"To err is human, to really screw things up you need a computer."
–Ubiquitous bumper sticker and/or T-shirt
Any mistake we can make can be greatly amplified by a computer, more so by the Internet, and irrevocably by email marketing. There’s no un-send button. There’s no "retrieve and destroy" method once that email has left your email box.
A long time ago I sent out an email newsletter for a client and made some sort of mistake in the copy. One of the subscribers emailed and let me know about it. Overtired, I sent an apology to the subscribers, saying that it hadn’t been Dr. Feinstein’s mistake it had been mine. Unfortunately, his name was Dr. Weinstein.
I didn’t send a second apology. (Names have been changed to protect the innocent.)
Recently I subscribed to Google’s Newsletter for Librarians. On their second issue they accidentally sent out multiple copies of the newsletter. The following day I received this message:
Hi everyone,
We wanted to let you know that we discovered this evening that the newsletter was looping and sending extra email to everyone (thanks to a few folks that let us know) and we’ve now fixed it (panicked calls to engineers back in Mountain View seemed to have helped). We are terribly sorry that this happened and hope that you will stick with our fledging newsletter despite this horrendously irritating – yet unintentional – flood of email. It will not happen again.
For those of you that want to unsubscribe or change your options to be web only, go to: http://groups.google.com/group/librarian-newsletter and you can manage your subscription there. If you have any problems, just send us an email and we’ll help you through it.
Our very sorry team,
Jen, Jodi, Ben and Pam
Now, that’s a great apology! It addresses the issue, and by including these people’s names, we can all identify with them. Who among us hasn’t made some embarrassing, public error? (Right, Dr. Feinstein?)
If you find that you’ve made a mistake in your newsletter that may cause distress to your subscribers, own up to it. The fastest way to defuse a potentially explosive situation is to blame yourself. Most of us realize "there, but for the grace of God…"
