\u201cI\u2019ve made an email marketing mistake. Now what?\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not a question you want to answer on the fly and in a panic with your boss standing at your desk. You want to have a plan in place so you know exactly how to respond in a variety of circumstances.<\/p>\n
We recently hosted a webinar where we shared a decision framework for how to recover as gracefully as possible from email marketing mistakes, and then put that framework into action, applying it to 10 real-life case studies of email marketing errors made in recent years.<\/p>\n
Didn\u2019t have a chance to make it to the webinar? Don\u2019t worry\u2014we recorded the whole thing!<\/p>\n
View slides & recording \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n Attendees of the live webinar had some great questions, which I\u2019d like to answer here.<\/p>\n Do you think \u201ctoo many cooks in the kitchen\u201d can affect the risk of a mistake slipping through due to conflicting opinions and feedback? What do you recommend about handling last-minute requests for changes?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes, conflicting feedback can definitely lead to mistakes. This is where having a strong process can help. First, start with a brief for every email that explains:<\/p>\n Refer to the brief throughout the production process. This will help keep everyone on the same page.<\/p>\n A solid approval process timeline can help address last-minute requests. Any requests that are made after a particular element is approved means that it has to be approved all over again. Anecdotally, a fair number of mistakes do appear to be caused by last-minute changes, in part because those changes were rushed through without re-approval by the usual people.<\/p>\n In the webinar, you mentioned that it\u2019s smart to allow email metrics dictate your reaction to a mistake and to help gauge the size of a mistake. Which metrics would you use and what variance would constitute a reaction?<\/strong><\/p>\n It all depends on your goals for the particular email\u2014the \u201cHOW will you measure the success of this email?\u201d that I mentioned above. Unfortunately, most serious mistakes tend to be black and white when it comes to metrics.<\/p>\n For example, if the goal of the email was to drive sales of a particular product and the link to that product was broken in your email, then that goal becomes seriously impacted. Similarly, when the interactivity in our live Twitter feed email broke<\/a>, it didn\u2019t have the desired effect of driving tweets with the #TEDC hashtag.<\/p>\n However, some mistakes do fall into a grey area. Some typos and missing images, for instance, can cause significant confusion in terms of the offer or what you want subscribers to do. In these cases, metrics can be useful in determining just how detrimental that confusion was.<\/p>\n If it\u2019s your biggest campaign of the year, your tolerance for anything less than perfect may be low. But for your typical campaign, you might be willing to tolerate a 10% to 20% deviation from the norm without sending a correction or apology email.<\/p>\n How do you deal with rebuilding internal stakeholder trust after an email mistake?<\/strong><\/p>\n First, hopefully those stakeholders understand that email mistakes are practically inevitable. We ran a quick Twitter poll that we think is reflective of just how difficult it is to avoid mistakes.<\/p>\n Have you ever sent an email with a mistake in it? #EmailMistakes<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Litmus (@litmusapp) November 18, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n
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