Email Ettiquette

A couple weeks ago, I attended a wedding expo and literally entered every drawing I could. I did this for two reasons - a) I wanted to win and b) I wanted to see how the sales people drafted their email to maximize their after-expo business.
I noticed something very concerning that could have been altogether avoided - almost half of the direct saleswomen who emailed me let me see every other email address they used. That means, if I were someone who wanted to phish information, I now have hundreds of people's email addresses - and they have mine.
This is such an easy thing to avoid that I wanted to take a second and explain how to do it, as well as some other finer points of email usage that are easy to miss when we're in a hurry.

BCC

When you compose an email, there are three potential fields in which you can put your email addresses they are as follows:

• To (or C)
• CC
• BCC

These are remnants of the old way we used to send mail. C stands for Copy - or the original addressee. CC stands for Carbon Copy. Back in the old days (can you imagine that in an old lady's voice?) we used to make a copy of the original with carbon paper to send to those whom the letter was not addressed to. Each person knew who the original addressee was and everyone else to whom a copy had been sent. BCC stands for Blank Carbon Copy. These were carbon copies sent to third parties as well, but these parties did not know who the original addressee was or who else had gotten a copy.
Email works in a similar way. When you use the C or CC fields, every single person you include in said field will see every other person you include. Alternatively, when you use the BCC field, every person only gets an email addressed to her and no one else. This serves 2 purposes:

• You eliminate the possibility of people stealing others email addresses.
• Each person feels like you took the time to email her specifically.

On a side note, if you use a mailing list service, it automatically does it for you.

Reply All

FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY, DO NOT USE THE REPLY ALL FUNCTION ON EMAILS!!!!
I'm really sorry about that, but I had to get it out of my system.  Please forgive my fervour on this one. I am going to try to remain calm, but you should know that I am currently fighting this battle with my daughter's gymnastics parent association.
Let's say, for example, that you get an email from someone (we'll call him Bob) who doesn't know how to use the BCC field  on his email and they sent that email to 100 people. Let's again say you need to tell Bob how to use the BCC field (or anything else equally important) so you hit the reply button.
Did you check to see if you hit Reply or Reply All?
Here's what's about to happen if you hit Reply All. Every single other person that Bob sent the original email to will now receive a copy of your email and your information, if you have an auto-completing signature. This continues until people lose interest in the email. I get emails constantly like this and it sets off my "new email" buzzer constantly.
Of course, if Bob had known how to use the BCC field, none of this would have happened in the first place.

Hope this helps!