DEV Community: Medha Mehta

75,000+ Subscribers in 10 Days: Morning Brew’s MarTech Case Study

Medha Mehta — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 09:51:14 +0000

Morning Brew, a leading distributor of the daily email newsletter covering the latest news from Wall St. to Silicon Valley, achieved a remarkable feat by adding over 75,000 new subscribers in about 10 days only. This success story ignited curiosity and speculation within the business community, leaving many wondering about the secret behind Morning Brew's meteoric rise. Let’s explore how Morning Brew did it with the use of the latest marketing technology.

Referral Program with Marketing Technology

The Morning Brew introduced a new referral program, offering a unique incentive for subscribers: Refer Morning Brew to five friends and receive a premium pair of joggers delivered right to your doorstep for free. Referral programs are not new and many companies have them.

In fact, Morning Brew also had such programs in the past but they faced many implementation issues. From keeping records of new referrals and winners to dispatching the joggers, maintaining stock, and sending confirmation and tracking emails, Morning Brew was managing everything manually with spreadsheets, making the campaign sluggish and difficult to execute.

But this time, Morning Brew automated the entire process by involving technology in their marketing campaign. So how exactly did it work?

Morning Brew outsourced the referral program to a marketing automation SaaS startup Stitchi.co, which handled every aspect of the operation. Stitchi.co took charge of numerous functions, providing Morning Brew with a hassle-free experience. Here’s how Martech came into play.

Custom Design Printing on the Joggers: Stichi.co’s designers worked with Morning Brew’s marketing to create a unique, custom design with the logo and printed it on joggers.

Integration with Shopify: Once the design is printed on the merchandise, Stitchi.co integrated the entire operations with Shopify to manage inventory records and order processing.

Warehousing: It took the responsibility of securely storing all the merchandise in its warehouses so that Morning Brew doesn’t need to find and pay for the storage.

Packing and Distribution: Ensuring that winners received their joggers promptly and in perfect condition, Stitchi.co used its powerful technology that kept records of all the winners, collected their shipping addresses, dispatched the merchandise from the warehouse, and shipped them to each winner to their doorsteps around the US.

Automated Email Marketing Campaigns: MarTech partners also developed dynamic email sequences triggered by specific actions or events, which boosted engagement, increased conversions, and heightened Morning Brew's brand awareness.
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"We shipped over 8,000 pairs of Morning Brew joggers to our loyal readers, resulting in over 75,000 new subscribers. This was our largest growth campaign to date, and we love seeing pictures of our readers wearing their MB joggers on social media,"_said Jenny Rothenberg, Director of Growth at Morning Brew.

Unlike traditional referral programs, this one stood out due to its exceptional execution, ease of participation, and swift delivery to the winners. MarTech’'s role in this success story highlights the growing trend of cost-efficient SaaS applications in the promotional marketing field.

Engaging with Martech companies is easy and way cost-efficient. You will be saving on the entire management and labor cost of handling such programs, which includes record keeping, warehousing, packing, dispatching, and shipping.

The Evolution of Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is not a new concept, but its evolution over the years has been remarkable. Initially, it was primarily used for sending automated emails and managing customer lists. However, as technology advanced and customer expectations evolved, marketing automation platforms expanded their capabilities.

Today, marketing automation encompasses a wide range of functionalities, including lead scoring, segmentation, personalized content delivery, social media management, and analytics. This evolution would not have been possible without the continuous integration of technology and SaaS solutions.

The Crucial Role of Technology

Data-Driven Decision Making:

Big data and analytics have become the backbone of marketing automation. Advanced algorithms analyze vast amounts of data to provide insights into customer behavior, preferences, and trends. This enables marketers to make data-driven decisions and refine their strategies for better results.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML):

AI and ML algorithms power predictive analytics, allowing marketers to anticipate customer needs and automate personalized marketing campaigns. Chatbots and virtual assistants enhance customer interactions, providing immediate responses and improving user experiences.

Integration Capabilities:

Marketing automation platforms seamlessly integrate with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, email marketing tools, social media platforms, and more. This integration streamlines data flow, ensuring a unified view of customer interactions across various touchpoints.

Personalization:

Personalization is key to engaging modern consumers. Technology enables marketers to create highly tailored content and offers, boosting customer engagement and conversion rates. Dynamic content and A/B testing are just a couple of examples of how technology enhances personalization.

Conclusion

Morning Brew's extraordinary growth and the success of its referral program underscore the value of innovative collaborations and streamlined operations. The role of technology and SaaS in marketing automation cannot be overstated. These tools have redefined the way businesses connect with their audiences, making marketing more efficient, personalized, and data-driven.

