My friend and I once invested in a product through Kickstarter. One day, while we were in the same room, our phones simultaneously bleeped with an email apology from the founder expressing regret for unwittingly offending people by his email from the day prior. My friend and I had the same reaction: “I can’t wait to read that email.” I bet the open rate skyrocketed after that! Have you ever made a mistake in business, only to receive an unexpectedly positive result? Sometimes these mistakes end up being gems in disguise, and by mapping out the formula you can learn to repeat the positive results. Here are some more business mistakes that unwittingly produced a positive outcome.
Cut Through the Clutter
In the example above, the apology created a way to cut through the clutter of the inbox. There are many ways to recreate this sort of situation. Imagine leading with a subject line like "We're Honoring Our Pricing Mistake Until Midnight!" You could use the email to talk about some savvy people noticing a pricing error on your website yesterday and taking full advantage. It was your company's mistake, but you’re honoring it for a limited time. Your original email gets more attention, plus you’ve found a way to add urgency to the sale!
Invest Creatively
Last year a tech conference in Finland called Slush attracted many top VC’s and entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley, and a flight from San Francisco to Helsinki essentially became a part of the conference.
The speakers of the conference were in first class and the attendees were in economy class. Knowing what a great networking opportunity Rizwan, our CSO who was attending, pulled some strings to get an upgrade into business class and was pumped to make the most of this incredible networking opportunity. When this fell through, rather than being disappointed he bought bottles of champagne (better than what they were serving in first class) and went around the Economy cabin offering everyone a glass, while introducing himself and chatting. The connections he made on that flight snowballed once at the conference! Mistakes can change your approach, and when you are pushed to think outside the box, creativity can produce great results. Think of how easily this approach could be used at an industry conference – rather than paying to display your logo on a coffee table, why not spend the same amount of money (or maybe even less!) to treat everyone to champagne?
Make Your Brand Relatable
Nobody is perfect, and making occasional errors is just a part of being human. When it comes to business, a well-handled mistake can become an opportunity to engage with your audience. My colleague once launched a company and didn’t have automated "Welcome" emails sent to customers immediately after a purchase. They did eventually set it up 3 months later, but the system mistakenly sent retroactive "Welcome" emails to all customers, including those who had made a purchase months ago. Rather than brush this under the carpet, the team decided to email their base: "You may have been surprised to get a Welcome email from us, but we're celebrating International Welcome Day, and we want you to know you’re always very welcome!" Customers responded by calling out the mistake in a fun way, or just responding that they loved this response. Mistakes happen, but sometimes it can help build upon the humanity of your brand! There are many ways to add transparency to the team behind the brand. It could be talking about real people in your communications, or adding photos of your office and team to your website. People like people – and people are also more accepting of people – while of brands, they demand perfection!
Control the Dialogue
If there's negative chatter about your brand, you’re better off joining in on the conversation and taking control of the dialogue, rather than burying your head in the sand in hopes that it'll blow over. I love what Domino’s Pizza did back in 2009 with their "Our Pizza Sucks" campaign. Realizing they’d been ignoring criticism for too long, they decided to go public with all the complaints. They showed how the bad reviews drove them to improve their product, realigning the perception of the brand and increasing the believability of the marketing campaign. The success of this dramatic turnaround is testament to the value in recognizing failings and tackling them head-on.
Mistakes are part of every business, especially for a startup or a scale-up where there is a constant state of change. When you're hiring new people, experimenting with business models, managing flexing workloads and dealing with conflicting priorities, mistakes are inevitable. But sometimes they can allow you to uncover new approaches, and their unanticipated benefits can outweigh the downside. Next time someone makes a mistake in your business (particularly if it’s you), think about how you can spin it into something positive!
