I don’t have to tell you that email spam is still a huge problem. I receive more spam in a day than good email in a week. Part of the spam comes from other people’s lack of knowledge when handling email addresses. A few times a month I receive a mass email from fellow business friends with a very long list of TO email addresses. It is not only a privacy concern because I now know who the email is being sent to but now I also have a list of a bunch of email addresses. Doing this is a frowned upon practice but unfortunately a lot of people don’t know any better. But what does this have to do with spam? Basically the email can fall into the wrong hands or one of the recipients computers/email boxes has been compromised. Bing bang boom, the spammer not only has the senders email address but now has every one else on the email.
Real quick lets break down the different ways to send an email so we can understand which way is the best to send an email.
- TO: The person or people you want to send an email to. These people should know each other or at least be trustworthy. Anyone who has their email address in the TO or CC fields can see each others email address.
- CC: CC mean “Carbon Copy”. It is more to let some one or several people know that you sent an email and what is in it. Again anyone who has their email address in the TO or CC fields can see each others email address.
- BCC: It means “Blind Carbon Copy”. Any one who is BCC’ed will see the email and any one the email is sent TO/CC’ed but any one who is TO/CC’ed won’t see who is BCC’ed. Nor will other BCC’ed recipients see each other.
If you must send mass emails and don’t want to use a mass email service then you should send the email to yourself and BCC the list of emails. This will keep every one’s email private and the chance of spammer picking up every one’s email address is greatly reduced. However, if you are sending out mass emails on a regular basis I would use a mass email service like YMLP.com, ConstantContact.com, MailChimp.com just to name a few.
Some benefits of using a mass email service are:
- You can manage your email list.
- Your subscribers can manage their subscription to your list.
- Your email provider won’t get mad or flag you as a spammer for sending emails with way too many recipients.
- You can send fancy HTML emails.
- No more exposing other people who are on the email list.
- Bounce back handling.
- No limits on how many email addresses you can send to.
- Schedule emails to be sent.
Some of the mass email services are free to use up to a certain point, other services you will have to pay a small monthly fee but it is worth it when it comes to fighting spam, sending emails properly, and making life easier. So if you send a lot of emails to big groups of people, it might be time to upgrade to a mass email service. But it you aren’t sure, have questions about a mass email service or other email related questions, please leave a comment.
