Companies that allow employees to telework can take advantage of today’s 24-hour digital lifestyle to get more done with their workers. The global Coronavirus pandemic has put even more workers in a position to telework. People new to working from home have to remember to take extra precautions to protect their personal and business digital security. Here are some ways staff members can improve their digital security practices while working at home.

Assign a Password to Your Wireless Network

Individuals new to working at home should do a thorough analysis of their home internet network before logging in and completing tasks. The first step to establish a secure working network at home is to assign a password to the wireless network. Wireless printers and other networked devices should also be password-protected to avoid unauthorized access.

Update Virus Protections

The second thing to tackle before working at home online is to update any security software and virus protection programs on laptops and other devices. People who work at home may want to consider installing software that protects their network of devices, such as products from security expert Hari Ravichandran and his company Aura. It may also be necessary to adjust internet browser security and privacy settings on the machines used for work.

Never Click on Links From Emails

Teleworkers should also be aware of how phishing attacks work and understand ways to avoid being a target of these hacking attempts. Some clever scammers have fooled people into clicking on fraudulent links and obtained secure information. Be aware of potential phishing attempts in email. Many of these emails may even appear to be from company contacts, so never click on links from emails unless they are confirmed to be from official sources. Pop-up windows in a browser may also be suspect, so it’s best to disable that feature in the settings.

Make Devices Password-Protected

When workers bring their company laptops and other devices home to continue tasks, they must ensure all items are password-protected and secure. The pandemic going on all around the world means lots of people are working from home, and some families are sharing workspaces and potentially even devices. Workers should keep their company computers, tablets, and phones separated from the rest of the household and secure them with strong passwords. This keeps them off-limits to curious children and teens who may not understand the ramifications of accessing a secure company device.

Keep Work and Personal Devices Separate

The next strategy to help increase digital security at home is to keep work and personal devices completely separate if possible. Use only work computers and phones for business tasks, such as checking company email, video conferencing with other team members, and downloading work items. For paying bills, posting to personal social media, messaging friends and family, and shopping online for home items, it’s best to use a separate device or computer.

Avoid Posting Too Many Details on Social Media

With so many people spending most of their time at home in the next few weeks, there may be a significant rise in social media use. While reading social media posts from family and friends and posting updates can be a way to avoid loneliness and isolation in this tough time, it’s important to not be too transparent about activities online. Some employees who work with sensitive information may have to be careful about the content they post on their personal social media accounts.

Backup Files Regularly

If someone is working online for long periods of time, it’s necessary to understand data protection issues. When this is not the typical routine for a company’s team, the staff members need to make sure they regularly update and backup files in at least two different places. In uncertain times like these, employees should back up to a physical location, such as an external hard drive and an online location. Backing up to two separate sources can ensure that essential information is not misplaced or lost.

Check-in With Your Company’s Digital Security Team

The last important way to protect a worker’s digital security at home is to keep in constant contact with the employer’s security team. Small companies may only have one person dedicated to this task, but there should be some sort of plan for employees to keep up with essential updates and policy changes. Workers may need to follow certain precautions and spend some time reading and reviewing digital security strategies to keep their information secure and available to the organization. Business leaders should make sure all members of the team are aware of company digital security policies before beginning telework.

The new digital workforce can survive the next few months of telework if they follow smart tips to protect their online security and their company’s data. Treating a home office as seriously as the company’s physical location and following all procedures with an organization can help lower the chances of phishing attacks, hacks, and data theft.

Image courtesy of Pexels.

Are you looking for a new way to reach your customers, improve engagement, and boost sales?

Then look no further. Triggered emails are exactly what you’ve been searching for. They provide customers with valuable information that they want and need and in turn provide you with the metrics you want to see.

From increased open and click-through rates to an impressive return on investment, trigger emails are a perfect solution for businesses looking to up their email game. The best part is that your customers actually want to receive these messages.

Here’s a sneak peek at what we’ll cover in this article:

• What a trigger email is
• Why you may want to use triggered emails
• Share a few best practices to help you nail your triggered emails

What is a trigger email?

Trigger emails, also known as transactional emails, are messages that are sent to customers based on a specific action or behavior. They provide customers with relevant information that is sent to them at the right time.

Transactional emails will not only increase your metrics around click and open rates, but they will also help increase your ROI. On top of that, your customers want to receive these types of emails, it’s a win-win for everyone. Image courtesy of Smart Insights.

Because these emails are so specific to the needs of your customers, triggered emails have the potential to boost revenue by 33%. That’s because your customers want to receive these types of emails.

Here are a few different kinds of trigger emails:

• Order confirmation emails
• Shipping and delivery emails
• Abandoned cart reminder emails
• Price drop emails
• Welcome email campaigns
• Retention email campaigns

With the help of technology, like predictive analytics and machine learning, you can continue to refine your triggered email strategy. The opportunity for personalization and real-time content is endless when you have the right tools.

