The Week of Mistakes

I know mistakes happen, but I didn't think my inbox would be so bombarded with them in just over a weeks time. It started with a colleague emailing me a story about an email campaign gone bad where the company was sending out communication to update users on something particular to their software game. The company sent out batches of emails (not sure how they were sending them out) but apparently they were supposed to use the BCC field for all the emails in that batch but forgot so everyone that received the email also received the long string of the other users emails.

Next was an email to me, one of my favorite weekly emails I might add, however this time it was addressed to Brooke and not myself. I began to question whether it was a joke considering the companies tone yet I find it hard to believe they would make that a joke. Then I received an email I had already received months prior. I remembered the email instantly because the content was good and it came from a credible source. A server maintenance issue was a fault and I was immediately followed up with an explanation.

Lastly, and one of my favorites was an email I received in terms of requesting specific information that I never requested and of all things, it was about advertising on adult rated sites. Fortunately enough I was immediately followed up with an apology email and explanation that it was a email-sending software error. At least I got a good laugh out of that mistake.

Although it is nice to see that nobody's perfect and mistakes do occur I couldn't agree more with Chad White's Media Post's Email Insider column the other week about the Oopsy Hall of Fame and his pointers in terms of testing your emails prior to hitting the send button. To recap for those that might have missed it, he noted the following guidelines to ensure flawless execution:

1. Develop an email testing process and stick to it!

2. Spell-check.

3. View a test send in accounts from all the major email clients such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN to ensure consistent rendering across platforms.

4. Check image source files to ensure they load accurately.

5. Only resend an email where the mistake has significantly impaired the first message that was sent.

6. Try to halt the send if you immediately catch a mistake that was sent. You may be able to stop your entire list from receiving the erroneous email.

7. Develop a protocol for your apology emails, to allow for quick responses when a serious mistake happens.