Can we talk about the time our CRM sent 14,000 emails to the wrong segment?

I was sitting at my desk in the office in Phoenix last Tuesday morning when my boss walked over and asked why our entire customer list just got a 'welcome back' email. Turns out a junior ops guy accidentally merged a test segment with our live list, and our mail server nearly crashed from the bouncebacks. Has anyone else had a bulk send go sideways and how did you explain it to support?

3 comments

3 Comments

jadej501mo ago

Respectfully, I see this a little differently. That kind of mistake is a systems problem, not just a people problem. Anybody who can accidentally merge a test segment with the live list means your sandbox and production environments aren't separated well enough. We had a similar disaster a few years ago and ended up putting a hard confirmation popup on every send that shows the exact list size in big red numbers, plus requiring a second person to approve any send over 500 people. Fixed the issue completely.

michaelgrant1mo agoOG Member

Buddy of mine runs a small ecommerce shop. He had a test email with a 50% off coupon code meant for internal review only. Somehow got merged with his main subscriber list and sent to about 8,000 people before he caught it. Took him three days to cancel all the orders that came in from that mistake. He said the same thing you did @jadej50, the system should have never let him put that test list next to his live one without a big red warning.

foster.jordan1mo ago

My buddy runs a restaurant and the same thing happens there. Put the specials board on the wrong day and suddenly everyone's ordering Wednesday's fish fry on a Tuesday, no system catch at all.