Not bad advice, it seems, but a rather turgid retelling. "Triage, apologize as soon and as honestly as possible, then take your lumps" is more succinct.
I did something similar to this the other day, accidentally tweeted the release of my metal band's new music video to the followers of one of my Android apps... Neither have more than a few hundred followers, so not too bad, but deathmetal certainly isn't everyone's cup of tea.
Was interested in taking a look at your music, but couldn't find any info in your profile. Any chance you could post a link here, or send some info my way (my contact details are in my profile).
I'm a bit confused about why it was possible to send an email to a million wrong people. Don't million-person lists usually have some form of moderation?
Presumable this is their subscriber list and they are the moderators.
Presumably moderators can make mistakes too.
So... all of these people got really angry over getting one email? Maybe I'm reading the article wrong, but I get tons of emails all the time that I didn't ask for. It's just part of using the internet as far as I can tell.
If they sent it to 1 million people and only 0.1% of people complained that is still 1,000 people complaining.
Love the stuble title.
People rightly crave accountability, & it's refreshing when it's displayed, as it's display is so rare lately. Don't fear accountability, embrace it.
FYI, my company (GoPhoto) had a similar "oops" email event & can validate that the approach in this article is right-on & valid.