Dear Sir/Madam,

I have emailed you this message with all the other recipients’ email addresses in the To and/or CC fields. You will now receive lots of responses intended for me from everyone else on this list whose email client defaults to Reply All. You’re welcome for the spamming!

~Your Solicitor

There’s a scene in La La Land where Emma Stone’s character commits several email faux pas at once. We’ll focus on just one aspect of this: she puts everyone’s email address in the To field, meaning that these will be both visible to everyone else in the email chain and that anyone who uses Reply All (either from habit or because it’s the default for their email client) will end up messaging the whole recipient list. This is not a good thing!

Takeaways:

• If you’re sending out a mass press release or press invite, use BCC (Blind Carbon Copy).
• However, if you’re sending a press release or invite to more than one person at an organization and only these persons, it’s a good courtesy to use an To or CC so that they know who’s in the loop.
• If you’re send a press invite to multiple people at the same organization, be prepared to field (and honor) multiple ticket requests.