How to email a group: 4 secrets everyone should know
So much of the work we do involves teams, departments, managers, assistants, whole groups of people who need to be up to date on what is happening with projects, clients, products, and tasks.
Because multiple humans are involved, the communication can get messy. One email sent to 5 people can quickly expand into 50 emails with different people involved in and responding to different aspects of the work.
And occasionally, something less deadline-driven can completely blow up your inbox: a promotion announcement about someone else that turns into 100 replies with congratuations that you don’t need to see. An invitation to an event that everyone starts RSVP’ing to on the group thread. A birthday and now you are overwhelmed with “Happy Birthday” emails, even though they aren’t for you.
The thing is email has ways for us to prevent some of these messy problems through the way the email tools are designed.
Secret #1
And the primary secret to preventing all those congratulations and happy birthdays? BCC.
The BCC (originally, blind carbon copy) function exists to allow a message to be sent to a whole lot of people at once–which you can also do in the TO field or the CC field.
But BCC does 2 things:
It prevents the group from being able to see who else is receiving the message. Which is great for privacy.
For example, let’s say that you want to send the same email to your entire client list, but you don’t want all your clients to have access to each other’s email addresses: BCC.
It prevents anyone from being able to REPLY ALL. Which is great for preventing all those “Congratulations!” and “Happy Birthday!” from filling up the entire office’s inboxes.
For example, let’s say you want to let everyone in the office know that it is Debbie’s birthday today. You can send the message TO Debbie and BCC everyone else in the office. That way, they can REPLY to Debbie with their good wishes, but they can’t REPLY ALL.
**Caution** BCC should not be used to CYA or let someone spy. That’s dishonest. If you need to CYA or let a supervisor see what’s going on, use CC, so that it’s clear what is happening. Also because BCC folks only get one message; they don’t get copied on replies to the message. CC folks can get copied on replies. So, it’s actually more useful to opening include the boss on your message if you want to get someone in trouble. If you use BCC, then the boss will only see you antagonizing your co-worker. The boss won’t be included on the difficult co-worker’s scandalous and appalling reply.
Secret #2
Ok, so if BCC is the best way to email information to a whole group to protect their privacy and prevent them from replying all, what is CC for?
Great question!
CC (originally, carbon copy) is a function that allows people to be included on a message, but the message isn’t specifically for them.
When we use CC, we are typically indicating that these people need to be kept informed on something and might need to weigh in on something.
But they are not expected to.
So the conversation, task, or project goes on whether the CC people contribute to the conversation or not.
This function allows us to make sure that people have access to the information they might need. So, it’s good for CYA things: I just want my boss to see that I’ve reached out to the client several times but haven’t gotten a response from them so the boss knows I am trying to do my job.
It’s also good for distinguishing in a group between people who are actually doing the work and people who may have the power to change or make decisions about the work if they have an idea or question or alternate direction.
But everyone receiving the message can see who is CC’d. For that reason, it is important to state somewhere in the message why certain people are being CC’d and whether the replies should include everyone or not.
Sometimes, we work on projects where we know our team and maybe the name of the client, but we don’t know the names of everyone on the client’s team. A person might get CC’d on an email to us whose name we don’t know. The writer needs to tell us in the email who that person is, why they are CC’d, and whether they should be included on future messages.
Secret #3
When writing to a group, it is the responsibility of the writer of the message to state whether the recipients should reply all or not.
When you write to a group, you need to say explicitly in the message either
Please reply all.
Or
Please reply directly to me.
If you don’t say it, then you are responsible for anyone who doesn’t read your mind and reply in the way that you imagined they would.
If you do say, then people will still not do what you ask, but everyone will know it is their fault, not yours.
You cannot expect people to know whether they should include people they don’t know in their replies. I tend to remove people I don’t know because I don’t know them. So, the writer has to be responsible for providing the information the reader needs to reply in the best possible way.
The writer is responsible for
Saying who has been CC’d and why
Stating whether people should reply all or not
When the writer takes care of these two small tasks, the whole message thread will be clearer and more functional for the group.
It won’t solve every problem, but we will know who to blame.
Secret #4
Who is TO for then?
TO is the field that is specifically for the people who are supposed to act on the message. TO can be one person or a group, but these are the people who are supposed to do things. That might just be that they are supposed to answer your question. Or it might be that they need to actually do a task–call the client, create a purchase order, revise a policy. Or it might be that they just need to respond to your email. Whatever it is, TO is the people who are supposed to the thing the email is about.
When we use TO for the recipients who need to take action and CC for the people who can take action but aren’t expected to, we clarify for the readers and the whole group who is responsible for what. Since most of us are incredibly overworked, this is helpful! It’s good to be able to clearly separate what I am responsible for from what I can choose to engage with.
Helping our readers read and sort their work and figure out how to get all their work done is one of the ways that we show respect for each other in our writing at work. If we aren’t using these tools and strategies, then we are literally making other people’s work harder. And that’s just not very nice.
So, now that you know the 4 secrets to emailing with a group, put them into practice and see how they spread like a virus through your office so that we all get fewer completely unnecessary emails that just cause chaos in our inboxes and make it harder for us to find the things that we actually need to get done.
Bonus
You also do not have to send a “Thank you” email. You can, but don’t feel obligated. And if someone sends one, you certainly don’t have to send “Thank you” back.
Gratitude is best felt in person, so if you really want the person to feel your appreciation, call them, meet with them, or send a gift.
But don’t waste everyone’s time and attention with multiple, unnecessary “Thank you” emails.
To be clear, I mean an entire email that just says “Thank you” in it and has no other information or content.
Again, I am just freeing you from any obligation you may feel to send a final “Thank you” email.
You are allowed to, if you must.
But if you don’t want to, you don’t have to.
We all want less email in our inboxes.