Good systems remove the opportunity for human error

The great thing about computers is that you can automate repetitive tasks. A human being can get bored or distracted and make a mistake. A computer performs with complete efficiency and accuracy each and every time.

As a programmer I’m in the business of shifting mundane jobs off the plate of a living, breathing person and onto the plate of a computer. I focus on creating sites that do simple tasks for you, and I love seeing other systems that are doing this right.

When we prepare an email campaign, we send a test message out to a few of us here in the office to make sure there are no errors. It has to be clear that the email is just a preview, though. If the date of an upcoming event is wrong in the email, do you need to a.) panic and go into damage control mode to get the correction out in time or b.) just fix the date before the real email goes out?

So we decided a while back that before we send a test message out, we need to add the word TEST to the subject line. When we see the message in our inbox, we know right away that we’re looking at a preview. It works great, but there is a catch. If the email looks right and no changes are required, it’s so-o-o easy to just send it out to the entire subscriber list. Oops. If you do that, the subject line still says TEST. I’m happy to say that we’ve never had that happen with a message we sent out for one of our clients, but wouldn’t it be great if it wasn’t even a possibility that could accidentally happen?

This looks like a job for a computer.

I’ve talked before about the cool features of Campaign Monitor. Here’s one more area they get right. First of all they ask you if you want to send a test message before sending it out to your entire subscriber list. It happens from a different screen on their website, and you’d never confuse sending a preview email with sending your real one. And what happens when you send your test? The word Preview is added to the subject line automatically.

You don’t have to manually change your subject line. If the email is great you just send it out to your subscriber list and everything reads perfect.

It’s not that other email campaign providers don’t let you send a test message. It’s that Campaign Monitor makes it hard to screw up.