Everyone makes mistakes occasionally. When it comes to email marketing, it can happen; even the big guys make gaffes sometimes. When this happens, the important thing is to take a breath and not panic. Most people think they need to send an apology immediately, but depending on the error and your audience, you may want to wait. Sending too many emails at once, even for a mistake, can skyrocket your unsubscribe rate.

Following, we have listed What to do when email mistakes happen:

1. Make a List of All Possible Problems

Before you fix the matter, the first step is to list all the possible issues with your unsuccessful email campaign. Write down every error, including typos in the subject line, broken links, inaccurate pricing, a slow website, the incorrect segment, broken HTML, etc. By doing this, you’ll be better able to manage the situation and deal with every error in an organized and competent way.

2. Consider the Situation

If you committed a more significant email marketing mistake that may have caused a real email marketing disaster, an email fixing the issue should send out immediately.

3. Identify the Potential Issues

Because marketers are human, mistakes will occasionally find in a campaign. Not every error, however, requires a response because some can fix it without drawing attention to them. Others, like spelling errors, can be overlooked (unless there is a clear typo). Once you have identified the errors in your campaign, decide which ones require a response. These are typically the mistakes that could damage your brand or lower your conversion rates.

4. Prepare an Answer

If you’ve decided that your error necessitates a correction, explanation, apology, or another follow-up, you should act swiftly and carefully to start the process. It’s best to make the remedy the same day. The confusion and problem that may have arisen from an accidental email campaign can almost always be resolved with a single email.

Keep your explanation brief, straightforward, and easy to understand. Give a sincere apology, make an effort to fix whatever issues your mistake may have created, and then end the conversation. There’s no need to bombard your customers with numerous emails of apology; doing so might make the apology seem worse than the original error.

5. Select the Appropriate Email Subject Line

The email’s subject line that corrects errors is its most crucial component. Your chances of getting customers to read the corrected email rather than the original email increase when you use the proper subject line. The reason your energy utility is sending another email should start in your subject line, which should be brief and to the point.

For instance, adding the word “Oops!” before the original subject line conveys that your energy utility is humorously acknowledging the error. Additionally, humor can improve customer engagement.

6. Respond

When you’ve decided that sending an oops email is necessary, it’s time to create a solution. Not every crisis calls for you to email a correction. A broad reaction prepared to respond quickly in crises is a good idea. However, make sure it’s straight and flexible so you can adjust it as needed. It’s important to remember that excessive regret for the wrong reasons can damage your brand’s reputation.

7. Aim to Keep It Brief

Generally, keep your correction email brief, apologize for the error, and emphasize accurate information. It should be simple to notice and comprehend. There are several methods to do it. You may mention a technical problem politely (if it is a technical issue).

8. Timing is Important

Depending on the incident’s seriousness, you could write an email of apologies. You wouldn’t undoubtedly write another email for a little error, like a careless spelling mistake. However, more serious mistakes like inaccurate dates, promotions, or segmentations might need an apology or correction email.

Timing is crucial. Errors should fix as quickly as feasible. For instance, you shouldn’t wait if you issued the erroneous promotional code or promoted the wrong price. You should contact the recipients with the proper information as soon as possible after the wrong email has been sent.

9. Use Uplifting Language

Try to interpret the circumstance advantageously rather than dragging yourself through the ground. While it’s important to acknowledge what went wrong, you must also discuss how you fixed it and what you learned. Of course, apologizing is necessary. However, using extremely unfavorable language, such as how embarrassed you are, won’t improve the user experience and will only make people uncomfortable.

10. Take Note of Your Error

After you’ve handled your apologies properly, you must look at your email procedures to prevent making the same (or a different) error again. Streamlining your editing and pre-send procedures is an important step. Before scheduling an email for distribution, try to go through many rounds of team proofreading. Sometimes, it takes another eye to notice a little mistake or identify incorrect or outdated material.

A comprehensive quality assurance checklist is something you would want to create and go through before launching each email campaign. Even if you are certain that your email is flawless, review each item on the checklist before pressing the send button. Send test emails for every campaign as a second stage. Check how your email appears in your inbox (across devices and screen sizes), open it, test the links, and confirm that the graphics are positioned correctly.

Bonus Solution

You can also try to correct the mistake, depending on where it was in your email. If you’ve made an error in the subject line, in a link, or the content, these tips can help you correct the mistake, even if you’ve already sent the email:

• Subject line oops – This impacts your open rate, so one thing you never want to do, no matter how tempting, is to use a placeholder subject line like TBD or “test” while creating your email – just in case you launch the email without remembering to change the subject line. You may not know your subject line immediately, but even if you use something like “August Newsletter” for the time being, it’ll support your email if it gets sent and won’t be as detrimental as “test” might.
  • In follow-ups:
    • Use the words “Correction,” “Oops,” or “We Apologize” in the subject line, so your recipients know why they received another email.
    • Consider using the pre-header for the correction information.

• Content oops – Images can be refreshed. If some of your recipients saw the wrong graphic in the email, contact our support team; they can help you refresh an image in your email. If you’ve made a typo, or the mistake is not business-impacting, address it later. If you’ve mailed to the wrong list segment or have the wrong offer in the email, send an apology email with the correct info.

How to avoid an “Oops!” in the future?

VerticalResponse’s Test Kit feature helps catch certain email errors before they happen. Find broken links, root out display problems across various email clients, and see how your subject lines will appear before you hit “Send.”

And, of course, proofread, proofread, proofread. If you’re the only person looking at your emails, enlist someone else to help. Just one other set of eyes can prevent a mistake from happening again. Also, always send yourself a test email too! Make sure the copy makes sense, that you see the right images, that they’re rendering correctly, and that all your links work.

Try some of these content tactics:

• Use auto-correct and spell check, or use Microsoft Word to discover grammar problems.
• Print out your emails and check for errors.
• Read each word out loud to catch anything wrong.

Everyone makes mistakes; the important thing is to learn from them.

When it comes to sending emails, mistakes can happen and it’s important to know how to handle them. didn’t notice sending a correction email send a correction write a correction email table of contents customer experience. If you’ve sent an email with a mistake, the first thing to do is to assess the situation and determine whether it requires a correction. If it’s a minor mistake, like a typo or a missing word, it’s usually not necessary to take action. However, if the mistake is more significant, like an incorrect discount code or a misdirected email, it’s important to correct it as soon as possible. One way to handle this situation is to send a follow-up email with a corrected version and apologize for any confusion caused by the mistake. In the subject line, you can use “Oops! Correction to our previous email” to make it clear that it’s a corrected version. It’s important to keep in mind that how you handle email mistakes can affect your open rates, so it’s crucial to take a professional and timely approach.

Conclusion:

Email marketing might include errors. When you make a mistake, you don’t want to make it worse by impatiently giving an apology that contains further errors. Instead, use this ten-step guide to evaluate accurately and deal with your error, maybe transform it into a positive, and prevent doing it again.

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Editor’s note: This blog post was originally published in August 2012 and has been revamped and updated for accuracy and relevance.

© 2017 – 2019, Contributing Author. All rights reserved.