Happy paycheque Monday!

Amazon Prime Day just wrapped up, hitting record-high sales numbers again this year. While marketers celebrate strong performance, it's the perfect reminder to ensure your marketing automations are secure from unintended changes.

Today’s ready time is around 3:02 minutes.

Here’s what you'll find in today's email:

• Real-life example of access control gone wrong

• The hidden security gaps in most marketing setups

• A clear and simple 10-minute audit to fix them

• Lifecycle quick hits

Protect your revenue—fix marketing access controls

Deep Dive

Have you ever logged into your marketing platform and noticed something strange?

Your abandoned cart flow, the one driving 22% of our e-commerce revenue, has been modified. The delay between emails was changed from 24 hours to 2 hours, and someone had edited the conditional logic that determines which products get featured.

I discovered our summer intern had full admin access. They were "just trying to help." It was a costly lesson about access controls.

The hidden security gap in your marketing stack

Most of us obsess over email performance, segmentation, and creative. But we rarely think about who has permission to access and change these critical systems.

The reality is sobering: In a recent audit of 15 lifecycle marketing programs, I found that 80% had given excessive permissions to team members who had no business having them. In three cases, former employees still had full admin access months after leaving the company.

Your marketing automation platform is essentially a money-printing machine. Would you let just anyone walk up and adjust the settings?

Not to mention most can also see customer PII.

The three levels of access control problems

After auditing dozens of marketing operations, I've identified three common permission problems that create risk:

1. Too Many Admins: Everyone from your VP Marketing to your newest team member has full administrative access to create, modify, and delete automations, segments, content blocks etc..

2. Outdated Access: Former team members, agencies, or contractors still have login credentials even though they're no longer working with you. Also a potential legal risk.

3. Insufficient Role Separation: Everyone has the same level of access, rather than limiting permissions based on job responsibilities. Engineers who want to test events and APIs. Product folks who want to run surveys, and you as a lifecycle marketer. All of you three need different kind of roles.

Any of these can lead to accidental changes, well-intentioned "improvements," or in worst cases, potential for data leaks etc.

Your 10-minute access audit

You don't need security expertise to assess your current situation. Here's my simple process:

1. List all users: Log into your marketing platform and go to user management. Export or list everyone who currently has access.

2. Verify active relationships: Check if each person on the list still works with your company or needs access to perform their current role.

3. Review permission levels: Look at what type of access each user has. Does your copywriter really need the ability to modify automation logic?

4. Check login history: Many platforms show when users last logged in. If someone hasn't accessed the system in 90+ days, they probably don't need their current level of access.

5. Document your findings: Note any issues you discover so you can address them systematically.

I recently helped a SaaS client run this audit. We found 17 user accounts for a marketing team of 6 people. Five belonged to former employees, and three to an agency they hadn't worked with in over a year.

The four permission principles I follow

After making this mistake myself (and helping others fix theirs), I now follow these rules for marketing platform access:

Principle 1: Minimum Viable Access

Give each user only the permissions they absolutely need to do their job, nothing more. Your email designer needs access to templates but not user data or automation logic.

Principle 2: Admin Limitation

Restrict full administrative access to 2-3 key team members who understand the implications of system-wide changes. The more technically savvy members, like you.

Principle 3: Regular Audits

Review user access quarterly, coinciding with team changes or the end of agency relationships.

Principle 4: Documented Procedures

Create clear documentation for what changes require approval and who has authority to make them.

Your access control action plan

Ready to fix this? Here's what to do today:

1. Conduct your audit using the five steps above.

2. Revoke unnecessary access for former team members, vendors, or agencies.

3. Downgrade excessive permissions for users who don't need full admin rights.

4. Create role-based access levels that align with job responsibilities.

5. Enable audit logging if your platform supports it, so you can track who makes changes.

Even if you trust your team completely, mistakes happen. Proper access controls aren't about trust, they're about creating safety nets that prevent costly accidents.

Take 10 minutes today to audit who has access to your marketing automation platform. You might be surprised by what you find, and you'll definitely sleep better knowing your revenue-generating automations are secure.

Which of your marketing platforms will you check first? Start with the one that has direct access to customer data and sending capabilities.

A quick access audit today prevents costly mistakes tomorrow. Secure your marketing automations now and rest easier tonight.

Well, that’s all for today, folks.

If you found even a tiny bit of value from this email, I’d appreciate sharing it with your team or on LinkedIn. You’ll get access to some Good karma if you do so 😇 

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