Cancer Research UK Grad Scheme
Should you recall or resend an email newsletter if the original had a mistake?
Last weekend, my girlfriend was filling out the application form for Cancer Research UK’s Graduate Scheme, and was asked to select the best answer to the following example:
“This morning, the Events team asked you, at short notice, to send out a targeted email to your supporters to try to boost participant numbers for the Race for Life event to be held next month. It is now late in the afternoon, and you have just checked to see whether the email was sent correctly, as you were in quite a hurry when you sent it. In doing so, you have realised that you put an out-of-date contact telephone number on the email. All other contact details, including the website, email and link to the entry form are correct.”
Graduate Job Questions
Having worked in a Communications role previously, I would tend to take the approach that if the mistake was minor, it is best left, rather than resending the newsletter again, with worst case scenario of being spammed? My argument, (remember only for minor mistakes) was that I would be lucky to get 50% of the mailing list to open the newsletter every time it arrived (Most would open 1 in 4 etc), therefore it wasn’t worth the risk of sending two identical emails with the same content to cover our backs.
However, I received GoViral.com’s monthly newsletter yesterday (a great newsletter by the way) and 5 minutes later received another apologising for a mistake:
Correction: We would like to correct a mistake in the email title and title of our latest newsletter. Instead of ‘Nike Twilight’ the brand should of course have been ‘Sony Twilight’. Our sincere apologies for the mistake and inconvenience.
Best regards,
Arthur Hendrix, Editor
On the otherhand, putting in the wrong brand in the subject line in a newsletter about brands, is clearly a major mistake. I think the action GoViral took was correct (even though I personally didn’t even notice), but how far do we go about defining a minor or major mistake? Do we cover our backs for every typo etc. I know proofing is key but mistakes will happen, so deciding on the best way of dealing with them in a consistent manner is clearly key.
I think I would have answered B or A, but I have an inkling that Cancer Research UK would penalise me if I didn’t pick answer D.
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