How to use BCC when sending emails

Would you give us your entire clients contact list?

Of course you wouldn''t, but many people do exactly this when they email everyone in their contacts list.

They cut and paste their entire list of contacts, into an email recipient list, type an email and hit send without a second thought. Thank you; you''ve just given everyone that you''ve sent that email to your entire contact list, emails and names.

You''ve also probably just broken the data protection act and also your own privacy policy, which states that you won''t freely release your clients contact details to anyone else.

So what should you do

If you are using an email application like Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird (and many online applications too) then you need to look for the BCC field when composing your list of recipients.

BCC stands for ''blind carbon copy'' and is like the CC field that you are probably more familiar with.

You use is to copy an email to many people without disclosing who you are sending to.

So what''s the difference between BCC and CC. The ''B'' stands for blind and that means that you still send the email to everyone, but you do not disclose those precious emails address details to anyone else. What each recipient will see in their email is "sent to undisclosed recipients"

So you''ve still managed to email everyone and not break any laws or policies.

I''ve not got BCC

Yes you have, it just might not be turned on. By default the BCC field may not be readily available.

For example in Microsoft Outlook 2007, you can turn it on in the options tab ''show BCC''.

If you send emails to many of your clients often, you should turn this on by default.

Other email marketing services like Clarke Marketing (www.clarkemarketing.co.uk) do this for you automatically by actually sending each recipient an individual email, thus never disclosing another person''s private email details.