Email Disaster Recovery

Have you ever sent out an email that you wish you could pull back from your customers' inboxes? Unfortunately, you can't. But there are steps you can take to mitigate problems that arise from problems like misspellings or promotional errors in emails. Here are a few tips from a Mediapost article.

1. Assign a disaster team. Convene immediately to discuss the error and outline potential courses of action. Don't wait until your vice president, who is seeded on the list, sends a note down the chain.

2. Minimize impact. If you see that there is an error and all the e-mails have NOT been sent, many ESPs have the ability to cancel the e-mails in the queue.

3. Why did it happen? 99 percent of the errors we see are due to teams sacrificing good process for urgency. Was it a system error? A human error? Did you sacrifice what you know is right to get it out quickly?

4. An error doesn't always justify a response. Spare your customers from a slew of meaningless apology e-mails. Discuss what constitutes an apology and who should receive it, and if you should reward the consumer.

5. Develop a protocol for apology e-mails. Use them for marketing and loyalty purposes. You'll get a higher response, so use this as an opportunity to let them know how important they are to your business.

Of course, the first step is to always proof your emails by as many people on your in-house and outsourced teams possible. Most errors come about because people didn't look closely at the email before hitting send.