A digital marketing campaign involves a variety of stages, from market research to client retention techniques. While your marketing team is working out new ways to lure customers in, are they paying due attention to their data security?
Customer data security is highly important for all marketing steps since failing to keep the information safe can lead to a spoiled reputation and lost revenues.
What are the data security threats marketing teams face on a regular basis? Each business must pay close attention to threat prevention.
1. Data Threats in Content Marketing
Many companies take advantage of CMSs (content management systems) for their marketing projects. CMSs are easy to set up, edit, and use. However, data leaks through such popular CMSs as WordPress are highly common.
If you are collecting client data while doing content marketing through CMS, you have to understand that hackers are working every day to find loopholes. If they manage to hack your website, the criminals could distribute malware to your visitors.
Meanwhile, they can collect customer data and use it for their purposes. Obviously, this may lead to a botched reputation and loss of clients.
It’s vital to integrate relevant security features into your CMS and regularly update the software. Avoiding accessing the website admin panel through unsecured public Wi-Fi networks can ensure further safety.
2. Data Threats In Email Marketing
Even though social media marketing has been trying to push email marketing out of the market for a while, it hasn’t been successful. Email is one of the most powerful marketing tools for B2B purposes. That’s the top reason why hackers are after information exchange in emails.
Every day, phishing scams are becoming more and more intricate, targeting business of all sizes.
As experts from an IT security provider Firewall Technical explain, by hacking an email account, hackers don’t just get access to your email list, they can send dangerous emails to your clients to collect personal data.
In order to keep emails safe while working on your marketing campaign, it’s important to ensure the integrity of your internet service provider. Use email marketing analysis tools to monitor your campaigns. Make sure your emails are fully encrypted to avoid information theft. Email systems should be checked during network security audits.
3. Data Threats In Social Media Marketing
Social media is one of the most exposed platforms for customer data security threats. If a hacker can get access to your social media account, private client information and sensitive correspondence can be exposed.
In order to increase the social media marketing data security, it’s important not to share sensitive information through social media channels, use two-step authentication, and come up with strong passwords.
Hacked social media accounts can ruin the businesses’ reputation while tricking the clients into revealing private information.
In order to avoid social media security threats, it’s important to monitor your social media marketing campaign on a daily basis to stop suspicious activity.
4. Data Threats in CRM Software
One of the key tools used for digital marketing campaigns is CRM software. These programs can help you stay in a close relationship with your clients, get to know their requirements, and analyze the effectiveness of your marketing campaign. CRMs allow you to automate many marketing efforts.
One of the things CRM software does is collecting customer data. A cyber breach can help hackers acquire sensitive business data.
It’s important to invest in highly secure CRM software and acquire services of a top-notch IT team to monitor its function.
One of the biggest problems with customer data security in CRM software is a careless approach by the employees. Setting poor passwords, sharing administration rights, losing devices, avoiding updates. All of that can lead to a cyber breach. It’s important to train the employees properly and only give admin rights to a limited number of users.
If a security breach does occur, your company must have a disaster recovery plan in place. The customer data must be regularly backed up. One of the newest and highly reliable options is cloud storage.
Considering customer data security in digital marketing is one of the first things a company should do. Failing to be ready for the abovementioned threats can spell disaster for any business, from lost profits to legal issues.
