Tag Archives: apology

How PayPal (really) hit the email oops gallery

Digital direct marketing is fast-paced. Thus, things can easily go wrong. We have seen the New York Times sending emails to 8 million subscribers instead of 300. We have also seen Mini stuffing people’s inboxes with hundreds of newsletters by mistake.

And speaking of such severe failures – here is what PayPal sent to many (or even all?) of its 20 million German accounts lately… Continue reading

Before sending an apology email, try to correct your newsletter

What If you accidentally emailed 8 million subscribers instead of just 300 churned customers? You would probably owe someone an excuse. That is what happened to the New York Times at the end of last year as described on emailmarketing.de. The NYT sent an apology email exactly three hours later. It said, “This e-mail [which you received earlier] was sent by us in error. Please disregard the message. We apologize for any confusion […]”.

Mistakes in email marketing are always annoying. They can never be completely avoided. However, you do not always have to set up an apology email. On the contrary, each additional email might be one email too much resulting in an unsubscribe. In addition, some errors can be corrected (or at least reduced) even after the send out, especially if they are detected instantly. Therefore, don’t fall into blind actionism. Depending on the severity and on how many readers were affected, you could instead consider the following five ideas (no claim to be complete): Continue reading