Avoid Sticking Colleagues in Reply-All Hell

I've never really understood why it is so upsetting to so many people to get "spammed" by colleagues. Other types of spam—for say, Hoodia or fake online degrees—are obviously unwanted, but mildly relevant bulk emails from groups or people I'm associated with in some way are sometimes worth a read, and if they're not, the delete button is never far away.

But I realize I'm in the minority here. Most people think of their inbox as some sort of virginal property that must be protected from unsolicited advances. And they can quickly turn against you if they think that you are somehow responsible for sullying that sanctity.

One way that happens very quickly is if you send a message out to a bunch of people wherein everyone's email address is visible in the To: or CC: line. That invites potentially annoying Reply-Alls from unsavvy folks who mean to just be replying to you, followed by another round of Reply Alls from people asking not to be included in Reply Alls. (Advertising and marketing folks rated this as their single biggest email peeve in a 2005 study.) Unless you use Outlook and are willing to use this tutorial to disable Reply-Alls, the best thing is to put everyone's email address but your own in the BCC column.

Some anti-spam bots filter BCC-ed emails directly to the trash box of the recipient, though, so if the email is really important, just add a line at the top of your message asking your colleagues to please, please, please not use the Reply All button.

There's got to be an even better fix for this (that doesn't include downloading complicated listserv clients). Anyone got a better idea? If so, leave a comment or send me an email.

(Image courtesy PostSecret.com)