Some Mass Email Dos and Don’ts

Today has been an interesting day for email, at least for me. Gmail has been acting up, happening more often these days unfortunately, and I have also received a number of emails from well intended local business people that broke a couple cardinal rules of mass emailing. Since I think these aren’t always common knowledge I wanted to lay them out in a blog. These are mostly “don’ts” but hidden in plain site are my recommendations of what to “do”.

• Do Not Carbon Copy (CC) Your List!- if you send out an email to a large list of people that most likely you either painstakingly assembled or simply purchases (the Chamber of Commerce email list for instance), do NOT send an email that CCs everyone! This is a no-no for a few reasons. First is that it essentially gives away your list. Now everyone knows who is on your list and can copy it to their list. All that hard work in creating the list, or money spent, is essentially being thrown out the window. Second, people don’t like having their email revealed to others. You are not only giving away your list but your violating the privacy of the individuals on that list. So if you aren’t going to pony up the $20-50 a month to use an email list server like Constant Contact then PLEASE use the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) option when sending email. That way your list is preserved along with everyone’s privacy.
• Do not use Outlook’s “Recall” Function for mass mailings, ever!- I have seen this twice recently with local promotions from national chains, Donatos and Qdoba, that sent out a mass email, foolishly using CC not BCC, and then using the “Recall” function that then sends out ANOTHER email notifying everyone that the previous email was recalled. Hilarious, I know. This “Recall” function only works in very select environments where everything is Microsoft and assuming no-one has opened the email to begin with. A worthless feature if there was one. But today I received not one, but 4 recalls from Donatos for a special offer that wasn’t that special. A month of so ago I had a similar experience with Qdoba, they sent out an email, CC’d everyone, then recalled it. Seriously people, if you are going to send out emails from a national chain know what you are doing first. Somebody either needs to get fired or get trained asap. If you MUST recall an email, send a separate one apologizing and clarifying whatever was wrong with the first one. We all screw up and people are usually understanding if you just come clean up front. Take the recent Dominoes YouTube video debacle for instance.
• Don’t make it hard to opt out- I hate when I get these emails and then there is no way to opt out but to send back an email pleading to be released from this Carbon Copy/Recall hell and not know if the person getting that email ever reads it or even knows how to take me off the list! Just use an email list server, please, they take care of this for you. Also, it lets you see who opened the email, what links they clicked on, etc.

Any other’s I missed? I’m sure this list could be very very long…