- Thanks for Unsubscribing
- Posts
- What Should You Do When You Screw Up An Email
What Should You Do When You Screw Up An Email
From broken links to badly timed messages, the one thing you shouldn't do is NOTHING.
Dear reader,
If you’re sending emails — whether it’s a personal email to a friend or a newsletter to thousands of subscribers — here’s one thing that’s guaranteed to happen to you…
You will make an embarrassing mistake.
There are so many reasons why mistakes happen in emails:
Typos
Missing links
Sending at the wrong time
Forgetting to attach your file(s)
Forgetting to suppress contacts
I know someone who put “asses” in the subject line as opposed to “assess”. A hilarious, yet honest mistake.
These things happen.
And because you can’t edit an email once it’s sent, they’re quite common among brands big and small.
If it’s a silly typo that’s sent to one person or a small group of people, you can probably just have a laugh, remember to be more thorough next time, and move on with your life.
But how about if the mistake is on behalf of a business and it’s sent to thousands of people?
There’s only one wrong answer here and that’s to DO NOTHING.
Recently, Dan Oshinsky shared a story on his brilliant Google Doc-based newsletter, called “Not a Newsletter”, about the time Oakland University sent an email to 5,000 students telling them they won a massive scholarship:
Carnell Poindexter looked at the subject line of the email — “Congratulations!” — and opened it immediately while in a debate class at his high school in West Bloomfield, Mich.
Mr. Poindexter, an 18-year-old senior with a 3.8 grade point average, thought that perhaps this was the scholarship he had hoped for from Oakland University.
“You worked hard and it paid off!” read the Jan. 4 email, informing him that he had won a $48,000 academic scholarship over four years. Mr. Poindexter, who wants to be a lawyer, and his parents were elated.
But then, more than two hours later, came another email with a subject line that read, “CORRECTION.”
This is nightmare fuel for anyone managing an email list — especially when money is involved.
If you find yourself in this unfortunate situation, you’re going to have to show some humility and correct yourself publicly.
Moreover, different sized f*** ups deserve different kinds of corrections.
A simple mistake regarding the time of an event can be made right by sending a follow-up email with the correct time. However, if you did what Oakland University did, you need to get personal.
Dan writes:
But when you make a major mistake, as in the case of Oakland University, your apology email needs to come from a person. (Their name should be the name that you see before you open the email.) It needs to explain what went wrong, and it needs to offer a heartfelt apology — in the first sentence, and then again later in the message. It needs to explain how you plan on righting this wrong. And it needs to include personal contact information for your organization so that those affected can get in touch with an actual person if they so choose. Those students deserved much more than “CORRECTION.”
True.
The time we got hacked
Our organisation had a HUGE mishap a few years ago.
We got hacked.
Upon getting hacked, the hackers sent an email to EVERYONE ON OUR LIST (~15,000 contacts) with an invoice attached to it.
The invoice was the same each time. If memory serves me correctly it was for a few thousand dollars.
Suddenly, our phones began ringing off the hook with customers, leads, former employees, community members, and VIPs asking us what this invoice was all about.
For hours, our phones did not stop ringing.
I was tasked with monitoring emails and social media messages. People started talking on Twitter about how reckless we were with their information. Some super angry people even began questioning our business ethics as it pertained to how we acquired emails.
Once the dust settled and we figured out what had happened, we had to start cleaning up the mess.
This included an email to our clients that apologised and explained what happened and how we could ensure it wouldn’t happen going forward.
It was embarrassing, but 99% of people were understanding. In fact, it got us some leads who had previously gone dormant!
This was proof that the vast majority of people are quite forgiving of sincere mistakes.
How to avoid mistakes in emails
Mistakes are avoided when businesses put good systems in place. Here’s the system we use that has drastically minimised our mistakes:
Email is completed > Internal review by an editor > Internal review by an account manager > External review by the client > Final review by the email marketer > Schedule email
In all, there are 4 separate reviews that happen by at least three different people.
If you’re writing a personal email to a co-worker or client, it’s unlikely that you’ll have an extensive editing process. In lieu of an extra set of eyes, read your email aloud. You’ll be surprised how many mistakes you catch by doing this.
I hope this has been useful.
Best of luck with your next mistake!Andrew