TL;DR If email marketing is an important part of your business, don’t assume everything will keep working as expected. An unexpected account review — triggered after I included a legitimate affiliate link in an email — temporarily disrupted my ability to send campaigns and highlighted some often-overlooked business risks. Although this incident happened on one specific email platform, the lessons apply to any business that relies on third-party tools. The experience reinforced the importance of understanding the Terms & Conditions of business services you depend on, using affiliate links responsibly, and building contingency plans and back-up communication and fulfillment channels before you need them. In this post, I share what happened, what I learned, and practical ways to make your email marketing — and your business — more resilient.
* This page may have affiliate links. If you click on affiliate links, I may be compensated at no additional cost to you. Learn more.
I Was in Email Jail…and It SUCKED!
Gather ’round and get comfy. I gotta little story to tell.
If you do AFFILIATE MARKETING as part of your EMAIL MARKETING,* you’ll want to read this.
But First, My Email Marketing Setup (The Context)
My Typical Email Workflow
I use a well-known email service provider (ESP). I regularly send emails to my list with affiliate links (all relevant, usually as links within a newsletter or solos for collab events I’m in or for businesses I’ve worked with).
The Friday Emails
Every Friday at 2:45pm local time, I send out two emails (a weekly content check-in) that are 95% identical but have different branding and a little bit of different text and links that go with the given brand. These emails go to two different groups and are sent at the same time.
In the emails, the bottom section contains helpful/interesting tidbits related to content creation (eg, tips, data, resources).
How One Affiliate Link Disrupted My Email Marketing & Communications (What Happened)
My Account Was Suddenly Put Under Review
Last week’s email(s) got me put into my ESP’s Email Jail. Basically, I had an affiliate link in that tidbits section that triggered a review of my account.
And it was a clusterf*ck bc I had two emails going out simultaneously with the same “issue.”
During the Account Freeze
When your account is under investigation, all sending is paused and the only Support request you can send via the in-app form is to ask about the Account Review (so if you have a dif prob, like I did, you’re SOL and forced to hunt my ESP down like I did). You can still access everything, create new emails, download backups of your list.
So, the first email (E1) went out on Friday (started sending on Thurs. my time). It showed as being Sent (tho I never got my copy of it in my inbox) as it was on the Sent tab in my Campaigns area.
This is the email that triggered the account review and put my account into pause mode.
I got an email notification saying something triggered the review at 7:06am PT Friday.
I got a second message at 7:20am telling me the issue was a jvz1.com affiliate link* and that I need to change it. (I’ll come back to this in a sec.)
I got a third email at 7:45am saying my account was reviewed and cleared — this was before I did/changed anything. That’s a turnaround time of about 40 mins. Not terrible (in terms of speed).
Bc of the pause, my second email (E2) never went out and was in the Outbox. I went in and changed the link and hit send. Went out no prob. I’m in that email Group and got the email no prob.
The Biggest Frustration: No Clear Path Forward
Then I get another notice from my ESP saying my account was on pause AGAIN for E1. I replied to the message asking what to do bc I can’t go back in time and change an email that was already sent. Like WTF?!
And this is when the ghosting started. Usually, when you submit an email to Support, you quickly get a response with confirmation of receipt and maybe a ticket number. Same with in-app forms you submit. I didn’t get anything.
And for some reason, I can’t access my ESP’s Community. I get a 502 page error no matter which browser I use, incognito or regular browser session, with or without VPN.*
I didn’t make too much of it at first, but then HOURS were going by and I’m freaking out bc I’m in the middle of an event with time-sensitive messages and need to be able to send this Friday email out.
Where My Humans At? I Pay for Support, Yo!
That’s when I turned to one of my fave email marketing communities — Liz Wilcox’s The Email Sound Booth* — for advice on how to connect with a human. Per uszh, that crowd came thru with lots of good suggestions, shared experience, and support.
