How to Bounce Back From An Email Hack Attack

It was all going so well…?

I’d planned to use the time between Christmas and New Year to relax, unwind and generally switch off…

But on the morning of Thursday 29th of December that peace was smashed…?

I happened to check my inbox and the subject line of a new email caught my attention:

“You've been hacked!”

I opened it and read with growing horror…

Dear Nick?

I think someone is trying to scam me using your company details.

I just received two emails that appear to come from you, which look suspicious and the address given for the company is not correct either.?

I quickly scrolled through my own inbox and found 2 emails, purportedly coming from different editors I work with.?

The subject line read: Invoice For Review

The content of the email was a single image…?

Over the next few hours, more and more messages poured in from genuine subscribers, sharing similar concerns.

It was clear that our email broadcast system had been seriously compromised. Someone had gained unauthorised access and sent out some dodgy messages.?

Thanks to our readers’ responses, we spotted the breach quickly and made sure that our business and most importantly, our customers were not affected.?

This wasn’t a system that held any personal details, passwords or records (unlike the rather more terrifying hacks that have been happening of late to Twitter!)

I won’t go into too much technical detail here, but it appears that one of our Virtual Assistants who had access to our email broadcast system, was using a certain Password Manager service.

This service itself was compromised by a separate hack a few weeks earlier, though he wasn’t informed by them!

Anyway, the upshot was, someone was then able to access our broadcast system to set up the email sends, bypassing the usual security measures.?

All told more than 100,000 emails were sent out including to - and this is important - those who had previously opted out of receiving our emails.?

It was an incredibly rare and unfortunate breach, but we had to take urgent action to make sure our hugely valuable email database and sender reputation were not fatally damaged.?

What follows are the key lessons learned and action points we have initiated. While I hope you will never have this problem, all of the following are relevant to EVERY email list owner:

Stop Sending Promotional Emails… For Now

The natural reaction to this kind of email appearing in our inbox is to mark it as spam.

This in turn alerts the email service providers who, quite understandably, want to block any spam.?

While we are a legitimate broadcaster, this spike in spam complaints meant we were put on their version of the ‘naughty step’ and saw a marked fall in our open rates.?

More on that in a moment…

So our first action was to suspend any promotional emails going out.?

Why? Email providers (think Gmail, Yahoo and the rest) scan and filter bulk emails that are deemed promotional.

They are looking for various triggers such as sales copy (content) and the number of links in an individual message that will raise potential red flags.?

Added to that, you will inevitably get some people on your list who unsubscribe and/or mark your email as spam.?

While these metrics are normally very low for most legitimate broadcasters, you want to avoid any potential additional marks against your sends.?

And that’s why we quickly went on a charm offensive…

Put Your Subscribers First

Once we realised what was going on we quickly (within 12hrs) wrote to everyone on our database explaining what had happened.

As this was during the Christmas break it was very difficult to get access to the relevant support teams but we persisted.

Further, we reassured them that we were taking action to protect them. People care about their own well-being, so we didn’t focus on the damage to our business, but reassured readers that their personal details were not compromised.

Our customer service team were superstars and came out of their Christmas break to answer all the emails.

Missing out on short-term sales is a small price to pay when you are looking at the long term health of your email list.?

Monitor Your Metrics Closely?

One of the immediate aftereffects of the hack was that the open rates of our subsequent broadcasts were down between 20% - 50% depending on the list from the long term average.?

A big drop in open rates is never good news, but at least it allowed us to measure the impact.

Of course, you should never focus on the results of one send in isolation. There are other factors that can decrease (or increase) open rate including the subject line and time of broadcast.?

However, if you keep a general benchmark for delivery rates and open rates, this allows you to measure the relative rise (or fall) in the performance of your broadcasts.?

Reinforce Your Relationship With Love Bombs!?

With our sender reputation taking a hit, we immediately drew up a plan to send out a series of content-rich (again, non-sales) emails, including free reports relevant and interesting to our subscribers.?

Thankfully the response was very positive with people emailing us their thanks.

This act had a double effect - not only did it show our readers that we genuinely cared about their well-being, but it also sent a positive message to the ESPs.

Always Send Regular High-Quality Content

The fact that our reputation seems to have come out relatively unscathed from this hack is down to nurturing our email lists over the long term.?

We’ve been sending out weekly content-only (non-sales) emails for 20 years across multiple subject areas.

We always make sure these emails contain relevant, useful and engaging content that helps our readers to get closer to achieving their desired outcomes.?

And this is essential for your email list - no matter what industry you are in.?

The aim is to nurture a personal and trusting relationship with your audience. You want our readers to look forward to our emails arriving each week because they contain opinions and advice that align with and advance their personal goals.?

So when a blatant and soulless spam email arrives in their inbox, they instinctively know it isn’t from you.?

And there you have it…

While being the victim of a hack is distressing, it does help to shock you into remembering just how precious your email list is.

UPDATE: As I write this in early January, we’re still very much in ‘recovery mode’, but our delivery and open rates are creeping up. We are focusing on delivering more great free (and useful) content to our readers and keeping their well-being our top priority.?

ANOTHER TIP: always ensure every member of your team uses 2FA (2-factor authentication) with anything they access on your behalf.?Even the most secure of passwords can be at risk beyond your control (as our experience showed us) so 2FA provides extra security.

OH, THE IRONY! I just realised that my free guide is called 'Open Rate HACKS and Killer Subject Lines'! If you can see beyond this unfortunate coincidence, you will find plenty of useful tips and a swipe file of proven subject lines.