153: How to Backtrack When You Send the Wrong Email

Have you ever sent out that work email to your team, company wide or press list? And then as soon as you hear the, you say, oh, welcome to the podcast where we help communicators create the right response at the right time and deliver it in the right place. In this episode, I'll share with you what to do when you hit send on the wrong email so that mistake doesn't cause a bigger problem with your audience, your customers or press list. We've all done it. You've spent all day, all morning, maybe perfecting your email. You do one last proofread, everything looks great, and then you hit send. And then it's your gut, maybe your intuition, or maybe the email sent. And it's that one person who never misses a mistake to let you know you sent an oof. Wrong email. Perhaps you inserted the wrong link, you misspelled the name, you emailed the wrong people, you sent a draft email. Maybe you sent an email to the wrong person because you were talking about that person. Or even have you ever sent out that press release that was embargoed, but you sent it out to your entire media list? Or from real life, you could work at PricewaterhouseCoopers in the communication staff and you have to put out the fire because someone on the team put out a list of office hotties that went to the press or from a story. Several years ago, there was an employee at a public relations firm who emailed his boss about how to deal with a client. His boss wrote back about the client's incompetence and how they hindered the team's ability to get anything done. Well, you know the rest. The client received the email and they yanked their $5 million account immediately. So you get the idea. So on today's episode, three quick and easy steps for recovery for backtracking when you've sent the wrong email. So in this episode, I'm going to give you some ideas for how to transform a mistake into an opportunity that can earn the respect back from the people you sent it to. All right, here we go. Step one. This is the most important step, and you have to do this immediately. When you hit send, you know you've made a mistake, you've sent the wrong email. Can you unsend it? Google has an option where you can very quickly unsend that email. I believe it gives you around 30 seconds. If you use a software package where you're sending out emails, a mass email, a lot of those programs allow you to unsend it, as mine does, as I'VE used in the past. But now is the time to check. Does your system have that option? Whether it's your personal email or an email that you use with your company, Check that. All right, the next step from step one. So this is step one A, is to panic. Yes, you heard that right. Panic, because it gets your blood moving, it gets your adrenaline racing because you want to build that muscle memory of this moment so you don't do it again. All right, I may be half kidding on that advice, but it's also half true. Sometimes when you make those big mistakes, you want it to stick with you so you don't do it again. But here's the real step one. Just relax. Don't panic. The most important thing now is to determine the cause of the blunder so you can prevent it from happening again. How did you send the wrong email? Determine what the breakdown was. Was it a software malfunction? Was it, was it human error? Was it your human error or someone else? By understanding what happened in the moment, you're going to know how to remedy the situation in the future. And then you're going to turn this simple mistake into an opportunity with an apology email. And if you know what happened, you can write an email, your follow up email, to explain it. All right, step two, how to backtrack on the email. Once you've assessed the situation, now it's time to make the move to fix the problem. Now's not the time to act impulsively. So let your blood rate come down, let the adrenaline out of your system. And now you need to start thinking. Use calm, critical thinking in this moment. What is the best way to triage this email going out? Keep, keep in mind that time is of the essence. So you want to start working immediately. You want a solution that's going to be quick. But there are many different ways that you can recover from that accidental email sent. If it's something that wasn't personal, where if you have insulted someone, then you're going to panic and you're going to continue to panic because that's a hard one to rewind. But if it is to your customer list, to your audience, to your stakeholders, to your members, whatever it is, first you want to send that second email with some type of a subject that indicates it's a correction that the previous email was incorrect. Because some people will see it and they won't. Even most people, I would assume, wouldn't even open that original email to see the mistake. So aside from changing the subject line, you want to come up with content that is explaining what happened and but has your stamp, your company's stamp and feeling of emotion in there, kind of like your brand is going to be in that email. So it's vital that you follow up with content that has an apologetic tone for the inconvenience that you've caused to the people on your list. But you also want to say it in a way that speaks from a voice. If they know who you are when, let it be from your voice. If it's just a mass email to everyone and they don't know the person, maybe it's time to explain who that person is behind that mistake. Now, most