I just heard a story where a firm had to issue an apology email a few minutes after sending what was an auto-reminder by email for an event in May that is no longer happening due to the coronavirus outbreak.
While the event was previously cancelled, the pre-scheduled reminder that was sent out each week via the firm’s email marketing software was not. This made the firm look like it was still having the event in spite of the coronavirus crisis and it was embarassing and confusing to their mailing list to cancel the event again after the reminder went out.
I hope we can all learn from this email faux pas.
During times of crisis, it’s important to be aware of any automated and pre-scheduled online activity that you’ve prescheduled such as automated email blasts, tweets, social media posts, blog posts etc. You may have several active campaigns in the works to suspend.
Distributing business-as-usual posts for your services during a time when serious news is unfolding, can appear disrespectful and insensitive. My advice is to cease all scheduled updates for the time being as well as any posts that aren’t educational in nature (webinars and client alerts are okay – especially updates that relate to the law regarding coronavirus). Otherwise they’re just not relevant and can hurt your brand.