How To Secure A Business Email: 7 Easy-To-Implement Tips

Medha Mehta — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 07:58:35 +0000

If you frequently send confidential professional data over emails, it is obvious that you want to know how to secure an
email. A vigilant email user can weed out the fake and phishing incoming emails. But what about outgoing emails? If someone intercepts it, they can read all your email content including, but not limited to trade secrets, technical know-how, confidential communication with customers and clients, sensitive legal issues, secret marketing strategies, etc.

What if someone hacks your employees’ email client itself? Then, they can not only read all the emails but also send emails to all your customers, vendors, shareholders, etc., impersonating a legit representative of the company! It is a highly risky thing. Google can blacklist your company's official email accounts, too!
In this article, we have included 7 tricks on how to protect business emails.

1) Use Email Clients That Provide E2E Encryption Facility

You might not be aware of the fact that when you use generic email clients like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc., the email first reaches these service providers' servers and is then redirected to the recipient's server. This step increases the chances of email compromise. End-to-end (E2E) email encryption means locking your emails' data with cryptographical keys. Plus, the email goes directly to the recipient, without any mediators.

There are some email service providers that provide you end-to-end encryption for all the emails for free! The well-known E2E service providers are ProtonMail, Mailfence, and Tuanota. The basic account will be free with limited storage. If you want an email address with your companies' domain after @ or more storage space, you have to upgrade to their premium plans.

2) Install Security Extension and Add-ons

The email clients we mentioned above are complicated to use. But if you want to stick with your regular email clients, you can use these freemium browser extensions and add-ons to secure your emails.

By installing some of these tools, you can not only get E2E encryption, but also set expiration, disable forwarding, revoke access to the email, and watermark attachments with recipients’ names to prevent them from leaking sensitive files.

Here are some well-known extensions.
• Virtu
• SendSafely
• Mailvelope,
• End-To-End,
• FlowCrypt

Another way to protect emails is to use S/MIME or email signing certificates. It is available for organizations only. These certs provide a digital signing facility with each outgoing email along with E2E encryption. The digital signatures can't be removed, altered, or duplicated. That provides a strong identity authentication to the recipients. S/MIME certificate costs between $10 to $35 per year.

3) Have Separate Email Accounts for Essential and Non-essential Usage

According to Dashlane, the average American internet user will have 300 online accounts by the year 2022. Most of the time when you want a new account with a platform, you must provide them an email address. That means your email ID is exposed to a lot of different platforms. If their database got leaked or if these platforms sell this data to others (it's illegal, though), you will not only get tons of phishing and spam emails but also be subject to brute force and credential stuffing attacks.

That's why it is highly advisable to keep a separate account for all the important tasks like banking, utilities, insurance, and personal emails and have a different email account that you can give to any non-essential service provider. Also, never use the same password as your email while making an online account with any other platform.

4) Enable Two-Factor Authentication

In two-factor authentication, you will get a unique one-time password (OTP), pin, link, or code on your registered mobile’s SMS or secondary email address. You need to provide this secret code along with the password every time at the time of logging in. It may look like a hassle to many but at least for the email addresses you use for sending sensitive personal or professional data, 2FA can definitely be good practice for protecting the email accounts.

You can also enable 2FA using these apps.

Google Authenticator,
Microsoft Authenticator,
Twilio Authy 2-Factor Authentication

5) Encrypt the Attachments

If you are sending important data via email attachments, it is always a good practice to encrypt it. In general, when you password-protect a document, it gets encrypted. For any Microsoft products (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access), you can go to
Files --> Info --> Protect Document/Workbook --> Encrypt with Password

There are some free encryption software available too like Folder Lock, 7-Zip, VeraCrypt, AxCrypt, DiskCryptor, etc.
Please make sure you send the recipient's password in a separate email or via SMS or any other channel.

6) Don’t Let Browsers Save your Passwords

The auto-login facility is always very convenient for emails. But it’s not a good practice for protecting your emails. you might not be aware, but your browser has stored many passwords which anyone can read easily if they get access to your computer.
For Chrome,
• go to the menu (three vertical dots on the upper right side)
• click on Settings
• locate Autofill and click on Passwords

See how many passwords are there. You can view them by clicking on the eye symbol and even export them in an excel sheet. If you lose your device or a hacker takes control of it using malware, they can easily intercept these passwords. Hence delete these stored passwords and always type your passwords manually while logging in.

7) Don’t Login to Other Services Using Default Email Clients

Now, this last piece of advice may sound cliché but people still miss this one. It is highly convenient when a new platform gives you options like “Login with Gmail” or “Login with Facebook”. You don't need to fill their boring form and all the formalities just get completed in a click! However, it is a highly unsafe practice. Do you read the terms and conditions of the new platform? They might be able to use all the personal information saved on your Gmail or Facebook and use that data.

