Having recently received an email,
addressed to one ‘influential’ blogger
and cc’ing the rest of us,
I thought I’d review e-mail sending etiquette.
To:
is used for the recipient you are writing the email for.
If my name is in the To: section,
I know I’m supposed to take action,
even if that action is to send back an LOL
to your hilarious joke email.
CC:
is for information only recipients.
That recipient may be responsible for tasks
but you’ve already contacted them
about their parts.
If the entire email is informational,
the To: recipients are considered more important
than the CC: recipients.
That’s what went wrong in this email.
The blogger in the To: field was seen as more important
and the CC: field bloggers got insulted.
BCC:
This field can come back to bite you on the ass.
Usually recipients in the BCC: field
will receive the email as though they were To: recipients.
This is great for mass mailings
and for other delicate address lists
where you don’t want recipients
to see everyone’s email addresses.
I use BCC: ONLY if there is no connection
between the recipients.
That is, the recipients aren’t going to talk to each other
about my email.
THIS is the field that should have been used
in the blogger contact email.
I’ve never used BCC: in an office situation
(other than to BCC: myself so I have a copy).
Folks that use BCC: get well deserved reputations
for being sneaky bastards.
You don’t know who the hell is included
in the conversations.
Once someone uses a BCC: on me,
that’s the end of trust
AND I assume everyone
is getting a copy of my emails.
But that said…
I assume everyone ALWAYS gets a copy of my emails.
Emails are forever.