Rebuilding the Faith

[Anonymous]

Hello my fellow Marketo friends!
My team inadvertently sent an incorrect email to our entire data base....current customers and leads.  We've fixed and sent a retraction but as you can imagine, the field has lost the faith.  I need to start from scratch and begin to build trust with our email campaigns.  I have a few ideas on where to begin but I'd really LOVE to hear from anyone that had a similar experience and how you overcame it.  Thank you so very much in advance!

[Jeff_Canada2]

I believe Marketo had a really great blog post on this same subject a while back, I always like to turn lemons into lemonade and take the opportunity to have a little fun. We are all human and this is a great reminder to remind your audience that you are human and make mistakes.

[Anonymous]

@Jeff, I think this the blog you were referring to? 

http://blog.marketo.com/2013/12/whoops-how-to-write-the-perfect-oopsie-email.html

[Anonymous]

Just like consumer brands and big companies that screw up, you should do a Root Cause Analysis and send that to the field. Cover the following:

• What happened exactly
• When you learned of the issue
• What you did you correct it
• The "aftermath" of the mistake (don't belabor the point, but be honest)
• and most importantly, the steps you are taking to ensure it does not happen again.

[Anonymous]

Does the "field" care that much? I have found that if you didn't have tons of engagement via email, your customer base does not really get ticked off or even notice it. But it is definitely stressful for the email team who takes it to heart and wants to attract attention to the incident and profusely apologize. They overcompensate by offering everyone a discount, but next week another wrong email comes through - and what do you do now? I have received wrong emails from almost any business I deal with, and the first time I forgive and forget no questions asked. In your professional career, by the time you send 5-6 wrong emails (a matter of time and volume, really), you will develop a good incident-handling routine, and will handle it as business as usual. Briefly apologize if the email is clearly wrong, make sure to follow custmer feedback real close for a few days, but then move on.

[Anonymous]

Actually I'm surprised with your statement about 'lost faith', as leads tend to be relaxed about such mistakes. I once sent an email in Spanish to the entire database and everyone was like "Hola amigos!". We never expected that so many people would read it and take time to reply with a joke. Of course it was a failure, but on the other side it caused a surge of interest.

So if I was you, I'd send a humorous fake-forwarded email to people who opened the original one (no need to overmail the guys who didn't read it at all).

[Anonymous]

I, too, am surprised that the field has lost faith after one faulty email. These things happen -- if it is a recurring mistake, then there is an issue. But one accidental send shouldn't cause them to lose faith.

I personally rarely notice when a company sends me a mistaken email, until they send a retraction. (which usually makes me feel better that I am not the only one who makes an oops every once in a while!)

[Anonymous]

Thank you all SO very much!  I agree that it shouldn't be such a big deal but the ones that were sent to our customer base had tokens from the rep.  So they were put out that they looked stupid.  Its refreshing to hear that many have done it as well and overall, it'll be forgotten soon.
Thanks again!

[Anonymous]

I once sent out a email to our entire list of over 120K for our quarterly survey about “how we’re doing” and a free gift card if they fill it out! The list was so post to be only around 200.  We also mentioned in the email about keeping an eye out for our NPS email next week… Nothing like a good “face-palm” moment.  

I normally just brush it off. It’s Best to take the “we’re human” and we blame the intern approach. I think that resonates better with our leads. Although, there is a time and a place for it! But typically if you don’t make it a big deal they wont either!