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the price in your email, consider sending the
correction email only to the people who clicked
on the affected product link.
Create a trigger-based correction email that is
sent only to recipients who click on the specific
product link.
8. Apologize in other channels. If the error is
significant enough, you’ll probably want to use
your other channels to apologize, post the correction
or provide updates. These include your
Web site, social media and blog.
9. Use a personal tone that matches your
recipients’ expectations. Your apology should
reflect your company or corporate personality.
Be humble, especially if the mistake could
jeopardize your subscribers’ faith and trust in
your brand.
Use humor if the mistake lends itself to it. But
be sure your humor is directed at yourself and
doesn’t sound as if you’re taking customers’
concerns lightly.
10. Find a way to turn the error into an opportunity.
The combination of an original
error-laden email followed by a well-executed
correction/apology email might increase your
total revenue, conversions or other goals.
While deliberately sending erroneous emails
is not a good long-term strategy, design your
correction email to support the original email’s
goal. Margins aside, an additional incentive
in the correction email can drive incremental
conversions.
11. Proof the correction email. Pull in people outside
your team to review your message for typos
and bad links and to be sure the tone and content
convey your desired impact. Sending a correction
email with another error is clearly something to
avoid. Also, send a “proof” email first and include
the other departments that might be affected on
the distribution.
12. Measure the impact. Measure both process
metrics (e.g., opens, clicks, unsubscribes and spam
complaints) and output metrics (conversions,
downloads, registrations, etc.) on your mistake
and corrected/apology emails.
Analyze whether your approach and any incentives
generated positive results. Also, understand
how the two emails affected unsubscribe and
spam complaint rates. A markedly higher-thannormal
rate means that your response did not line
up with expectations.
13. Learn from the mistake. Once the dust
settles, determine how it happened. Was it a
simple user error from lack of training on your
email platform? A poor review/proofing process?
Did someone circumvent your standard process?
If needed, revise your creative and production
processes to minimize future mistakes.
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