Marketing Lessons From Hawaii's False-Alarm Missile Alert

by Tom Ruwitch

I wonder what that guy was thinking after he accidentally issued the incoming-missile alert in Hawaii last month.

Imagine the scene as he and his colleagues scrambled to undo that damage. It took more than 38 minutes for the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency to retract the false alert.

By any measure, that’s an epic failure — one that offers important lessons for small-business marketers.

The Hawaii episode sparked a memory about one of those marketers: A few years back, a client called MarketVolt’s support desk in a panic.

“Can I get back an email I just sent!?” she wailed.

“What do you mean, ‘get back’”? I asked.

“Get it back! Undo it. Stop the send! Delete it from inboxes!” she screamed (yes, she was screaming).

I broke the bad news. No, once the email has been sent, you can’t get it back.
“Oh, no,” she whimpered, and then she told me her sad story…

She had accidentally delivered to all in her database an email intended only for her company’s board of directors. The email contained links to sensitive company information, including financial reports.

She realized her mistake two minutes after pressing “send.” She looked at the delivery statistics and saw it had gone to 1,200 recipients instead of just 14 directors. Since she had scheduled the email to send immediately, two minutes after the fact was too late.

She picked up the phone and called me. I tried to offer some quick-fix solutions.

Can you move the sensitive files from your server so the links in the email won’t work?

I’m not sure how to do that, she replied.

What about shutting down your entire site for just a few minutes (“site undergoing maintenance”) so no one can get to those documents, I suggested.

I don’t know if anyone here can do that, she said, adding that they had cut ties with the company that built their site.

She settled on a solution: About 30 minutes after the first email landed, she sent a follow-up, telling recipients that the first email had been sent in error and requesting that they not click the links that contained information intended for others.

That helped. The click rate was lower than it might otherwise have been. Still, many nondirectors clicked through to the sensitive information.
Hours later, someone relocated the sensitive files so the links in the original email didn’t work.

She called me the next day to thank me. “If only I had scheduled the mailing to deliver a few minutes later, I probably would have caught the mistake and canceled the mailing before it was delivered.”

Yeah, if only…

I imagine the folks in Hawaii were saying, “If only…” a lot last month too. If only we had systems and procedures to prevent just one person’s error from causing a false alarm. If only we had a process in place to quickly retract a false alarm. If only...

If only our client had scheduled the email to send 10 minutes later. If only our client had sent a delivery notice to a colleague who could see the delivery details (list-count, subject line, mailing draft, etc.). That second set of eyes could have caught the error and canceled the mailing. If only our client’s company had systems and procedures to edit the website quickly in case of an emergency.

Human beings make mistakes. You and your colleagues are human. You have made and you will make mistakes. Bad things will happen — sometimes without human error as the cause.

Do you have systems and procedures in place to minimize the damage?
Ask yourself now: What if I send an email to the wrong list or with a content error? What will I do? What if I have to change something quickly on my website? What will I do?

It’s so much better to ask, “What if…” now (and plan accordingly) than to say, “If only…” after the damage is done.

Tom Ruwitch is the president and founder of MarketVolt, an interactive marketing firm. For more business-building marketing resources by, go to MarketVolt.com/resources.