We use email every day and most of the times the BCC is a crafty little feature that we rarely use. Usually, it is for confirmation emails for events to multiple people, or something similar. The only other time I have personally used it was when I had to send assignments for evaluation to some higher authority and a few friends as well. I did not want the authority to know about the friends getting it as well.
Recently I got an email which went as follows:
Ryan: Hey Bob, Wanted to introduce you to Saransh who shares similar interests as you. You both should definitely get to know each other.
Bob: Saransh, nice to meet you. Thanks for introducing us Ryan (moving Ryan to BCC). Can we talk over skype Saransh?
After that Bob and I shared some more emails in which Ryan was not CC’d at all. Had it been someone else in place of Bob, Ryan would have been needlessly CC’d on all of them even though he was not interested in them at all.
Because Bob smartly moved Ryan to BCC, Ryan no longer was punished with the plethora of emails we interchanged after this conversation. I found it to be a great way of letting people know that you replied to the mail and are following up with the other person. Since the person who is introducing you is not required in the mail thread anymore, moving to BCC was a great idea to save them from receiving irrelevant emails.
And introductions are not the only scenario in which we should be using BCC. Next time you are attached to an email thread with a lot of people in it, instead of lazily hitting the reply all button and sending an email to everyone, think if moving to BCCwould be useful. It would save a lot of precious time on people’s part if you just copy paste their names from the cc list to the BCC list, mentioning that you are moving them to BCC.
Eventually, you would have saved them from some unwanted emails! Go give it out a try next time you are talking to a group of people over email (Though, be careful not to offend any egos in the process of doing so).
