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Balancing holiday marketing efforts with fraud prevention requires a coordinated approach according to survey findings from 41st Parameter, a part of Experian. The survey results from 250 marketers released today, looks at the relationship between omnichannel retailing, fraud prevention and the holiday shopping season. The findings show that few marketers understand the full benefit of fraud-prevention systems on their activities as 60 percent of marketers were unsure of the cost of fraud to their organization. The survey also indicated that 40 percent of marketers said their organization had been targeted by hackers or cybercriminals. Download the Holiday Marketing Fraud Survey: http://snip.ly/JoyF With holiday shopping in full stride, 35 percent of businesses said they planned to increase their digital spend for the 2014 holiday season. Furthermore, Experian Marketing Services reported that during 2014, 80 percent of marketers planned on running cross-channel marketing campaigns. As marketers integrate more channels into their campaigns, new challenges emerge for fraud-risk managers who face continuous pressure to adopt new approaches. Here are three steps to help marketers and risk managers maintain a frictionless experience for customers: Marketers should communicate their plans early to the fraud-risk team, especially if they are planning to target a new or unexpected audience. Making this part of the process will reduce the chances that risk management will stop or inhibit customers. Ensure that marketers understand what the risk-management department is doing with respect to fraud detection. Chances are risk managers are waiting to tell you. Marketers shouldn’t assume that fraud won’t affect their business and talk to their risk-management division to learn how much fraud truly costs their company. Then they can understand what they need to do to make sure that their marketing efforts are not thwarted. “Marketers spend a great deal of time and money bringing in new customers and increasing sales, especially this time of year, and in too many cases, those efforts are negated in the name of fraud prevention,” said David Britton, vice president of industry solutions, 41st Parameter. “Marketers can help an organization’s bottom line by working with their fraud-risk department to prevent bad transactions from occurring while maintaining a seamless customer experience. Reducing fraud is important and protecting the customer experience is a necessity.” Few marketers understand the resulting impact of declined transactions because of suspected fraud and this is even more pronounced among small businesses, with 70 percent saying they were unsure of fraud’s impact. Fifty percent of mid-sized business marketers and 67 percent of large-enterprise marketers were unsure of the impact of fraud as well. An uncoordinated approach to new customer acquisition can result in lost revenue affecting the entire organization. For example, the industry average for card-not-present declines is 15 percent. However, one to three percent of those declined transactions turn out to be valid transactions, equating to $1.2 billion in lost revenue annually. Wrongfully declined transactions can be costly as the growth of cross-channel marketing increases and a push towards omnichannel retailing pressures marketers to find new customers. “Many businesses loosen their fraud detection measures during high peak time because they don’t have the tools to review potentially risky orders manually during the higher-volume holiday shopping period,” said Britton. “Criminals look to capitalize on this and exploit these gaps in any way possible, taking an omnifraud approach to maximizing their chances of success. Striking the right balance between sales enablement and fraud prevention is the key to maximizing growth for any business at all times of the year.” Download Experian’s fraud prevention report to learn more about how businesses can address these new marketing challenges.  

The world of mobile devices is constantly changing—everything is faster, bigger and better, and consumers have become more savvy and discerning about the features and benefits that make their lives more convenient, and in many cases, more manageable. I use my phone to do everything from simple tasks like checking email or Facebook, to downloading coupons, buying movie and concert tickets, to checking my bank balance and making deposits on the fly (which is such a great feature). When it comes to banking, mobile has become a growing consumer trend that Experian wanted to explore in its latest white paper, Mobile Banking: Enhancing Your Customers’ Experience. According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in 2013, about 74,000 new consumers used mobile banking per day. With more and more consumers utilizing mobile platforms to conduct business, this paper takes an in-depth look at how lenders have the opportunity to increase engagement with customers, offer more customized products and services with in-the-moment offers and enhance loyalty by anticipating their financial service’s needs. Some key points in this paper include: • Consumers are not only using their smartphones, but their tablets as well. Tablet adoption was slow at only 5 percent in 2011, but increased to 34 percent in 2013. • According to a recent survey from Pew Internet Research, 98 percent of mobile banking customers move between multiple devices within the same day. • According to the Census Bureau, 21-to-23 year olds comprise the largest age group using smartphones in America. To read more about how consumers are banking and being empowered in this digital age, download the report.

The growing prevalence of widely publicized data breaches is sparking a change in the attitudes of business leaders and consumers when it comes to cybersecurity. Board members and the C-suite can no longer ignore the drastic impact a data breach has on company reputation, and consumers are demanding more communication and remedies from businesses after a data breach occurs. As a result, the topic is a high priority facing businesses and regulators in 2015. The Experian Data Breach Resolution group serviced more than 3,000 breaches in 2014, the most in more than a decade of handling breach resolution. While our data breach services and identity protection products assist companies after a breach has occurred, our experience and insights help companies beforehand to plan and better protect their reputations in the aftermath. Today, it’s not just about upgrading your security technologies. What can benefit companies the most is learning from others – both best practices and their mistakes in handling a breach. It’s the small nuances that make a big difference, such as when to communicate the breach news and what to include in the notification to affected parties. Another important step is to keep abreast on what is happening in the cybersecurity industry from the latest malware to hit or what is the best identity protection product on the market for consumers. Knowing what’s coming, including regulatory changes, can impact the development of a response plan, too. That’s one reason resources, such as our 2015 Second Annual Data Breach Industry Forecast, are valued by companies striving to stay ahead of the curve. The paper addresses a number of risks that companies should be aware of, such as the increasing use of the cloud, lack of employee security training and the fresh breach “surface” created via the Internet of Things. My comments and predictions are meant to be a guiding light for our clients and others to use in advocating preparedness as they lead their organizations into the New Year. ”Insights into Action” is a mantra we follow, as well. As we noticed payment card breaches increasing in frequency and volume, we assessed how our products might provide even more robust protection to breach victims. This led to our collaboration with BillGuard, a mobile app for payment card monitoring that is now part of our Experian’s ProtectMyID® suite of features. Delivering valuable information and data to empower and drive businesses is the core of what we do at Experian. Our Data Breach Industry Forecast is a great example of that, and I encourage you to take action – and download it.