Things I learned from an emarketing blunder
Raise your hand if you’ve sent an email to the wrong person, had a typo in an email or sent the wrong email to the wrong recipient. We all have. Raise your hand if you’ve sent an email that 1. wasn’t suppose to go, 2. went to your ENTIRE database. Yup. I did that.
Here is how I bit it with an email marketing campaign. It was late in the day, I had a million things swirling around my brain and I had a demo. I showed off all the cool things including mass email. “Oh look how easy it is to create a template. You want to do a survey, sure! We can do that!” (Mental note to self, remember to delete that schedule mass email before you power down.) “Reports? Sure, I can show you that. Look at this pretty dashboard!” Demo nailed. Text about what’s for dinner. Little peek at emails. Fire off a couple responses. Shut it all down and head home.
Over coffee the next morning I notice A LOT of emails and then I remember. . . turn off the scheduled mass email. Yea, a little late for that. Not only did I forget to disable the send, my demo send was to my entire database. This isn’t my first goof up and likely won’t be my last. So now what?
Here are some tips:
- Own it. Something I learned early in my career, own your mistake. Don’t blame technology or someone else. None of us is perfect. You’ll gain far more respect and trust by simply admitting you made a mistake.
- Apologize – There are no words more disarming to most than, “I’m sorry” or “I apologize”. That is especially true when paired with the advice in the previous tip. Admitting fault and apologizing for the mistake is priceless. If there are potential repercussions from the blunder, make it right by offering a compelling reason to forgive and to re-engage.
- Be prompt – If your mistake warrants addressing, do so quickly. In the world of email marketing, it’s likely your correction will be opened before your oops.
- Learn from it – After you clear out the inbox of all the “why did I get this”, take stock of what you learned. For instance, how could it have been avoided and what can you do differently next time? I learned (yet again) I need to slow down a bit, avoid distractions and there is still value in the whiteboard/sticky note reminder.
- Make lemonade – Most mistakes are irrecoverable. Some mistakes even have an upside. Make the most of it. For me, it was an opportunity to clean up some bounced email addresses, delete a few people that were overly offended and I got a few great calls out of it.
The biggest take away, mistakes happen. We all make them. If you haven’t yet, you will and you’ll recover.
