How to Recover from Email Marketing Mistakes

How to Recover from
Email Marketing Mistakes

@chadswhite #EmailMistakes
Email marketing mistakes are
not a matter of if, but when.
Email is too dynamic, too complex,
and too quick of a medium to avoid
mistakes completely.

The best you can hope for is to
keep mistakes infrequent and small,
and then to manage them quickly
and recover with a degree of
grace when they do happen.

To that end, we created a decision
framework to help guide you to the
appropriate response to any error,
one that minimizes the impact and
prevents overreactions.

The Pivotal Questions:
• Is the error minor or easily understood as an error?

• Has the send completed?

• Can you fix the error or eliminate most of the resulting
confusion post-send?

• Does the error only affect subscribers who click or try
to convert?

to convert?
• Does the mistake warrant wider damage control?

to convert?
• Does the mistake warrant wider damage control?
Plus one more critical question…that we’ll
address at the end.

Chad White @chadswhite
• Research Director at Litmus
• Author of Email Marketing Rules
• Written thousands of posts and articles
on email marketing
• Quoted in over 100 publications,
including The New York Times,
The Wall Street Journal,
and USA Today

You’ll receive a copy of
How to Recover from
Email Marketing
Mistakes, which contains
the decision tree, along
with these slides and the
recording following the
webinar. @chadswhite #EmailMistakes

Over the next half-hour,
we’ll discuss 10 real-world
email marketing mistakes and
use the decision framework to guide
us to the appropriate response.

Case Study #1
Subject Line Typo

Linens-N-Things
Nov. 28, 2011 (Cyber Monday)
Subject line of the 1st email of day:
Cyber Monday Deals + Free Shipping Sitewide
Subject line of the 2nd email of day:
Last Chance: Cyber Monday Deals End in 60
Minutes
Subject line of the 3rd email of day, which arrived 4 hours after the 2nd:
Last Chance: Cyber Monday Deals End in 60 Miutes

Subject line of the 4th email of day, which arrived 2 hours after the 3rd
and 5 hours after the sale was supposed to end:
Oops! Sorry for the Typo: Cyber Monday Deals End
in Minutes!

Ignoring the credibility issues around the end of the
sale, apologizing for an easily understood typo isn’t
necessary—even when it’s in the subject line.
Plus, sending a 4th email on Cyber Monday that
gives subscribers just minutes to respond will irritate
some at a time when opt-outs and complaints are
costly.

Some brands have seen such a
positive response to their correction
emails that they regularly
manufacture mistakes for the sole
purpose of issuing an apology.

Since it’s difficult to measure the long-
term brand damage done by routine
apologies, our advice is to save your
goodwill for when you actually make
a mistake.

Case Study #2
Image Loading Issue

Thanks in part to B&H’s smart use of defensive
design, consisting of extensive HTML text andALT
text, their email was able to convey its message
adequately while their image server was offline.
Although situations like this are rare, they are another
reason to design your email with images off in mind.

Case Study #3
Early Deployment

Drs. Foster & Smith
Nov. 14, 2007
(a full week before
Thanksgiving Day)

While this email was clearly sent a week earlier than
intended, it was close enough. More importantly, the
early send didn’t impair subscribers’ ability to act.
The silver lining is that it’s possible this email stood
out because there were no other season’s greetings
emails that week and less email volume in general.

If you’re unsure if an error is truly
minor, check your email metrics.
Sometimes things aren’t as bad as
you imagine them to be.

Fab
Aug. 3, 2014

Clearly this was a test email that got loose.
Especially considering the popularity of cat pictures,
this was a low-risk mistake.
However, with some clever copywriting and images,
Fab turned this non-catastrophe into an oppurrtunity.
But if you’re not as clever or fun as Fab, let it go.

Case Study #5
Early Deployment

Amazon.com
Jan. 7, 2013
(morning before the BCS Championship game)

The recipients mostly likely to buy championship
gear knew that the game hadn’t taken place yet.
Amazon could have used the landing pages to
clarify that gear would be available after the game
“tonight.”
In this case, sending an apology only seemed to
draw more attention to the mistake.

Case Study #6
Sent an Old Email

OfficeMax
June 15, 2012

OfficeMax was able to act quickly and update all of
the images in their primary content block to
transform this outdated email into an apology email.
They also sent a mass apology email the next day.
The delay, plus a relatively weak call-to-action,
probably made it a low performer.

Case Study #7
Broken Interactive Content

Litmus
May 21, 2015

Thanks to a heads up by our Twitter followers, we
were able to recognize the problem quickly, halt the
send, fix the problem, resume the send, and send
corrected versions to the 53,000 subscribers who
received the broken interactivity.

Action is needed when an email
marketing error significantly impairs
subscribers’ ability to act on the
message or causes significant brand
damage by annoying, angering, or
offending subscribers.

Case Study #8
Emailed without Permission
(sort of)

Alchemy Worx
July 15, 2013

Permission is sacred. So even though there were
some signs that this email was just a mistake, it was
definitely worth clarifying the issue.
Alchemy Worx did that with a simple apology email
that they were able to get out quickly, less than a
hour and a half after sending the erroneous email.

Case Study #9
Broadcasting a Targeted Email

Sharper Image
Oct. 12, 2006

Humor, which The Sharper Image uses well in the
subject line of this apology email, can take the edge
off a mistake. However, when an error reveals that
some people are getting something that others are
not, the best way to avoid any hurt feelings is
generally to let everyone have the offer, if possible.

Case Study #10
Broadcasting a Targeted Email

Shutterfly
May 14, 2014

This mistake caused genuine pain to some
subscribers and sparked lots of media attention.
To try to minimize damage to the brand, Shutterfly
sent a text-based apology signed by the CMO,
broadcasted apologies on social media, and
responded to individuals via social and email.

The Final Question
to Ask Yourself after Making
an Email Marketing Mistake

Can I change my email production
process to reduce the chance of this
mistake recurring in the future?

Avoidable failures are common
and persistent, not to mention
demoralizing and frustrating,
across many fields—from
medicine to finance, business
to government.

And the reason is increasingly
evident: the volume and
complexity of what we know has
exceeded
our individual ability to deliver
its benefits correctly, safely,
or reliably.

Dr. Gawande’s prescription for better
outcomes is the checklist—and it’s
ours as well.

Some process changes and checks to consider:
• Creating a brief for every email

• Eliminating production processes that invite errors

• Restricting access to certain tools or tool functions for some team members

• Improving copyediting

• Using an email rendering tool

• Checking that all links are functional and lead to the correct destinations

• Double-checking that the final email matches specs in the brief

• Running the final email through spam filter tests

• Running the final email through spam filter tests
• Strengthening the approval process

Try Litmus Free at litmus.com/coupon/EMAILMISTAKES

Questions?
The slides, a recording, and copy of the full report will be sent
via email to everyone who registered for this webinar.
Submit questions via the Q&A panel

How to Recover from Email Marketing Mistakes

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