How to Quickly Identify Scam Emails and Their Connection to Digital Marketing

In the world of digital marketing, where public companies—especially those with websites or LinkedIn pages—are highly visible, it's common to receive scam emails. These scams are more than just nuisances; if not detected in time, they can lead to serious financial or reputational issues as scammers try to convince you to make payments or share sensitive information. As marketers, it's essential not only to protect our own businesses but also to educate our clients on how to quickly identify these frauds.

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In marketing, credibility and trust are key. If our clients fall victim to scams, their trust in the digital environment could be shaken, impacting not only their operations but also our business relationship. Additionally, the time spent identifying and dealing with scammers is time that could be dedicated to more effective marketing strategies.

?In this article, I offer a few useful tools to quickly identify scam emails, based on real experiences and easily applicable steps.

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#1. Trust Your Intuition

Digital marketing often teaches us to trust our instincts, especially when something seems too good to be true. One of the scam’s emails I’ve experienced involved an "offer" where I was promised a $100,000 marketing contract, with an incredible(!) 15% commission for our agency. These kinds of “sweet” promises may sound tempting, but keep your mind from boiling: in the business world, nothing comes for free —except love of your family ??

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When you receive an extraordinary proposal without much context or out of the blue, keep cool ! Just as we analyze data in marketing before making decisions, it's better to assess the legitimacy of the offer in these situations.

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# 2. Verify the Sender’s Details: Name, Position, and Company

When receiving a suspicious email, the first thing to do is check the sender’s details. In marketing, we understand the importance of personalization. A genuine sender should provide their full name, position, and company clearly. If you receive an email from someone who only introduces themselves as "Marketing Director" without a full name, be suspicious.

Look up the company using a search engine like DuckDuckGo or Google. If you can't find valid information about the company, it’s a red flag. Also, check the email domain of the sender: does it match the company’s official domain, or is it a generic one?

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# 3. Check Their LinkedIn Profile

In today’s professional environment, having a LinkedIn profile is almost a given. If the sender doesn’t have one or their profile looks suspicious (no connections, no photo, or very little activity), this could indicate you're dealing with a scammer. As a marketing professional, you know that online presence and digital reputation are critical. If there's no clear digital footprint for the person or company contacting you, be cautious.

Let’s go further

How to check if image of photo is AI generated, there a lot of tools, just search for ”check image is ai generated”

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# 4. Check Their Domain

1.????? First of all domain you received email from should be accessible, try to put domain name into browser. If you do not see a nice website or you do not see website at all this means that this is domain where only email is setup but not website. In most cases companies do not set up domains this way.

2.????? Domain registration, find any "who is" website (type in any search engine "who is"), then check the domain name.

3.????? Website domain name and email domain should in most cases be the same, for example if there is a xyzzyzzyz.com domain, scammers could register something like xyzzyzzyz-it.com or it-xyzzyzzyz.com .

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# 5. Check WhatsUp number

If you're being contacted from, say, Italy, then in most cases the phone number should be local.

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In conclusion, quickly spotting scams is essential not only for protecting our businesses but also for maintaining efficiency in our marketing operations. After all, the time waisted dealing with scammers is time could be dedicated to more valuable tasks.

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Final Marketing Tips:

- Help Your Clients: Share this information with your clients and followers on social media. By helping them spot scam emails, you not only protect them but also position your agency as a trusted partner and skilled team.

- Build Trust: Every interaction with client should be clear, transparent and straightforward. This helps build professional relationships based on trust, which is essential in any business and of course marketing.

- Use Protection Tools: Implement spam filters in your agency’s email systems, usually mostly any hosting has it is own basic free protection from spam, encourage your clients to do the same. Suspicious email that passed spam filter check using approach described in this article.

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Marketing isn’t just about promoting products or services—it’s about protecting and strengthening the image and trust of both our clients and ourselves. Identifying and avoiding scams is a fundamental part of this process.

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