Understanding CC and BCC

(Ryan’s SMM Technology Tuesday topic)

Beside my love of illustration, a big part of my career is also helping others better use technology to market themselves with Social Media Marketing (SMM). It’s a passion of mine. So is having strong opinions. Join me every Tuesday for technology tips. Today I am beginning with what seems like a simple thing. So simple, most people overlook it and FAIL big time. How to send email properly!

Email Faux Pas
Email is still a relatively new technology for people; and we learned how to use it with little, real training - and some of us picked up REALLY bad habits. I have even gone as far as blocking friends for their misuse of my email address.

Have you ever sent an email to all your friends at once? There is a way to do this properly, and there is a way to do this that causes BIG disasters. These are the three fields used to send emails:

TO: For the primary recipient(s) [no more than two main recipients]

CC: (carbon copy) For secondary recipients you want to be privy to the conversation with the primary recipient; or when more than two people have equal significance to the message.

BCC: (blind carbon copy) For protecting the identities and addresses of multiple recipients. Use the BCC field when sending a message to more than 4 people where you are the only person the recipients need to communicate with. Note: if you ever need an open communication between more than a handful of people, where all parties are communicating to each other; the polite, safe thing to do is invite them to join a listserv first, such as GoogleGroups or Google Wave.

BCC vs. TO
Never use the TO field in place of the BCC field. When putting dozens or hundreds of your contacts email addresses in the TO field, this exposes their addresses to spam-harvesting robots who love to gather giant lists like these. It only takes one person to forward that message on to the wrong person, and your email could end up on any number of mailing lists. Certain mail servers might blacklist your account because it looks like spam. In a lesser degree, it is just tacky to expose all your contacts to every other person you know. The WORST is when someone accidentally replies to ALL. It is a mess.

If you are sending a message to 20 people requesting they contact you regarding presenting at a conference, do you want to share the identity of the 19 other people who are one person’s direct competition? This is considered tacky. BCC is the tasteful solution. Protect their identities and use the BCC field when sending en masse.

BCC Analogy
If you sent out invitations to a party in the mail, would you include a print-out of everyone you invited with their home addresses and phone numbers in that envelope? Or worse, would you send this list out to even more random strangers? Most of our friends and family would be offended at this carelessness. The same applies to email addresses.

CC vs TO
Learning to understand to use the CC field helps your recipients understand their role in the message. If every person is important and equal to the conversation, put all the members in the CC field. This tells them it’s an equal, team conversation. This helps them understand replying to all is okay. Putting one person in the TO field and others in the CC field sends the message that they are just FYI to the main recipient – sometimes this is the case. Understand when the scenario calls for one or the other.

Conclusion
Having someone’s email address is a privilege. Just like having their phone number or address, you should be respectful of privacy and be good stewards of this knowledge. Sending emails in a lazy way by not understanding the fields is considered poor email etiquette and can even put your recipients at risk. If you have a technology job, you could even be judged by your lack of understanding of these standards – so there are many reasons to better your understanding of email “netiqette”.

Need help getting your inbox under control? If you have a free 45 minutes, this was a really helpful video.

More technology tips next Tuesday…