ο»ΏBusiness Fire Drills | Season 1, Episode 12
Fire Drill 11: Before You Lose Access to Your Email Platform
Speaker: Tamsen Horton
This morning I woke up and kept smelling something awful. Now, I live in a house with three boys, so a bad smell is not out of the ordinary, but it just kept getting stronger. Sure enough, I let one of the dogs out of the crate and something had not agreed with their stomach. The crate was covered. The dog was covered. And I hadn't heard a peep all night. It was puke. They were covered in puke.
It was 6:30 on a Monday morning. We normally walk out the door at 6:45. School drop-offs, work, the whole routine. Well, that was not going to be happening this morning.
So my husband and I looked at each other and we just started working. He gave the dog a bath and a blow-dry. I took the crate. We changed the drop-off order. Halfway through the blow-dry, the dog had an upset stomach again. So we adjusted again. I put a clean pad in the second crate and swapped the dog back and forth. No food until the stomach calms down.
And here's the thing. Nobody yelled. We were literally laughing at each other. My own brain was running on fumes, and my husband asked if the gray blanket in the dryer was clean or needed to be washed. It took me a minute, and I said, "Nope, that needs to be washed." He said, "Well, you got it close. You had it next to the washer." So he flipped it around. And we still got everyone to work and school on time. The house was still standing.
I'm attorney Tamsen Horton. Business moments like this are predictable. Panic is optional. This is your Business Fire Drill: Before You Lose Access to Your Email Platform. And I'll tell you exactly why I started this with the story about our dog.
When we got our first puppy, and it took us ten years to get a dog, because I had not been responsible for a dog, my husband had not been responsible for a dog, and our children both wanted dogs from the time they could speak, but I just didn't have the capacity. So it took us ten years to bring a dog into our family. When we got Scout, our first dog, the breeder told me, "You have the groomer booked every four weeks. That's great. But you need to know how to give this dog a bath in case something happens." I had never had a dog, so I listened to her.
It is the one thing I tell every new dog owner: you may not be your dog's groomer. I had no intention of ever being the groomer, ever. But when your dog gets sick, or rolls in something, and you can't get to the groomer, you need to know how to take care of your dog.
This really got me thinking about the episode before this one, Before You Lose Access to Your Website. The website developer who holds all the keys is similar to the groomer. "Oh, that person takes care of it, so I don't need to worry about it. That person knows how to do it." No. It's still our website. It's still our dog. It's still our, insert whatever.
This morning, I didn't have to learn how to bathe a dog at 6:30 on a Monday, covered in puke, when the stakes were ridiculously high. I already knew. I knew how to rotate crates. I knew not to feed a sick stomach. That's what a fire drill does. Sometimes you do everything right and the fire still starts. The point isn't to prevent every fire. That would be nice, but it's not 100 percent realistic. It's to know exactly what to do when one shows up.
So let's talk about your email list. The one channel that's supposed to be yours.
Here's what the fire alarm looks like. Your account is suddenly suspended over spam complaints or a bounce rate you didn't know was a problem. Or a payment fails and the account freezes, because, again, the notice is going to an inbox you are not regularly checking. Or the team member with the admin login moved on. Or your sending domain's settings were set up by a contractor who's long gone. Or you hired someone in the frenzy of a launch. We have talked about this in previous episodes, how a launch becomes basically a five-alarm fire. You hired too quickly, you didn't vet the person, and they stole your email list, or locked you out of it, or changed the login. You can let your brain come up with all kinds of scenarios.
And the question under all of it is: wait, is my list actually gone? Where did it go?
Now, before we run this fire drill, let me ask you: why do you have smoke detectors in your house? To warn you before the fire. That's their entire job. I built a free one for your business. It's called the Smoke Detector. It's eleven questions, takes about three minutes, and it tells you which fires your business is most likely to have, which ones might already be smoldering. So if you're not sure your list lives anywhere but inside your email platform, go take it today. I would take it today no matter what, because it's going to identify multiple fires, not just our topic for today. The link is in the show notes. Please go use the Smoke Detector.
After you use the Smoke Detector, I want you to think about whether you are reacting or responding to this fire alarm.
Reacting looks like this. There's no recent export of your list anywhere outside the tech platform you're using. Access depends on one person. And the moment you're back in, you fire off a "sorry for the technical difficulties" email to everyone without even knowing what caused the suspension. You are just racing around. What should I do? What should I send? I've got to take care of this.
