It’s probably safe to say that everyone has sent messages by mistake at one point or another in their lives. People send the wrong text to the wrong cell phone number, messages to the wrong chat window and emails to the wrong email address all the time. All these are fine because we all are, after all, humans who make mistakes.

But what if that wrongly sent message contained something so offensive you can’t help but feel mortified when you realise what you’ve done? Ryan Deiss tells of one such email in an article at DigitalMarketer and shares tips on what to do if you send out an offensive newsletter by mistake.

Bad golfing

Deiss tells the story of an email newsletter called “This Week in Golf”, which, as you can tell from the title, is meant for golfers. For some reason, the email newsletter got sent with a subject line that is so offensive I wouldn’t dare post it here. Let’s just say it has something to do with mothers, both human and dog. You can only imagine the shock subscribers of the newsletter got when they received their copy in the email. Certainly enough, the President of Global Golf Post, publisher of the newsletter, issued an apology to those who received the offending newsletter.

In case we find ourselves in a similar situation in the future, Deiss has several tips for us.

Double-check emails before sending, among other things

We all should have checklists and we should always run them before sending out emails. We should double-check emails before sending, including links, contact numbers, images, dates and times. Somebody else should also check the email for us. Reading it out loud may also help. If we can help it, we should keep our emails classy all the time. No horsing around, which is probably why that golf newsletter faux pas happened in the first place. Respect for customers should always be a priority.

And if we ever do send out an offensive newsletter by mistake for whatever reason, we should man up and admit it. Let’s admit the mistake, explain what happened, and say we’re sorry about it.

Click here to read the full article.