CMOs have a difficult problem to solve: Outside the walls of their corporate mailboxes, scammers and bad actors impersonate their brands to deceive current and prospective customers.
Because of the nature of these types of attacks, without the proper mechanisms in place, the damage to a CMO’s brand is completely out of their purview. All of the work your marketing team is doing to build a trustworthy and recognizable brand is being used against you.
You might think you’re safe, but it’s easier than you think to impersonate a brand.
A quick online search is all that hackers need to get your latest logo files and brand style. And with a wealth of templated design tools available, pretty much any scammer can put together a professional, legitimate-looking email from “your brand.”
Equally alarming is that hackers can actually send fake email from your exact domain address if you’re not protected by DMARC enforcement. And if they use your domain, it’s almost impossible for your customers to identify a fake email.
There are obvious monetary losses associated with brand damage. In fact, customers are 42 percent less likely to engage with a brand after being phished.
Almost 100 percent of businesses send marketing emails to customers at least once a month, and for every dollar spent, email marketing returns $38 to the business. Brand impersonation through email phishing presents an extreme risk to the success of that channel:
- Email services providers are more likely to block legitimate email when your brand is experiencing phishing
- One in five phishing attacks end up negatively impacting the deliverability of legit messages
- One in three phishing attacks results in reduced email engagement by customers and prospects
There’s good news and bad news: CISOs are becoming more aware of the impact that these types of attacks can have on a brand, but 70 percent of IT leaders say that protecting their company’s brand is not their responsibility. Marketing teams must partner with IT/Security teams to drive home the value and importance.
With over $600 billion being spent on brand activation, marketers need to retain full ownership of their brand — everything from style guides to brand protection — in order to protect their investment.