Feb 25

Written by: Steve Gray
2/25/2011 7:43 AM 

I’m a web designer, programmer, and email/web host. As such, a lot of people call on me to help with their email.

Here’s some general advice that I give out to anyone that’ll listen, about sending an email to a large group of people.

First of all… try not to. Half the things that I get via ‘mass forward’ (you know, where you get an email you like and you forward it to all your contacts) I delete anyway. I never send it any further. Even if there is an ominous penalty for ‘breaking the chain’ <smiles>

If you are at all in the business of sending out email blasts regularly, you should consider www.constantContact.com. Advantages:

• The effect is very, very professional
• You can add a link to your web site for people to sign up for your newsletter.
• In the newsletter, people have the options to ‘unsubscribe’
• You get statistics about who actually opened and read your newsletter <smiles>

But sometimes it is necessary, and sometimes there is even a good reason. So…

Don’t put my address in the TO or CC

If you’re going to send a blast, DON’T (yes, that was shouting) put all the names in the TO box. Put them in the BCC.

CC means ‘Carbon Copy’, BCC means ‘Blind Carbon Copy’. If you put the names in the TO everyone will see them; if you put them in the CC everyone will still see them. But, if you put them in the BCC… no one sees them.

You still need to send the email to someone. Send it to yourself. Really.

If you need some help with this (sometimes the BCC is hidden and hard to find) just call me.

Why shouldn’t I use TO or CC?

Because I don’t want my email address visible to the whole world. One of those other 200 people on the mailing list might copy my email into their contacts and … well, you know. 

Here is a test email (click to enlarge):

and here is what I got in the mail (click to enlarge):

Notice that the TO and CC are visible, but the BCC is not