It’s holiday season, so it’s likely you’ll be emailing groups of friends, friends of friends, and so on.
Whether it’s passing on Christmas greetings, or making plans to meet them at the beach after work for a barbecue (maybe not in the Northern Hemisphere, but you get the idea), or figuring out who’s going to take the least popular Christmas-to-New-Year support desk shifts…
…you may end up with emails that have plenty of recipients, possibly including people you don’t know very well, or who are your boss’s boss’s boss.
And if you have email access on your phone, you may very well find yourself replying when you’re already at the beach barbie, perhaps even when you’ve already been there a while.
That’s where today’s tip comes in.
“Reply All” is probably not what you want.
To make it perfectly clear why, here’s an example:
To: Roland From: James CC: Management Team, HR Department, Senior VP Team, Board Subject: Company beach party this Friday You are invited. Dress code casual.
Reply All would result in this:
To: James From: Roland CC: Management Team, HR Department, Senior VP Team, Board Bring it on, Jimbo! Let's sink a few tinnies, then dump the other losers and head to the Beach Bar.
“Reply All” is not what you wanted, if you see what we mean.
Also, while we’re about it, remember that when you are emailing many different recipients, especially people outside your organisation who don’t already know one another, you should be using BCC:, not CC:, and here’s why.
Take care, and if in doubt, don’t sent it out!
💡 LEARN MORE – When to use BCC in your emails instead of CC, and why ►
Images of Christmas tree and Advent calendar courtesy of Shutterstock.
Dave
ABSOLUTELY!
I recently severed contact with an old friend (87) who, after being reminded numerous times, couldn’t remember to use BCC instead of CC when letting a large group of friends know he was still alive every morning. The “straw” was one in which he “linked” two of my email addresses in one mailing. So far, only an increased volume of SPAM & PHISHING.has resulted. Passwords changed, move on.
Oscar Windsor-Smith
Hi Paul. First things first: Compliments of the festive season!
I have a corker of an example of CC-abuse from a few months back: Some admin-type at a certain London university sent out an email CCed to more than 600 students – the entire department so far as I can tell. But it gets better. When I vented my wrath on the sender, I received a further email by return – also CCed to the original recipients – stating that its purpose was to withdraw the original email.
*facepalm*
Perhaps there’s another cautionary message here, too? Something like: don’t think it’s safe to give out ‘mundane’ email tasks to new temps/interns?