Some platforms' policies are so bizarre that they see your contact list, emails, media files, and social media posts as well. They can invade your privacy or use this data for marketing purposes. But if such a platform's database or server is hacked, the hacker can cause huge damage with such an access. Hackers can send phishing emails using your email client or blackmail you.

Final Words on How to Secure an Email

There are approx. 4. 15 billion email users in the world in 2021. Such a large pool of victims is definitely going to attract cybercrimes for deploying cybercrimes. That’s why it is important for you to know how to protect emails. This includes how to recognize phishing incoming emails and how to secure outgoing emails. For that, you can use encryption, enable 2FA, install tools and extensions, delete passwords from browsers, and keep separate email accounts for essential and non-essential work. If you're doing email marketing, use a trustable email marketing service provider like Yottled that securely stores your and your customers' email addresses.

5 Shocking Incidents Related to Healthcare IoT Security

Medha Mehta — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 14:24:26 +0000

The healthcare industry is one of the hot favorite targets for hackers. The average hospital uses an average of 17 network-connected devices per hospital bed and Deloitte predicts the market for internet of medical things i.e. IoMT devices will be $52.2 billion in 2022. Hence, the surface area is gigantic. There are many other challenges the healthcare industry faces, but what makes this sector more vulnerable is the urgency of the situation. Each passing movement risks patients’ lives and can create catastrophes.
Here are the five eye-opening incidents that show how vulnerable healthcare IoT devices can be.

1) Hackers Accessing Pacemakers Remotely

Muddy Waters Capital and security firm MedSec discovered that St. Jude’s implantable cardiac devices like pacemakers and defibrillators were suffering from security vulnerabilities. Hackers can easily access those devices remotely, tamper with programming commands, and put patients’ health at risk. St. Jude bought these devices from Abbott, but it was St.Jude hospital staff who was responsible to deal with the updates and patch management.

After learning about the vulnerabilities, FDA urged the patients who implanted pacemakers at St. Jude to visit the healthcare facility immediately and get the firmware update in person. It would take three minutes and can't be done at home. They further warned patients that if the update is incomplete, they are at the risk of a loss of programmed settings and diagnostic data, along with a cyber-attack. The hackers can drain off the battery, too, and cause the device lose its functionality.

2) Hackers Disabled Düsseldorf hospital’s Emergency Services

In September 2020, a hacker deployed a ransomware attack on Düsseldorf University Hospital in Germany and disabled emergency care services. As a result, the hospital had to postpone a critical patient’s emergency operation and transfer her to another hospital which was 19 miles away. As the patient didn't get the needed medical treatment at the time, she lost her life.

Although, later on, investigators declared that the patient's condition was so severe that she likely would not have survived irrespective of the cyberattack, this incident is eye-opening. If hackers can access the IoMT devices, servers, and databases to disrupt the emergency services, they can put many patients' lives in jeopardy.

3) Campbell County Health’s Systemwide Computers Crippled Down

On 20 September 2019, hackers targeted Campbell County Health (CCH) and crippled down their computers, which affected more than 20 facilities and clinics associated with CCH. The hospital had to transfer critical patients to the nearest hospital, which was 70 miles away. Many departments like Respiratory Therapy, Sleep Clinic, Radiology, etc. stopped admitting outpatient orders. Numerous appointments needed to be canceled and surgeries were postponed. It was a ransomware attack and it took CCH 17 days to restore everything.

4) IoMT Devices Using Social Media!

Ordr analyzed more than 5 million IoMT devices and found some shocking facts. According to its report, it found Facebook and YouTube apps running on MRI and CT scan machines! These machines are connected with monitors in which the healthcare provider can monitor the test results and make the reports. But staff used these connected monitors to surf the internet and various social media sites.
This can be a dangerous thing. It is convenient for hackers to deliver a piece of malware through insecure websites, redirects, malvertising (malware-laden advertising), and corrupted games. If that happens, attackers can view all the patients' test results and misuse them. They can also remotely access those devices and disrupt their functionalities to deploy a ransomware attack.

5) IoMT devices and Non-Essential IoT devices Use Same VLAN and Internet

In the same Ordr research, it was found that IoT devices like printers, servers, vending machines, and parking lot gates were on the same VLANs as critical medical devices. In fact, 75% of healthcare deployments had VLAN violations.

Moreover, 95% of medical facilities had devices on which Amazon Alexa and Echo devices were active on the same network. Such voice assistants can be used for spying and recording medical staff's sensitive conversations about the patient's health. It will not only violate the HIPAA regulations but also give hackers a chance to misuse patients' confidential information to blackmail them.

Recommended Security Practices For Healthcare Industry

Cybersecurity is all about staying one step ahead of hackers. This excellent infographic summarizes some good security practices for all the industries, including healthcare.

Image Source: Cyphere