I spent the whole wknd emailing, submitting forms, reaching out via social channels. I even messaged 1st-degree connections on LinkedIn (so cringe, but I was at my wit’s end!).
And by this point, it had been waaaay more than 40 mins since my account was paused!
All I wanted to know was how to move forward to unlock my account. Bc the actions I could actually take in my account were zero. You can’t edit or delete or unsend a sent email!
How I Got My Account Cleared & Unpaused
FINALLY, yesterday afternoon I decided to try emailing Support from an alternate email address. (Somehow I have two addys associated with my account — an issue to deal with another day.)
Someone finally got back to me via that alt addy and I was able to confirm that they had indeed gotten my previous emails and form submissions (which I guess they just ignored?). They told me, again, the issue was that jvz1.com link* and that I need to change it.
I replied again that I couldn’t change a sent email.
However, at some point, my ESP somehow moved E1 from my Sent folder back into the Outbox. But, the only action I could take was to click a Review button, which just opens up a screen with a preview of the email and the subject, and sending details. No way to edit.
I fwd the screenshots of this back to Support asking what to do bc I didn’t have an option to Edit or Delete. They got back to me about an hour ago telling me to remove the link in E1.
When I went in to my account, today, the message in the Outbox had been changed to one I could Cancel Sending for or delete. As sending it now was pointless, I just deleted it.
My account got out of jail! Back in business again! All in, my account was paused for 2.5 DAYS with ZERO COMMUNICATION from my ESP for the first two days of that lock-down! Inexcusable!
OK, so that’s the What Happened. Now let’s cover the Why It Happened and the Takeaways, and What’s Next.
What Triggered the Account Review?
The messages from my ESP said my account review was triggered by an aff link that may be against their Terms of Service. The ToS prohibit doing Affiliate Marketing.
Obvs, I immediately went to the ToS to see WTF.
How’s it possible that you can’t use my ESP for affiliate marketing?! That doesn’t make sense.
This was a very informative bit of research.
Affiliate Marketing vs Affiliate Links
My ESP has a whole section on Affiliate Marketing. They use this section to articulate what they define as Affiliate Marketing (not allowed) and including Affiliate Links in your emails.
Their definition for Affiliate Marketing is not the same one I use. My definition of “affiliate marketing” is equivalent to what they consider fair use of Affiliate Links.
It’s the difference between “Affiliate Marketing” with capital “A” and “M” and “affiliate marketing” with lower case “a” and “m”….
Their assertion was that my jvz1.com link* was Affiliate Marketing. (It wasn’t, according to their own ToS definitions.)
Why Context Matters
I get it, they don’t want you broadcast spamming people with a bunch of rando shit. I don’t want that either — as a sender or recipient.
But that is so definitely NOT what I was doing. And I think it’s plain to see this if they’d (or probs their AI compliance bot) bothered to look at my email(s), email history, website, products, etc. I’m firmly in the “affiliate marketing” with small “a” and small “m” territory — aka my ESP’s Affiliate Linking.
My use of this aff link was solidly and obviously within the scope of my ESP’s Affiliate Links policy. The link/thing I was promoting was:
- For something related to what my business does/discusses (i.e., a training on how to create a type of content*)
- On-topic for the message it was in (i.e., content creation)
- Within the realm of expectations of my audience (i.e., they signed up to hear about content-related stuff)
- Not the focus of the email and at the bottom of the email in a little blurb (i.e., only a small part of the overall message content)
- Clearly identified (multiple times) as an affiliate link (i.e., with disclaimers and link markers.)
- For a free training that I’d attended and thought might be of interest to my peeps (i.e., how to create funny AI video ads/demos)
- For a business that I’ve had personal correspondence with (ie., Laugh Your Ads Off*)
- For a business that I discovered thru a trusted business source (Molly Mahoney)
See? 8 points of proof that this is a case of Affiliate Linking!