It would be like if, this morning, I had said, "Oh my gosh, I've got to get the dog out of the crate," and I let them out, but they're still covered in puke. Now they've run around the house, rubbed up on the couch, rolled on the carpet. And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, now I have more of a mess over here. Quick, grab the dog!" The kids start chasing the dog. "The dog's running around, the dog's dropping puke everywhere!" That's reacting. Metaphorically, apply it to your email list, because that's exactly what happens.
Responding looks different. You have a consistent, current export of your list that lives outside your platform. More than one person has admin access. A lockout is an inconvenience, not a crisis. My dog this morning was an inconvenience, not a crisis.
Now let's run the drill. D-R-I-L-L.
D: Don't react. Do not panic-send a "sorry for the technical difficulties" email broadcast the moment you get back into your list. Honestly, very likely nobody even noticed you were locked out. Do not go on social media if someone has locked you out and changed the admin access. Please do not post in a group of 10,000 or 30,000 of your closest entrepreneurial friends. Not a good idea. Do not send an angry email to your email person if you have someone helping you. Don't yell at the people you share a home with. Don't go nuts.
R: Record everything. Keep a regularly updated export of your email list stored outside the piece of technology you use for your email list. Write down your domain and sending authentication records, the DNS settings that prove your emails are really yours. Keep all of the information regarding your email provider and your email list, and know where all of it is.
I: Identify the real risk. Is this a billing lapse? Is it a compliance problem? Or is it a real loss of access? Each one has a different fix. We have to identify the issue in order to apply the correct solution.
L: Lead with calm. Contact support for your email provider. Have the proof you need of your list, and what happened, the sequence of events: this happened, this happened, this happened, or this is my best guess of what has happened. We are taking the emotion out of it, so it's very factual. Not a public rant, not ripping into someone, not accusing them of trying to ruin your life, because typically our email providers are not trying to ruin our lives. In a lot of instances, they are also dealing with a tech gremlin that just got out of control.
L: Lock in the lesson. Set a recurring export reminder. I consistently export my list and save it as a CSV file. This is a recurring task that Claude can help me with through Kajabi. I always have an export. Could I miss a few hundred people who opted in between the last export and a tech gremlin coming into play? Absolutely. But I'm dealing with a less-than-30-day window, and I'll take a less-than-30-day window over wiping out the work I've been doing since 2011, all day, every day. And have a second trusted person with admin access. Again, not someone you met in a group of your closest entrepreneurial friends. A truly trusted individual who, should you need a second person to access it, can. This is exactly like knowing how to bathe your own dog.
You just heard the five steps, and you may be thinking, "I'm not sure I have an export." That's what the Smoke Detector is for. It is free. I cannot make this any more accessible, understandable, and targeted for you. It will show you where the smoke is. Fire produces smoke. Smoldering fires produce smoke. Much like the stench of my dog crate this morning was telling me, "Hey, we have an issue. Do you smell this? Something is not right." Go use the Smoke Detector. I do not want you to get burned. I don't want your business to get burned. I do not want anything burning down or up around you.
Just like in our homes, we have fire extinguishers. When did you buy your fire extinguisher or your fire blanket? Probably when you moved into your house or your condo or your apartment. You're not racing to the store in the middle of a fire to buy a fire extinguisher. At that point, you have to call the fire department. Let me state this plainly: if you do not run the Smoke Detector, and you do not have the fire extinguisher, when this predictable business moment generates a fire, you are calling the lawyers. The lawyer is the fire department. Once the blaze is going, you can't say, "Oh, now I'm going to log in and run the fire drill." That would be the equivalent of going to the store when your house is on fire and saying, "I need to buy a fire extinguisher," and someone saying, "Why did you not call the fire department?" So let me make that explicit for anyone having a hard time connecting the dots.
This fire extinguisher is something we build in our business. I can't stick it in a canister and pull a trigger and have it blow smoke everywhere. It's different. But I know you're hanging with me. You're going to build this before the fire.
Number one, a recurring export of your email list, stored outside of your email platform. Put it on your calendar, monthly if you email often. I highly recommend this. And I don't keep past copies. As soon as a new copy comes in, we get rid of the old one, so you always have the current CSV file right here.
