Data Privacy has always been a concern for many email users. Marketers who do email bulk marketing have used user data to build customer profiles and targeted email campaigns. Many times, users are unaware of this email marketing strategy used by email marketers.
Email Privacy is a sensitive topic as failing to adhere to it. There is a huge risk of threat to user data if companies do not protect this data. The top three data and brand privacy concerns are:
- Email Spoofing – Over the years there has been an increase in email spoofing by 47%.
- Data leaks – There is an increase in data leaks by 46%.
- Brand misuse – Hackers and spammers misuse brand name to send out malicious emails. This has increases by 42% year after year.
How is the personal collected through emails of users is worth on the dark web?
The dark web is a dangerous place to leave your email address. Even if you have not visited any dark web websites, leaving your email address on every other website of interest is equivalent to leaving your email address on the dark web directly.
Did you know that your email account data could be worth $80 and above, depending on the worth of your personal data? Personal data of individuals are worth a lot more, especially when such data is used to create fake credit cards or passports or driving licenses and even use for illegal activities. The dark web is lurking with hackers and spammers, so to keep your email address safe, use a reputed mass mailing service provider.
Email Privacy by Apple:
Email Privacy policies by Apple are a benchmark for other countries to follow suit. Every Mass email service provider, even third-party service providers must now create a Privacy Policy for email marketing. Apple has put in place in-built privacy settings for iOS 15 which gives users the control to opt-in to give permission to third-party services.
Major social media platform Facebook has a big problem with this because its only money driver is to provide browsing data of users to Marketers through Facebook Ads targeting. This holds true for other third-party services like Twitter, Linked In, Instagram, Pinterest, and more.
According to independent data by Flurry, only 5% of iOS 14 and above users have opted-in for their browsing and email activity data to be used by Facebook and other third-party services.
What are email privacy setting features for service provider mass mailing?
There are certain features that users will benefit from under Mail privacy. Some features are:
- Mask the user’s IP address.
- Marketers are prevented to know if and when users open emails. (So, the email open rate data goes out the window).
- Hide My Email feature enables users to hide their primary address by creating proxy email addresses. (Companies can no longer use your primary email address for email marketing).
- The main inbox receives forwarded messages from the proxy email addresses and can be fully controlled by the user.
- Gmail has the Promotion Tab in place, which segregates all promotional emails for the users. (You may choose to open the marketing email or simply delete them).
- Apple has given choice to its users to use Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) to block advertisers.
- Apple’s Safari and Mozilla Firefox web browsers have already blocked third-party cookies.
Why is it important to adhere to Mail Privacy Settings?
Traditionally, email marketing and other digital marketing avenues revolve around collecting user data, without the knowledge of the users. In the past, this has helped marketers to understand and create user behavior models, which resulted in targeting marketing and sales. But, continuous misuse of vital user information has put stress on having strict privacy protection laws. (EMail Privacy Protection)
How to adhere to the Email Privacy settings and still conduct effective marketing?
There are many strategies marketers can still use to conduct effective marketing, also adhering to Email Privacy Settings. Some of them are:
- Aim to get “first-party data”, where the user opts-in themselves to share their data.
- To move from the “batch and blast” strategy to “click-through” strategy.
- Do not track “Email open rate”, rather track “click-through rate”.
- Useful first-party data can be sourced through newsletters, polls, sign-ups, social posts etc.
- Include the Privacy Policy with your email to show that your users can trust your business. This will help to build valuable bond with your users.
How to use bulk email solutions to create “first-party data”?
Often Bulk email solutions are mostly connected with spam emails. However, this is a wrong notion. When you choose the best bulk mail software and partner with a bulk email service in USA, you can send streamlined and personalized emails to your users.
- You can include the privacy policy opt-in form in the bulk email campaigns.
- You can use advanced email marketing tools and techniques.
- Built-in Anti-spam measures.
- Double email opt-in feature.
- Maintain a global suppression list and more.
- You can track the click-through emails using real-time Reporting and Statistics.
- Adhere to CAN-SPAM Act, GDPR, CCPA or California Consumer Privacy Act.
- We adhere to data removal policy, where users who do not wish to be contacted are removed from our data.
We at Alpha Sandesh take Privacy Protection seriously and hence, will provide bulk email solutions to businesses that seek this important feature.
Conclusion:
With the dawn of Email Privacy, user data is expected to be much safer. Are you ready to use Privacy Settings to protect your users? If you haven’t thought about it yet, now is the time to really get going with the idea.
Having a robust SMTP email service provider will make sure that all your email user data is safe. You will still be able to reach users and track their data provided your users have accepted with first-hand opt-in. Track click-throughs and conversions efficiently with Alpha Sandesh and still follow the Email Privacy Protection Policy to safeguard your users.
