Harmless Email Perceived as a Threat

"We miss you" - those words once landed me into trouble.

I was trying to shape a retention workflow for a recruitment SaaS product of ours.

The idea was to remind users who hadn't logged in for a while about their account with us and how we can serve value for their hiring projects.

I thought it'd be a great idea to send out a mailer with "that" subject line.

What I didn't realize was that several CEOs had accounts on our platform and of course, they'd qualify for our low-usage condition since they hardly logged in.

I also failed to read the culture of the audience and and how they'd interpret it.

When I dispatched the email, they thought it was an attack. We were bombarded with complaints and several clients demanded a security audit and full-scale explanation of the "incident".

It was strange. What was supposed to be a harmless email was perceived as a threat.
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Lessons for me: When sending out a bulk mailer to customers, solicit feedback by sharing a preview with those closest to the customer - in this case, sales and customer support.