The tiniest typo can make the biggest difference

I still can't believe I did that. One tiny typo, compounded by one silly little mistake. That's all it was. Except that an entire e-blast marketing promotion was ruined. That's all.

A few years back, my company was hosting a webinar (back before such things were the norm). To get the word out, we ran a series of email blasts to various lists. The campaign was quite successful, and our webinar came together for attendees on three continents. (I emcee’d from London, in fact.)

But I’ll always wonder what might have been.

You see, toward the end of the campaign, I went and made an itsy bitsy tiny mistake, then compounded it with another little boo-boo, thus exploding things into a full-blown screw up.

My error was typographical. I left off one character. One tiny little character. That's it.

Except this particular little character happens to be the "close" marker for a special tag that replaces the word *NAME* with the first name of each individual email recipient.

A hard rule I’ve always followed is that I never — and I mean NEVER — write a letter to a bunch of people. I communicate one-to-one. I don't talk to people, I talk with persons, one at a time.

So you can imagine my reaction at discovering my critical typo and the resulting message going to hundreds of people all addressed as *NAME*! Oh thank goodness for that test email that we send out to make sure things like this don't happen.

Oh, wait. There's that second tiny little mistake on my part.

I had assumed that my work — which in this case already had been seen by at least two people — was perfect. By virtue of it being my work.

I missed the character. I didn't proof my work.

And now I have a few thousand close personal friends all with the same first *NAME* who, to this day, have not let me forget what I did.

Please, learn from my shame.

Even if someone else has already reviewed it, proof everything anyway. Even your own work.

Especially your own work.

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Don't let Jeffrey M. Peyton's accolades, business accomplishments or cool demeanor fool you. The Sun's newest marketing team member has wing-walked on an airplane at 700 feet, co-piloted the Goodyear Blimp, swam with sharks, and managed to obtain paperwork officially declaring him “legally sane.”