You rely on email as a tried-and-true communication medium. It's a great way to reach the audiences that have shown an interest in your brand or your products or services.
But as reliable as email tends to be, the marketers who use it are not perfect. All email marketers will make a mistake at some point. And when you make that mistake, you'll need to be ready to respond appropriately.
Exactly how you respond depends on the degree of severity and who was affected. Here are six email mistakes you may encounter as a marketer, along with guidelines for rectifying them.
1. Multiple Emails
Along with being one of the most common email mistakes, it's also among the most annoying for the recipient, who probably trusted you with occupying at most one slot in the inbox each day.
Multiple identical emails clog up the recipient's inbox, which can be a sin worthy of an apology. The catch in this situation, though, is that an apology would require a subsequent email, which is the very problem you're apologizing for.
If you sent two identical emails, you might be OK without sending an apology email, especially if you can address the mistake in your regular message the next day or later in the week. In the case of three or more identical emails, though, an apology is entirely necessary; you want your subscribers to know it was an honest mistake and not a blatant attempt to spam them.
2. Email Mix-Up
Though easy to avoid, mixing up your distribution lists is entirely possible. If you sent the wrong email to a particular list, follow up by sending the correct email as soon as possible. Address the error in the subject line or early on in the body.
If time allows, cross-reference the two lists—the correct list and the list you sent to—and create a third list that consists of people whose names do not appear on both. Then send the correct email with the apology to this new list. That way, you avoid apologizing to people who received the correct message.
3. Broken Link
If your email contains one or more links that are broken or which misdirect the recipient, you have two options:
- Move the landing page to the incorrect link that went out in the email. If you take this route, before you put the landing page in place you'll want to notify those who clicked on the bad link.
- Respond directly to anyone who clicked on the bad link to provide them the correct link (and maybe even a code for a small discount for their trouble, if applicable). The downside of this option is that new people will likely continue to click the bad link over the next couple weeks, and because you want to respond in a timely fashion that means several rounds of correction emails.
