Oops! Email Mistake–Correction How-tos

You discover that an email you sent to your subscribers has a mistake in it. Now what? An oops email with an apology may be the best course of action, but it also may make the situation worse. Here are some email mistake–correction tips to help.

How to Deal With Common Email Mistakes

Once marketers realize that they’ve sent an email with a mistake in it to their list of subscribers, they often have a knee-jerk reaction of wanting to immediately send out an apology email. However, sending yet another email to recipients whose inboxes are likely already inundated with marketing emails may result in more of them unsubscribing from your email list or even marking your email as spam.

Check out these 3 steps to take if, and when, you send an email that has a mistake in it:

1. Identify the mistake promptly.
   Before you can come up with a sound strategy, you need to first determine the extent of the mistake. For example, some common email mistakes include typos, rendering issues, broken links, website landing pages that aren’t loading, an email that was sent to the wrong segment of your email list, incorrect time or date for an event, an error in the amount of a discount, and an incorrect promotional code.
2. Assess whether any damage has been done.
   Begin by determining how serious and detrimental the email mistake was. If the mistake requires a correction to a minor typo, for example, calling attention to it in an oops email may do more harm than good. In the same way, if it’s a technical issue with a landing page that you can quickly fix before too many subscribers open your email, just do it. Or if the mistake is an incorrect URL, you may be able to easily set up a redirect to send users where they’re supposed to go.

   But if it’s a bigger mistake that negatively impacts the customer experience (e.g., an incorrect promotional code, wrong date/time listing, an email sent to the wrong segment of your email list), it’s a good idea to send an oops email to right the wrong information.

3. Respond with a timely apology email.
   The content of your email message will vary depending on the mistake, your brand, and your target audience. But here are some tips for creating an effective oops email:
   • Do it quickly. You may even get to some of your subscribers before they’ve had a chance to open the email with the mistake in it.
   • Identify the subscribers who were affected by the email mistake and target only that group with the email-mistake correction.
   • Let subscribers know from the start that this is an email correction. In other words, include such words as “sorry” and “oops” in your email subject line and preheader.
   • Apologize sincerely. Keep it short and sweet. Plus, stay on brand in both design and tone.
   • Make it right with a special offer, if appropriate. As the saying goes, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” An apology email may actually grab recipients’ attention and—when presented with a special offer—motivate them to convert.

To see a good example of an oops email sent by GreaterGood that offers a special discount to help “make it right,” check out this recent FulcrumTech Get the Click email review.

How to Avoid Email Mistakes

Of course, when it comes to email mistakes, prevention is the best medicine. And having an effective email quality-assurance process in place is one of the best ways to ensure the production of flawless email campaigns. For example, do you have an email pre-send checklist for your marketing team to follow prior to sending emails? This is an important practice for catching any and all email mistakes.

For more information about the items to include in your pre-send checklist and other email quality-assurance tips, check out this FulcrumTech article: “Email Quality Assurance—Does Your QA Process Empower Email-Marketing Success?”

How’s your email quality-assurance process? If you are frequently making changes up to the last minute prior to sending out your email campaigns and still finding email mistakes, contact the email-marketing experts at FulcrumTech today. We can manage your email production from start to finish, helping to ensure that you have an effective quality-assurance process in place to avoid making mistakes and needing to send the dreaded oops email.

Other Articles You Might Like

• The Oops Email — What to Do When You Make an Email-Marketing Mistake
• Email Quality Assurance—Does Your QA Process Empower Email-Marketing Success?
• 7 Tips to Keep Subscribers From Marking Your Emails as Spam
• Email Optimization—5 Ways to Give Your Email Campaigns a Big Boost