There has been a lot of talk recently of data security, with the recent breaches at a couple of ESP’s, where millions of email addresses have been stolen by hackers. In both circumstances this has been because user logins have been compromised.

One of the basic rules of data protection is, only give access to those that need it. Reducing the amount of people that can access the data reduces the amount of people who can lose their logins to hackers.

This is one of the benefits of the ‘Enhanced User Permissions’ available in Maxemail V6. Users have always been able to specify what areas of Maxemail are available as per the screen below, but if someone needed access to a single list, they would need access to all lists.

Now for each user, you can assign them to a group. Then against each folder in Maxemail, you can define which groups can read or write in that folder. So you could set a group of users to be able to view all of your newsletters but not actually create any.

This applies to everything you store in Maxemail – lists, emails, reports, segments, templates, forms or dynamic content – choose which users have access to which folders in each of these areas.

Another enhancement is aimed at our customers who have multiple customer spaces. Previously users could either see just one or all customer spaces, but now it is possible to choose which ones they have access to:

For more information on configuring user access rights and folder permissions call our support team on 01327 355871.

Following the recent publicised data breaches at a number of digital and email marketing organisations, we thought it appropriate to emphasise that Emailcenter takes and is continuing to take measures to safeguard our customer’s data held within Maxemail.

Password strength meter

One of the methods hackers use to gain access to secure systems is to make a ‘brute force attack’ on a users login. This means they will try and guess a password by using thousands of common words used in passwords.

Maxemail contains a list of millions of such ‘common’ passwords, which it does not allow users to have as their password. Users are also shown how secure their password is by Maxemail’s password strength meter.

Encrypted connection

Whenever you input any data into Maxemail it is done so over a 256bit high grade encrypted connection. This means that when you are doing anything from inputting your passwords or uploading data, this information cannot be accesses by any third parties.

IP restriction

IP restriction ensures that only those on your specified IP can gain access to Maxemail. To set up IP restriction simply:

1. Find out your IP address at www.whatismyip.com.
2. Log into Maxemail as an Administrator.
3. Select ‘Edit User’.
4. Tick ‘IP Restriction’ and enter your IP address.
5. For those wishing to access Maxemail in multiple locations, they should enter the IP addresses from these locations, separated by a comma.

Maxemail will also ban IP addresses that try to login too many times in quick succession.

In addition, there are certain steps that your organisation can take to increase the security of your data:

1. Ensure Maxemail users regularly review and change their login password.
2. De-activate login details for employees that have left the organisation.

If you would like to discuss your data security with a member of our client services team, please call 01327 355871.

A new edition into the Maxemail reporting suite is our “Email Engagement Report”.

One of the questions marketers often ask is; if I get 20% open rates for each email campaign, is it the same 20% or a different 20% each time? And how many subscribers never open an email?

The engagement report answers all of these questions by providing an open and click rate for each individual recipient based upon the emails you select. For example if a recipient has received 5 emails, but only opened one and not clicked on any, the report will show their open rate as 20% and click rate as 0%.

The report also shows the last time that someone opened and clicked on an email. This means you can either target those who have not opened in the last 90 days with a different message or even simply create a segment to suppress those that have not opened or clicked in the last 365 days.

Of course you don’t want to suppress those who have only recently signed up, so the report also outputs their first email and a count of how many emails they have received.

Additional data fields can also be added to the report to show how different segments are more or less engaged with your email marketing.

If you find yourself importing updated CSV files into Maxemail on a daily basis, this new feature will come as welcome news. It is now possible to automate list imports from all major CRM systems or via FTP.

View a detailed summary report without having to log into Maxemail. Schedule a PDF summary of the campaign results to be sent to your inbox at a frequency of your choice.