Recently, I had quite an eye-opening experience with a Third Party CEM system. Third Party decided to ban us due to a policy violation after one of our email recipients complained to their ISP, claiming our message was unsolicited. The frustrating part is that, on average, we sent only 2 to 4 emails per user—not exactly a heavy volume. Yet, this single incident was enough to result in our ban, with seemingly no path to resolution.
This situation highlighted a crucial lesson: the significant risk of relying too heavily on a single platform. Platform risk is no small matter. If your system, processes, or communication channels are tightly integrated with just one provider, and that provider suddenly cuts off services, the consequences can be disastrous. In our case, it’s not just about losing access—it’s the potential nightmare of reworking the entire system from scratch.
The takeaway here is the importance of maintaining control over key aspects of your infrastructure, customer relationships, and communication processes. It’s essential to have a contingency plan—a solid fallback mechanism—so your operations don’t come to a grinding halt if something goes wrong.
Equally important is managing customer interactions with care to minimize such incidents. We need to provide users with simple ways to opt out or resolve issues themselves before escalating to complaints and blacklisting. A bit of proactive diligence can prevent things from spiraling out of control.
In the end, despite the inconvenience, this experience gave me invaluable insight into the dangers of platform dependency. Moving forward, my focus will be on diversifying tools and ensuring my business is resilient enough to adapt to any unforeseen disruptions.