August 18, 2026
DOH!
My sincerest apologies to everyone I accidentally spammed yesterday!
If you’re the curious type, here’s what happened:
I have a segment in my mailing list software (Kit.com) that contains a list of folks who have been subscribed to my mailing list for 4-5 weeks.
Periodically, I send a note to thank this group of newcomers for taking a chance on a daily newsletter and staying subscribed past the onboarding phase.
Every time I want to send a message to this group, I have to manually update the date range because Kit doesn’t support date math in their segmentation filters.
I have never automated this process, but I need to figure out how I can.
Why?
Because yesterday I fat-fingered the configuration and accidentally sent the “new subscriber” note to approximately 40x more people than I meant to.
DOH!
As soon as I clicked SEND, I realized my mistake. I watched in horror as the message entered the processing queue. I frantically scoured the interface for a “cancel send” button.
I found no such button.
The broadcast was marked SENT.
With dread, I slowly opened my email inbox.
Veteran emailers can tell you absolutely nothing gets a reply faster than a message with a glaring error in it. And indeed, this time was no different. My inbox started filling within seconds.
The very first one I opened called me a spammer. Totally fair, but ouch. I apologized profusely and moved to the next message.
It was from someone who had been on my list for almost ten years. She was not mad. In fact, she thought it was funny and busted my chops a bit, suggesting I check my automation for bugs.
The next message? Similar... a long-time subscriber goofing on my obvious error.
Next one? Same.
24 hours later, the replies are still coming in, and I’ve only had that one subscriber (justifiably) call me out.
Everyone else was either helpful, funny, or some combination of the two.
For example:
“For about a MONTH now?! ROFL!!!”
“Just a heads up you might have a misconfigured automation.”
”Subscribed for ONE month? More like ONE HUNDRED months!”
“Uh oh, gotta update that segment lol.”
“‘about a month’ 😂😂😂”
“Heh. More like 5 years, 5 months, and 22 days. (Literally.)”
Most surprising was how many replies came from folks who’ve been subscribed for the entire ten years I’ve been sending these daily messages.
That blows my mind. It’s pretty humbling, actually. I get a little choked up if I think about it too hard.
So... thank you thank you thank you to everyone for being so fun and smart and cool, and of course, for welcoming me into your inboxes every day for all this time!
It’s a gift and I really do appreciate it.
Yours,
—J