Why This Matters Beyond Me & One Email Service Provider
Now that my account is cleared, I’m going to pursue this point (again) with my ESP. Bc I don’t believe my account should have been flagged and put on ice in the first place.
And I want to mitigate this issue (oh the PAIN!) for myself and others. And it caused me so much stress and frustration.
I asked my ESP in several of my messages how I can prevent this from happening in the future. And got no answer to this question.
Bc here’s the prob:
- I don’t control what affiliate program management platform or software a company uses.
- Many larger companies use JVZoo and similar platforms (e.g., Impact, ClickBank, CJ Affiliate, ShareASale, etc.) to run their affiliate programs.
- There’s no list (that I could find or was given) indicating which aff management platforms’ links my ESP prohibits.
- Despite asking repeatedly, my ESP offered no explicit guidance. Just the generic party line.
How is one supposed to work with this?!
Lessons Every Email Marketer Can Learn
The four big takeaways or lessons learned for me were:
- Be sure to read the Terms of Service for your ESP and other mission-critical tools.
- Be careful and conscientious if you do any affiliate marketing. (Which I already am.)
- Brainstorm and establish alternate ways to communicate with your audience/customers and fulfill orders so you have a fallback contingency if needed…before you need it.
- More broadly, try to reduce the number of single points of failure in your biz.
My Next Steps
Re-Evaluating My Email Service Provider
TBH, I’ve been contemplating moving to another ESP.
My ESP just restructured their plans and raised prices. If I stick with them, I’ll probably have to upgrade my plan. I’m looking at 20%-45% cost increase each month. CRAZY!
If I’m going to have to spend that much, I might as well shift over to the ESP many of my peers use, which is generally regarded as a much better and very beloved ESP. And it has built-in monetization opps that my ESP doesn’t have, so I might even offest some of the cost. Plus, my understanding is that this other ESP’s email builder and automations are more robust and easier to work with. All wins!
Alternatively, I’m looking at a couple of other ESPs with similar level of features, but a little lower cost. We’ll see….
Anyhoo, this experience has just added another straw to the camel’s back. It did not endear my ESP to me, that’s for sure.
Improving My Business Continuity Plan
I have some imperfect partial ways to communicate and deliver stuff, but it’s pretty limited due to constraints of those other tools/platforms.
But hey, we do the best we can!
And, as I look for tools in the future or consider business models and systems, I’ll have this in mind as well. I think the earlier I bring this into my planning, the better!
Before You Go…
To bring this home and help you envision how this might apply to your business, I thought a little checklist might be handy.
☐ Review your email service provider’s Terms of Service.
☐ Understand its policies around affiliate links and promotions.
☐ Keep backups of your subscriber list.
☐ Create at least one alternate way to communicate with customers.
☐ Have a plan for fulfilling orders if email becomes unavailable.
☐ Periodically review which third-party tools represent single points of failure in your business.
The Bigger Lesson — Don’t Wait for Your Own “Email Jail” Moment
I don’t share this story to scare anyone away from email marketing, sharing affiliate links, or using any particular platform. Every company has Terms & Conditions, automated systems, and occasional mistakes. They’re realities of running a business.
What this experience did do was expose a few weak spots in my own biz that I’d much rather discover now than later. It was a good reminder that I — and probs many others — rely heavily on third-party tools without fully thinking through what we’d do if one suddenly became unavailable.
If this story encourages you to review the your mission-critical tools, think through your backup communication and fulfillment options, or simply ask yourself, “What would I do if I couldn’t send email tomorrow?” then at least something good came out of my stint in “email jail.”
We can’t eliminate every risk (or, sadly, frustration), but we can make our businesses more resilient, agile, and flexible. And if my experience helps you avoid learning these lessons the hard way, it’ll have been worth sharing.
* This page may have affiliate links. If you click on affiliate links, I may be compensated at no additional cost to you. Learn more.
* This page may have affiliate links. If you click on affiliate links, I may be compensated at no additional cost to you. Learn more.
