Email mistakes happen. We’re all human, after all. Between the different professionals usually involved in the copy, design, and sending of marketing mails, there’s bound to be an error that slips through the cracks once in a while. How do you recover from your email mistakes? These are our top tips.
Common Email Mistakes
According to Business Tech Pro, some of the most common email mistakes include:
- Bad URL links
- Incorrect event dates
- Emails sent to the wrong email list
- Bad promo codes
- Technical problems on the website
But, luckily for some, a few of them can be ‘fixed’ (if you catch them early enough).
Email Mistakes That Can Be ‘Fixed’
Just because you’ve sent a flawed email doesn’t always mean there’s nothing you can do about it. Marketing Land explains that, unlike HTML text and subject lines that are unchangeable, there are some features that can be adapted after you’ve pushed send. These make the error less noticeable to contacts who haven’t clicked or acted on your mail yet:
- Links: With some clever work with your web service provider, you may be able to point or redirect an incorrect link or URL to the correct one.
- Promo codes: This one’s easy. Adapt your system to accept the incorrect version of the code and the correct version. Voila!
When to Send a ‘Whoopsie’ Mail
It isn’t always necessary to alert your readers about a mistake in your email, because many may not even notice that it’s there in the first place. Marketing Land adds that ‘whoopsie’ emails can also impact your credibility – so they should be saved for critical errors only.
If you must send a ‘whoopsie’ email, try make it fun. This clears the air and lightens the load of the mistake… we’re all human after all. If you own up and apologise as soon as you realise you’ve made a mistake, your readers will be much more forgiving. The natural curiosity of what the error was may even lead to more opens on the mail.
Email Mistakes That Cost Money
Sadly, fixing email mistakes isn’t always as simple as sending an updated email. Sometimes, it can cause serious damage to your bottom line. If this happens to you, Business Tech Pro recommends:
- Honouring the deal: If your email mistake involves sending out the incorrect offer, honour it. You may take a hit financially in the short run, but the impact may be more damaging to your brand in the long run if you don’t.
- Offering an incentive: If it warrants it, give the subscribers that were affected by your email error an incentive for the inconvenience. This can include:
- A refund on the item sold
- A free item or service
- Current or future discounts
- Vouchers
Avoid Email Mistakes in The First Place
In our business (much like yours, I’m sure), we have multiple departments of professionals, all with vastly different areas of expertise. But, when it comes to communicating with the outside world, we speak as one. So, it’s important to avoid making email marketing mistakes in the first place.
To do this effectively, we’ve learned that we must leverage the expertise within our business, collaborate across departments to optimise our communications, implement systems to protect us from making the same mistakes again, and test, test, test. We recommend that you do the same.
Having a high-quality email service partner also goes a long way to resolving issues when they inevitably crop up.
