Everyone makes mistakes, and when a company does it everyone else wants to watch. That’s why you’re guaranteed to get the best email open-rates when you send an ‘Oops’ email admitting to your own mess-up. It may feel counter-intuitive to call yourself out, but it lets your customers know that you’re a real person and that although you may occasionally trip up, you’ll always swoop in to save the day.
Here at Adcuda we recently needed to send our own ‘Oops’ email, because we mistyped a date, and our open-rate was a whopping 32% (generally, you should be happy with around 25%). Needless to say, we were pretty excited.
Another example of an ‘Oops’ email was in my inbox today, sent from Papyrus. I deleted the first email without opening, but then an hour later I received “Oops! You’re invited to our exclusive *December* Friends & Family event.” As soon as I saw the word Oops, I clicked to open to see what the mistake was. Turns out their mistake was in the subject line itself, so I was a little confused when I didn’t see an explanation in the content.
It’s always best to be the first to point out your mistakes, and give the people what they want by explaining what you did. They’ll appreciate your honesty, and they may get a chuckle out of it, too. Moral of the story: take a breath, design a fun email to say ‘Oops!’, and send it on it’s merry way.
