Randy Dean, the Email Sanity Expert, breaks down when to use To, CC, and BCC. Most teams assume To means action and CC means informational, but he says you need explicit agreement on this. BCC is risky because recipients can accidentally reply all and expose confidential info. Safe uses: put large lists in BCC for mass emails, or forward a sent message separately with a cover note.
Chapters
Hi everybody, Randy Dean, Email Sanity Expert here. Hey, it's been a little while since I've done an email etiquette video, and I'm testing out some new podcasting software right now. So I wanted to do a quick little email etiquette video on a very common thing that comes up in my sessions: the use of the To field in email versus the CC and the BCC fields. And one of the things that has come up pretty commonly from the audience, not me, a lot of people say, when your name is in the "To" field, that means you've probably got something to do. When your name is in the "CC" field, you're just being informed. But then I ask the audience, is that universal? Does everybody use it that way? And almost no one raises their hand. As a matter of fact, a lot of people that I ask the follow-up question, "How many of you have ever received an email where you were CC'd, but inside the email you had a task you needed to accomplish?" And more than half the room raises their hand. And so, we've got this idea that's out there that, you know, if your name's in the "To" field, you are probably responsible for something. If your name is in the CC field, you're being copied for informational purposes only, but it's not being used that way. And so here's what I would recommend. I think it's a brilliant idea. I actually like that plan that if you're in the To field, you got something to do. If you're in the CC field, you're being copied for informational purposes only. But what I would recommend is every workgroup, every every department, every company, they need to formalize that. You got to get out and have a discussion with all of the members of your group that are using email for regular day-to-day communication and get an agreement that that is what you're going to do with the To and the CC field, because all it takes is one person to sort of violate that rule, and nobody can put trust into that. But obviously, what that would mean is that if you know that your organization has sort of decided to adopt this as sort of a standard operating principle, that means that, you know, when your name is in the "To" field, you got to read that email closely. And in the "CC" field, you're just getting informed. And it sort of does make a lot of sense intuitively. Now, what about BCC? I always tell people BCC is a very loaded beast and be very careful with it because here's the risk with BCC. You BCC somebody on what the party you're sending to believes is a private two-way conversation between you and that party. You're BCCing that third party, and then the third party does a reply all. And now what happens is the other party, you've just broken confidence and trust. So you got to be careful with BCC. However, I'll tell you a great use of BCC, which I've covered previously. When you're sending out a mass email and you want to stop people from hitting reply all to everyone, put the entire distribution list in the BCC field, because then when somebody hits Reply All, it only goes to the people in the To or the CC field. Coming back to the, you know, 3-way BCC secret conversation thing, I'll tell you what I think is a much better way to do it. Right after you hit Send, to avoid that risk of the Reply All situation popping up, if you want to inform somebody else, within your group about the email you just sent to this second party, right after you send it, forward it to that other person from your Sent folder. That takes away that risk of the Reply All and the confidence being broken. And maybe then you could even put a little cover note, "Hey, this was sort of a private conversation, but I'd like you to be informed. Please don't forward this back to the other party." You know, so hopefully you find these tips on To, CC, and BCC make a lot more sense, and you can then have some discussions with your workgroup or team to maybe adopt some new standard operating principles to help make your email communications just that much more, you know, manageable. Thanks, everybody. Bye now.
