Each time I publish a newsletter, for myself or for one of my clients, I resend it the following week to whomever didn’t open it the first time.

This significantly increases open rates and people often email back thanking me for the reminder.

But, with my preferred email vendor (MailChimp), the process is not automated. I have to go into each account and step through some selects – “choose all subscribers that did not open issue X” – so that it doesn’t resend to the entire list.

It’s pretty easy to do, but it’s also pretty easy to make a mistake. So, each time I make the selection, I first mentally estimate the size of the resend list.

For example, if a newsletter list has 1,124 subscribers and 43% opened the first time, I might guess that 612 people will be selected. Then I push the button to see the actual number that pops up (in this case, 640).

It’s a fun little game (when you work alone you need to keep yourself amused) and I’ve never hit it on the head exactly. But by doing an estimate before I get the answer, it serves as a check that I did the select correctly (I am occasionally off by hundreds which means I made a mistake somewhere).

It’s easy to run your business on autopilot. That saves time, but it also keeps you from noticing things that might otherwise be obvious. Building in these kinds of little safeguards helps keep the errors to a minimum.

P.S. To listen to a fascinating podcast episode on how literal “autopilot” led to the crash of a commercial airliner in 2009, click here.