Hooking the Big Fish (or Mammals)
Just when you thought you’d mastered the technique of getting CEOs to open your email marketing communications, or at least you’d improved your statistics, the stakes have changed again. According to a report by email security expert MessageLabs, an average of 10 scam emails per day are specifically targeted at C-level executives.
Called “whaling”, phishers obtain the name, title and email of top executives and craft emails specific to their role at the company to lure the executive into clicking on a link that will download malware onto their computer. This takes a lot of work on behalf of the phisherman. Typically spammers rely on reaching the greatest amount of people with the smallest amount of effort, banking on the law of statistics to achieve some suckers who respond to the scam.
So if your business targets top executives, what should you do? I suggest:
- Reserve email campaigns for influencers or decision makers outside the executive roundtable. Use premium direct mail campaigns and mobile campaigns for C-level contacts.
- Choose your call to action and action required carefully. If you are sending readers to a campaign landing page, avoid hyperlinks that may look suspicious. Host your landing page on your corporate website so that your corporate domain name is obvious. For example, http://www.rpath.com/experience
- And this really goes without saying, but be sure you are following the CAN-SPAM Act. You are required to include in your message or template a physical postal address and mechanism to opt-out of future email messages. Although it’s not required, you should also consider including a telephone number. After all, there’s no better response to a great email campaign than an inbound phone call from your prospect!
-Melissa (for iMarketingMix)
Tags: CAN-SPAM, email campaigns, email marketing, email spam, iMarketingMix, marketing best practices, Melissa Richards, phishers
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