File this under “no good deed goes unpunished.” Someone found a set of keys and sent email to a few hundred (maybe a few thousand?) of her closest friends. There was no way to really tell, because–with nothing but the best intention—she sent the message using some of the distribution lists in the Exchange Email global address book. But they were big groups of people.
Sure enough, the owner of the keys got the message and was reunited with his/her missing item. We all heard about it. And then two (or three or four) people replied to everyone about how great and wonderful that was. And then it got weird. People, uninterested in the keys saga, took umbrage at the many emails sent to so many, and started emailing the entire group again, this time saying they did not want to get anymore messages on the topic. There were another dozen messages, again sent to everyone, saying to not send those messages to everyone. It eventually tailed off and I guess people got back to work.
I’m no Miss Manners of the email world, and this incident isn’t something I’m losing any sleep over, but I’ve been asked to assemble a list of email best practices. (I guess this request stems from that “internal communication” part of my job title.) Some of it is common sense, some is covered in our required training, some of it is just convention that maybe not all of us know. Watch for it in an upcoming Impact and I’ll post a link to it from my blog. And, I’m glad those keys found their owner.
I thought it was nice of her to try to find the owner… and then things got strange. Some things are just common sense and get overlooked. I will look forward to your lessons in the impact.
Jan
Good email etiquette is part and parcel of appropriate messaging behaviour which is necessary if folks are to avoid the problems mentioned above.
Sending to a large list requires a subtle set of messaging to avoid just these problems. Because this was a ‘broadcast’, she should have placed the list in the BCC field (blind carbon copy) rather than the CC field (carbon copy). Folks are mistakenly told not to use BCC because its viewed as ‘sneaky’ (other recipients can’t see who been copied) – its not. When folks reply to a BCC list, only the original sender receives a reply – not the whole list. This would have saved several hundred unecessary replies.
I had the same task to assemble a best practice guide and came up with 7 Deadly Sins of Email which I use to teach this subject.
Hope this helps?
Tetsou
http://www.tetsou.co.uk