To Group or, Just Don’t

A while ago I did a survey about the most annoying email habit.

Can you guess what it was?

Not all CAPs, not profanity, or even the abrupt one word emails.

It was…

This one is HUGE. People hate them! and people use them all the time.

When I did a little digging it became clear that it actually wasn’t the idea of the group email that was the problem. The problem with group emails is all about WHY they are sent and HOW they are sent.
Here is the Troubling Scenario
Let’s say you have been receiving a group email from the same person to the same group of people (yourself included) on a regular basis. This annoys you, but you don’t want to ask them to take you off.

By-the-way:
People HATE the need to ask to be taken off a group. They are afraid they will appear rude or uncaring. They don’t want to hurt the sender’s feelings.

Most people (myself included) would much rather quietly unsubscribe from an email than ask to be removed from a group email.

Some people get very annoyed at group emails and mark them as spam or junk. This action gives the sender a bad reputation and will affect the deliverability of their emails to other people. And if they still receive individual emails from the group sender this could be a problem.

So what are you to do? How do you leave?
If you filter them out of your inbox you may miss the individual messages they send you.
Here is a Group Email Filter Trick
Often when you get these emails from that specific person on a regular basis they have created a distribution list with you on it. These distribution lists are set up once and can be used to send emails to the same group of people and because the order of the email addresses in the list usually does not change you can successfully filter these messages without risking filtering that person’s individual emails to you.

Next time you get one, copy the first 5 or so emails (or the entire list). And create a filter or set a rule in your email system to filter the email based on the TO, CC fields that have those email addresses in them. You can set the filter to file away the emails in a folder out of your way or you can set it to quietly delete them.

Unfortunately this won’t work if they have everyone in the BCC field and you may be in an environment where you just need to delete or file the group email and move on.

Good Group Email Rules

Going forward, for those of you who do need to occasionally send group emails here are a few rules for you. If you are following the “rules” of sending group emails you will not annoy people with your group emails.

Rule #1

Unless everyone NEEDS to know everyone else’s contact information be sure to use the BCC field. To to this well you can enter your own email address in the TO field of the email and everyone else’s email address in the BCC field. BCC stands for Blind Carbon Copy, meaning no one knows who else is on the email thread.

Rule #2

When you receive a group email, even if the sender has correctly used the BCC field, be sure to reply ONLY to the sender and do not Reply ALL unless you know that everyone NEEDS to read what you have to say. There are very few things more irritating than a bunch of “I won’t be there” and “to where were we supposed to meet” for a meeting that you didn’t even plan to attend.

Rule #3

Don’t use group emails when there are better options.
For email newsletters and club announcements use an email service like MailChimp or Send in Blue.
For meetings and regular events use a Facebook Event or use Eventbrite or even invite people to your calendar event.
For team emails or projects use Google Groups or Slack.

Rule #4

Use group emails for the purposes they are meant for.
Dispensing useful information to a group for a one time event.
Group emails are amazing for Introductions, this is also the time to add everyone to the CC field so that you are sharing everyone’s information with everyone else.

Group emails, like everything else under the scrutiny of proper etiquette, can be used in moderation and with common sense. Think it through and you will be fine.

And please, let me know if you would like help with this. See the offer below.

Nicole Lux-Ritchie - Founder of Luxcentric

Nicole's mission is to help feminine professionals gain the technical
skills they need to grow their business and focus on their missions.
The focus of Luxcentric is on training practical strategies in the area of the core technologies.
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