Tech-No: Marketing Technology Failure Planning...

You may have heard about Chase's online banking system crash this week. It affected millions of customers.

Technology failure briefly hobbled Sasso Marketing this week, too -- twice...

Fortunately, we only experienced limited downtime. But it felt like an eternity. And it made me begin to beef-up our technology failure plan.

One Monday, I was out of town and our DSL modem failed. We now have a back up.  This morning, our email hosting failed, generating dozens of bounce backs. Now we have back-up email accounts.

Marketing today is innately dependent on technology from the old-fashioned telephone and fax to email and ecommerce. One hiccup and operations can grind to a halt. 

That's why it's important to have a marketing technology back-up plan. 

Up until this week. large chunks of our plan were in my head. Now, I plan to put it on paper so we're ready to implement it at a moments notice.

For instance, if our phone system fails, calls forward to my iPhone. If I can't use the landline or cell phone, we have a Skype account. (If the DSL fails again, I grab my laptop, run to Starbucks and rely on their wifi and latte to keep me going). I'm oversimplifying, but you get the point. Planning is key.

By the way, my email is working again, I think.

Takeaway: What will you do if you technology fails? Are you ready for every possibility short of nuclear disaster (phones, fax, email, Internet, DSL, website, printer, desktop, laptop...)?