Our First Newsletter…oops!
Hey everyone, today we launched our first email newsletter! Unfortunately, there was also a bug in it :( The bug caused the email to send multiple times. We deeply apologize for this error and take this situation very seriously. We have identified the issue and will do everything within our power to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again.
A breakdown of what happened:
- Our newsletter was scheduled to go out (only once!) at 6:00 AM EST, to be enjoyed with a fresh morning cuppa.
- At approximately 6:04 AM, our email server ran into a problematic email address that caused it to fail.
- Instead of handling the error appropropriately and moving on to the next email address, the program restarted, causing the process to start over from the beginning.
- From 6:04 AM until 8:38 AM, the program continued to run without our knowledge (we weren’t aware of the situation because no one at Steepster HQ had received any emails).
- We shut the program down at 8:38 AM when the problem came to our attention and no more emails were sent.
In the end, we did a few things wrong. At the root of the issue was the fact that we weren’t monitoring the situation closely enough. This will be the first change. In addition to fixing the bug, we’ll be adding additional process checks to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again.
For now, we will be holding off on sending emails until we can implement these changes and guarantee that duplicates will not be sent. If you have any additional questions or concerns, please feel free to email me at jason@steepster.com and I’ll be sure to send a response (only one, I promise :).
- Jason
