Chilling tales from sends gone wrong

Every emailer has a ghost story. 

You know the kind that starts with a simple “just one more test” and ends with a broken link and the sinking dread of realizing the send is already at 100%.

To celebrate spooky season with Halloween tomorrow, I asked nonprofit emailers to share their most horrifying tales. Names (mercifully) withheld.

“We linked to a YouTube thank you video from our Executive Director… but the link led to a cat grooming tutorial. To this day, I have no idea how.”
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“We once mixed up two audiences — people who had already given and those who hadn’t. The subject line was, ‘Your last chance to make a Giving Tuesday gift.’ It went to every major donor who had donated more than $1,000 the night before.”
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“A board member forwarded a petition email and noticed the preview text said: ‘Don’t forget to replace this placeholder.’ We’ll never live that one down.”
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“Our CRM experienced an outage right before a campaign deadline, which resulted in scheduled emails not being delivered or dropping into inboxes very slowly.

The support team fixed the issue within an hour, but the ‘one hour to go’ email dropped two hours late before any of us realized it because it was New Years Eve and our entire team was off the clock.

Lesson learned: make sure at least one person’s on task the final day of your biggest fundraising push of the year.”
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“We sent a heartfelt ‘thank you’ to our sustainers close to the end of the year with a detailed breakdown of their impact — except the dynamic tag malfunctioned and said: ‘Thank you for your monthly gift of $0!’”
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“Someone copied a test donation link into the live email. Supporters could give — but the form had bright red text that said ‘THIS IS A STAGING PAGE. DO NOT USE.’”

The bottom line
Every email marketer has a ghost story — the broken merge tag, the wrong segment, the “FINAL DRAFT” subject line that somehow went to 100,000 people. 

It’s practically a rite of passage.

The good news? A mistake isn’t the end of the world — it’s a moment to show your supporters that there’s a real human behind the send button. 

The best teams treat slip-ups as opportunities to connect, not catastrophes to hide.

A well-timed, transparent apology or correction email can remind your audience why they trust you in the first place — and sometimes drive better engagement than the polished version ever did.

Check our events list for more or reply to this email to submit one for consideration.

'Til next time!
Sara

P.S. Looking to add donors to your email list before year-end comes knocking? See how Civic Shout can help.