Don’t make this Email mistake

At some point in our career, we have probably all done it at least once, but this is definitely not the way you should be emailing your prospects or customers. How many times this week have you received an email from someone and had 100 other email addresses with yours in the CC: line or received an email where you were blind-copied (BCC:) in an email that was send to the person that sent it to you or to someone else?

Why not CC?

Using copies in your email are made for a specific purpose, and let me assure you that purpose is not so all of your prospects can see all of your other prospects email addresses. But why, you ask?

1. What if one of your competitors got on your email list? Then, every time you sent an email, they could see what you were sending, and since you CC’d your entire prospect list, they could follow up with your prospects directly and use your email against you.
2. What if you have a problem with a customer and sent out an email to which they hit the “reply-all” button and really let you have a piece of their mind? I have actually seen this happen, and it wasn’t pretty.
3. Personal emails, and even business email address boxes, are not designed for marketing purposes. Sending bulk emails from a personal box also runs the risk of you losing your email account, may be subject to sending limits, and are significantly more likely to be marked as spam by the inbound email server. Using a reputable bulk service provider mitigates that risk by creating relationships with email companies and spam-checking software.

Do I need to share more reasons? Or have I convinced you? okay, but what about the dreaded BCC? Sure, your customers will not see everyone else’s email addresses, but it still comes off as horribly unprofessional and is also subject to your email providers sending limitations and likely to be discarded as spam by the inbound server.

So what do you do?

Using a service that specializes in email deliverability and list management is key. I have used AWeber for many years (since 2007 to be exact) and can recommend their service. They have high deliverability, good list management, and even allow you to schedule emails, set up autoresponder sequences, and provide a slight level of automation. Go get a free trial and you will see why I use them.

If you’d like to really talk about some automation, and learn how I create dynamic relationship marketing email sequences, you can grab the AWProTools subscription, free trial for 14 days if I am not mistaken.

Just Remember

CC was built as a means of copying in a couple people on an email so they can see what you are sending. Usually, in business, I would suggest this if you are sending an email to a customer and need to copy in someone else working within their account, or maybe even to copy in several people on an important document. You could use BCC if you needed to send something to a customer and wanted to copy in your personal assistant or manager without revealing their email address to the customer. You should never use either to send out mass email, however.