Why use trigger emails?

Beyond the benefits we’ve already mentioned, there are a number of other reasons why you’d want to use triggered emails. From improving lead nurturing to building trust and retaining customers — you can’t go wrong with trigger emails.

Here are a few additional benefits to using triggered emails:

• They provide an automatic response to customers
• You can nurture leads more effectively
• It will increase brand awareness
• They can help build trust
• You can set trigger emails to help retain inactive customers

Trigger emails provide impressive stats across the board. From a decrease in bounces to an increase in open and click-through rates, they’re worth the investment. Image courtesy of Neil Patel.

Triggered emails can provide your customers with a great experience while providing you with higher engagement and conversion rates. When compared to bulk emails, triggered emails average 74.9% higher open rates and 161.9% higher click-through rates.

Try These Trigger Email Best Practices

To see success in your triggered emails, you’ll need to know where to start. To help you get started, we’re going to take a look at a few best practices to follow when starting to use triggered emails.

Have a Goal in Mind for Each Email

It can be easy to go overboard when you start to see your triggered emails working, but you need to keep goals in mind. Every email you send should have a specific goal it’s meant to accomplish.

Goals will help keep your content in line with what you want to accomplish and keep you from deviating from your original plan. That doesn’t mean you can’t build on to your triggered emails in the future, but you’ll always want to keep your overarching goals in mind.

Let’s take a look at a few types of trigger emails and what the goals associated with them may be:

• Abandoned cart emails are meant to bring customers back to complete a purchase
• Retention emails are meant to turn an inactive customer back into an active and engaged customer
• Welcome campaigns are supposed to warm customers up and begin to build a relationship
• Confirmation emails let customers know that their order was received

Abandoned cart emails are a great example of trigger emails. They are triggered by someone adding an item to their cart and leaving the site. Sending a quick reminder email about that product can bring customers back to your site and increase sales. Image courtesy of CoSchedule.

Each type of triggered email has a specific reason for being created. Don’t lose sight of what that reason is. Especially when you’re just starting out, pick one or two triggers to focus on and spend time really building out your goals and customer journey.

By keeping your goals in mind, you’ll also have a clear idea of how successful your campaign was, or where you may need to adjust for future emails.

Make Sure Your Email Provide Value

When you think about the experience you are providing your customers, you need to remember that these emails need to provide them with something of value. If you’re sending emails based on a customer’s action, it needs to be relevant to that action and provide them with something they need.

A useless email will not only get deleted, but it may also cause the customer to ignore future communication from you. Especially if you’re continuously sending trigger emails that don’t apply to their needs.

To ensure you’re providing customers with value, you need to anticipate what the customer will need at this stage of their journey. Answer any questions they may have and provide them with what the next step is. That could be leading them back to your website to read more about a product or reminding them that a product will be shipped to their home in the coming day.

No matter what the communication is about — just always remember to take a minute and think about what your customers need. Put yourself in their shoes and really think through what would provide them with the most value at this point in their journey.

Use Personalization to Make an Even Better Experience

Personalization is so important in today’s marketing world — and that’s true for triggered emails as well. In fact, by combining the power of triggered emails with personalization, you’ll expect to see even higher conversion rates.

Personalization alone can increase open and click-through rates. But when you bring these two email tactics together, you can expect to see even higher metrics. It’s a match made in heaven and is something you should consider when using trigger emails. Image courtesy of Statista.

Here are a few stats to prove that adding personalization to your triggered emails is the right move:

• Personalized subject lines experience 26% higher open rates
• They improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and improve conversion by 10%
• Personalized emails can increase transaction rates by 600%
• Marketers see an average of 20% sales increase when personalizing customer experiences

Together, triggered emails and personalization can be your secret weapon.

There are a few different ways to personalize your triggered emails. Here are the two ways we’ll talk about in this article: subscriber segmentation and using predictive analytics.

Subscriber segmentation will help you know your customers better. There are a number of ways to segment your customer list including location, age, gender, and purchase and browsing history. If you can collect the data, you can create segmentation groups around it and start providing customers with more relevant and personalize email communication.

Using predictive analytics is another solution to improve personalization. This means taking the data you already have on your customers and using it to predict what they will need next.

Predictive analytics uses advanced artificial technology and machine learning to understand your customers on an entirely new level. With this knowledge, you can begin to hyper personalize their experience and know exactly what content each customer wants to receive.

In the case of triggered emails, using predictive analytics could look like product recommendations based on a previous purchase, or sending remarketing emails about a product the customer was recently browsing.

Behavioural segmentation is also one of the type of market segmentation to further target customers based on actions and behavior.

Start Sending Your Customers Triggered Emails

So there you have it. Triggered emails are a great resource for companies and will improve your metrics across the board. If you take the time to set goals, understand the needs of your customers, and implement personalization into your strategy, you too can benefit from sending your customers triggered emails.