The $40k Email Nightmare,  a story by Jacalyn Beales

It was a surprisingly bright Fall day – the air crisp, the leaves just beginning to turn. Nathan, my coworker and I were cheerfully chatting about an upcoming webinar campaign.

As marketers—more specifically, content and lifecycle marketers—much of our conversation revolved around the best way to leverage email as a promotional channel for the campaign. We wanted to be bold, and laugh in the face of typical email conventions.

Now, the funny thing is, as a Head of Lifecycle, you’d think I’d be all for proper segmentation—but as marketers who love to fail fast, Nathan and I sometimes choose to live dangerously.

So, we created a cleverly crafted and wittily written email campaign that would impress even the most fickle of writers.

All that was left to do was launch it.

With the thrill of two giddy marketers who truly thought we had struck gold with our campaign, we decided to broaden our segmentation. “What would happen if we widened the audience? Say, to one million recipients?”

I looked at the audience data, shrugged my shoulders, and said, “Never try, never know!”

What I probably should have said is, “F**k around and find out.” Because find out, we did.

Unbeknownst to us, we had a people-reach limit from our email service provider.

So, imagine our surprise when we receive messages from the CEO, the founder, and other leaders in our company, letting us know of a $40k charge for exceeding said limit. $40k. For an email campaign. Ouch!

We panicked.

With sweat rolling down our backs, tears gathering in our eyes, heart rates pumping like an old-school Bugs Bunny clip, we knew we had not only f***ed around, but were about to really find out just how much we could mess up.

Hastily written, panic-induced Slack messages were sent; apology notes begging and pleading for mercy were sent off, and a tear-stained email to our email service provider rep was dispatched.

And you know what happened?

Drumroll… The world didn’t end. We didn’t lose our jobs. Our audience wasn’t upset.

• Our leadership was totally understanding, and knew we recognized our mistake.
• Our phenomenal email service provider rep helped us swiftly deal with the overcharge, waiving his magic wand and making it disappear.
• We immediately paused the campaign, optimized, and carefully QA’d.

And we were able to compile a robust process for email sends that would help guide others in leveraging email thoughtfully.

The email campaign performed well—exceeding our expectations, and somehow managing not to totally implode our spam rate 😂 But that isn’t the point.

The real lesson learned? It’s not taking risks, failing fast, or wanting to try new things that will hold you back—it’s missing the opportunity to learn from your mistakes. There’s no growth without failing.

Oh, and it never hurts to be humbled—even people who know what they’re doing can make mistakes.