Most people complain about being swamped by email and by mass mailings. Jokes, invitation to attend workshops, special deals, blogs subscriptions, newsletters and many more make their way into our Inbox, and we feel totally overwhelmed.
There is one thing that annoys me more than everything else: receiving an email that has been forwarded many times, which results in me having to scroll down and down through many email addresses before I finally get to see the intended message. Do I really need to see all these addresses? Do I care who else has received this same message before or at the same time? And … do I really want to receive these kind of messages?
The first golden rule of email sending to a group of people is, don’t do it unless it’s an important email. But, if you really feel you must send group mass emails, here is what to do:
- Once you have selected the names of the persons you want to send your email to, you might see a long list in your ‘To” field. Highlight all the names and email addresses; right-click and select ‘cut’ from the pop-up menu;
- Paste the names to the address section of the ‘bcc’ field;
- Send your message.
Or, you can insert the names into the’ bcc’ directly, and save the copy and paste step.
You might ask ‘Why would I want to do this?‘ Let me ask you, if you are in business, would you give away your contact list? Of course not, but that’s exactly what happens when you include everyone in the ‘To’ or ‘cc’ field.
- I try to be very selective about who gets my email address, and do not like it to be available to just everybody. If all addresses in an email to me are put into the ‘To’ field, everyone who received the message as well has also received my information;
- By using the ‘bcc’ field we respect everyone’s privacy;
- Using the ‘bcc’ field is a great anti-spam, even an anti-virus precaution. Some viruses ‘harvest’ email addresses from your address book or computer cache, increasing the viruses snowball effect.
So, I beg you, if you don’t do it already, please start using the ‘bcc’ field.