companies would amend the situation by being creative in their approach. Most do that. Some will send out a blanket kind of bland statement. Many will use humor or wit or even give some type of a gift or a discount or something to thank them for the inconvenience. Think about what is the best approach here that you can use. It probably depends also on the number of people who are inconvenienced. Some of the language that you can use in the header oops, sorry. Or if you're in Canada, sorry, my bad. Our bad. Oops, we're sorry. You get the idea. If it was a media mistake, you've sent it to the press list. You for example, I said earlier sending an embargoed news story to an entire entire list of journalists instead of just that one. The correction needs to be a bold correction. Please disregard previous email and then follow up with every person on that list personally if it's a small list so you can make amends personally. Mass email if necessary. But you may now need to change the scope of that embargoed story. You can explain that it's embargoed to someone else or maybe turn it into an opportunity and release it early to everyone. That's the case. You got to get buy in for leadership that you're doing that and the rest of the communication team. But remember and this is important and it also follows along with the indestructible PR you know response which is step one. You know, you apologize, you acknowledge you you know, you accept a mistake that you made, but you turn that into something by explaining the reason why you made it. And this is where being clever helps. Some examples of an apology email that I saw online. One company, the Natural Dog company sent an email with the header yesterday was rough R U F F Another pet company had a clever response after sending out an email about an event that wasn't happening it appears that it probably went to some franchise members, but not others. The copy they used. Unfortunately, your store is not hosting the event that was publicized. The email was sent in error. The dogs say the cats did it. The cats say the dogs did it. And the fish aren't talking. That's funny. The makeup company, Smashbox. Their header was, Oops, we broke out the wine too early. Very on brand. Another email that I like, this one was a company named Arcadia Power. They apologized for an errant email written by their copywriter, Dalton. He had addressed every email to his name, Dalton. So in his apology email, he explained that he had accidentally addressed all the emails in his name. And then he added, to make up for mistakenly sending my own name instead of yours, I'll share a few facts about myself. I was named after Patrick Swayze's roadhouse character. And he also sent a photo of his dog, Bindi, who said, and he wrote he hates the rain and was not named after Steve Irwin's daughter. I guess it's the late Steve Irwin. But a dated example, but a very funny one. I thought it was clever. Be clever in your explanation. So step three, this is where we, again, just like in the response, the indestructible PR response, we're going to talk about our plans here. What are we going to do moving forward? How are we going to fix this? So in your case, you want to learn from that mistake so it never, ever happens again. Now that you've analyzed the situation, you know why it happened and then you cleaned it up, you fix the damage, this mistake, you know, mistakes like this happen to almost everyone. So don't let it completely ruin your day, ruin your month, think that you're going to be fired. So don't be too harsh on yourself. More often than not, truly, the people on the other end of that email are going to be forgiving and understanding of the situation. That is, unless it was just an errant business email. If it was something that was personal, you are going to have to go straight into that indestructible PR response plan. You are going to have to apologize profusely. Take accountability for what you did. Put it into context if you can. You were, you know, frustrated and I was writing a note and I accidentally hit sent. It was my problem. It was my fault. And then three, what are you going to do about it? I profusely apologize for this. Can we get together? Can I do something? You know, whatever the plans are, I promise to not do whatever. But you want to use that immediate response plan. For the triage. But if it is just a business email, a simple one. Always think how can we turn this into an opportunity? It's a crisis, right? It's a micro crisis, albeit, but it's still a crisis that you can turn around into a good thing. It's an opportunity. If it's if you're a company, it could be a marketing email. It could be an email that will gain you more customers. If the follow up apology is a good one, people to respect you more. If you follow it up with a human, a human using their names, they know who the person is. You're building the reputation of a company. You're giving that company the reputation of a human. Feel as in we all make mistakes. In every podcast I added indestructible tip. Here it is. If that wrong email goes out and it's from your company, whatever you do, do not blame anyone else. Specifically, do not blame your junior staff and do not blame your interns. Those type of emails have a way of going viral because people don't like when people low on the chain get blamed. That's all for this week on the podcast. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you here again next week. Bye for now.