As I was sitting here working on blog posts, I got an agitated email from a client who was in the process of launching a new enewsletter we had written for them. In their excitement to get the newsletter designed and out, they made the same mistake that all of us have occasionally made on individual emails …hit “Send” before the email was finished. What should we do now, they asked? My advice:
1) Send a correction immediately. In this case, the company had another emailing scheduled for the same day and wanted to know if they should change their plans, send a correction now and reschedule the second emailing for another day. “Yes!” I told them. The faster you correct the mistake, the more on top of things you appear, the fewer people will read the wrong newsletter, and the faster everyone will forget about the issue.
2) Make it personal. Have a real person send the email. Show some emotion and admit your embarrassment. Apologize.
3) Make it right. If no harm was caused by the snafu, a simple apology is sufficient. If the damage went beyond that, do whatever it takes to make it right.
We all make mistakes, and people are remarkably forgiving when we own up to them, provided they’re infrequent.
Our client ended up sending a correction with the subject line, “Ooops! We got a little excited.” I told them they may have increased responses with that one!
Have you had a similar snafu? How did you handle it and what happened as a result?