Number two, at least two people with admin access. Not one person, and not only someone else. Not just you, and not just the person you may have hired to help you maintain your email. Your email list is your dog. The dog brings you joy. The email list funds your business. You have to know how to bathe your dog. In so many ways I am laughing hysterically in my brain, because I am recording these fire drills in real time, one day every month, and the fact that the dog inconvenience happened this morning, the joke of the universe is not lost on me. I was like, really? Could I not have had a more in-my-face example of why this matters and why I won't shut up about it? Who knows what the rest of our episodes are going to bring.
Number three, your domain and email authentication records documented in writing, so a lockout doesn't also mean a mystery. There have been many changes in rules and regulations concerning setting up email, what kind of records we need to have, where the code needs to be. It's going to depend on where you send email and who you send it through. But there are records. If that's complete Greek to you, let me know in the comments, because I have the best person, probably in the world, who I use and send all my clients to. He's phenomenal, and he understands all of that language. If you need someone, let me know and I will give you his info.
Number four, a working understanding of your platform's sending and compliance rules. Again, you have to know how to bathe your dog. I don't need to understand the sending and compliance rules the way I understand law, but I do have to be aware that they're there. I have to be aware of how I send email and what I put in email, because different things could trigger different issues inadvertently. So just a working understanding. Let me bring it back to dog bathing and grooming. When I'm training a puppy owner, I don't tell them, "You have to be an expert groomer." No. You have to know how to give them a bath and get them dry, so that you can then get them to the groomer. The groomer can have the clippers and the scissors and do all of the pretty things. But if there's an issue, that basic working understanding means I can bathe and wash the dog, so the dog isn't walking around my house leaving a mess wherever it goes.
Number five, records of how your subscribers opted in. I run all of my email through Kajabi, so there is a record of when they opted in and what form they came through. I export all of that type of information, so if you ever need it, you have that proof when support asks. I have only seen this become an issue in one instance, and it was outside the scope of this: someone had bought an email list and wanted to import it into their platform, and the platform said, "Something doesn't smell right here. How did these people actually opt in? Where are the forms and the timestamps?" And the person did not have them. When you're running an ethical business and doing things right, you have access to this information, and being able to provide it if you need to is part of the drill.
If the fire is already burning, look for your suspension notice before you do anything else, because it will tell you the reason. If your access is really gone, pull your most recent export, and contact support with proof of ownership, opt-in records, whatever they need. And don't email-blast your list until you know what triggered it. If you even need to say something, because even though what I have to say is important, I do not think anyone is sitting at their laptop waiting for an email from me. They're not going to notice. I could have the biggest tech gremlin and I don't need to announce it to the world. You don't need to announce it to the world, unless you do need to. The facts and circumstances will tell you, because you're leading with calm: this does need to be said, and this is how I'm going to say it. Leading with calm will guide whether you need to take action and publicize whatever just took place.
That brings us to your next right decision. We have three options.
One, do nothing. You already export your email list regularly, you have a backup admin, you know where your documents are, and you have a working understanding such that, should you need to bathe your dog, you are perfectly capable. You're good. You're absolutely good.
Two, put the drill in place. If your entire list lives in only one location with one admin person, start with your export today. Go into your platform and hit "export my list." Every platform has this option. If yours does not, that is a huge fire alarm going off for me: maybe I should move. You want the ability to hit a button and say, export my list. Start with the export today.
Three, you thought of a friend. Anyone running email marketing is one mess away from finding out whether their list really belongs to them. Can they take care of bathing their dog if something happens? Send them this link. They will send you a thank-you note. It is one of the best things you can do for your friends.
Any of these three options is completely valid.
Your homework for today: log in right now, find the export button, and download your list. This is going to take less than ten minutes, and you just bought the cheapest insurance policy that exists for a business owner. A list is only really yours if you can walk away from the platform holding it and still have it. If you have no record of it, it's going to be really hard to take it anywhere with you. It's the cheapest insurance policy. Log in, click button, save file. Done.
And I'm going to keep talking about fire drills until you are sick of me saying it. If you are sick of hearing it, your brain has it. It's Jiminy Cricket on your shoulder saying, "Hey, we have time to take care of this now." I didn't need to learn to bathe my dog this morning. I already knew, because I'd done the boring stuff before the fire.
Please take the Smoke Detector. Find out if there's smoke in your business. Fire causes smoke. Smoldering fires leave smoke. Because business moments are predictable. Your panic is optional. Run the fire drill before the fire alarm goes off.
