Occasionally we need to send emails to more than one person. It’s a very simple task. For example, in Gmail, all you need to do is enter all of the names into the ‘To’ field. Done! However, there are times when we don’t want to show all of the addresses to our recipients.
How do we manage this option? In this article, you will learn how to send email to multiple recipients without them seeing each other. We will look at the main steps in accomplishing this goal using Gmail and Outlook.
Also, we review here how you can use email marketing services for sending emails in bulk. If you’re into email marketing and sales, and looking for ways to get email addresses of your potential customers from LinkedIn, try an outreach automation tool.
How to Send Same Email to Multiple Recipients Separately in Outlook
Let’s first look at the definitions of “Cc” and “Bcc”.
Cc stands for “carbon copy”, and means that recipients added to this field will get a copy of your message. Addresses that are “Cc” -ed are visible to all recipients.
Bcc, or “blind carbon copy” functions the same as “Cc”, with one difference: Bcc-ed addresses are hidden from all recipients.
Both features are available in Gmail and Outlook.
To send the same email separately to various users in Outlook follow the guide below.
- Find and add the Bcc field for your message. Go to ‘Options’, and in the ‘Show fields’ section, select Bcc.
- The Bcc box will now appear by default for every new message.
- To send emails to small groups where everybody knows each other, use the Cc field. Enter all of the addresses there, separated by commas.
- To hide addresses, use the Bcc field, just like the Cc field. No one will be able to see the addresses added in this field.
However, there are some problems with this messaging style.
- Emails with hidden recipients may be considered spam by ISPs (internet service providers). If so, some addressees will not receive your message. Follow the main tips to prevent your emails from going to spam.
- Generally, for bulk emails, the number of addresses is limited by ESPs (email service providers), to prevent suspicious activity.
To get around the first problem, fill in the ‘To’ field. For example, you can put your own address here. This won’t necessarily guarantee delivery to all recipients, but it does increase your chances. If you have problems sending due to limitations on the number of addresses, simply divide your contact list into several parts.
Undisclosed recipients
You can alert recipients about your email being sent to several addresses by using the ‘Undisclosed recipients’ feature.
How to send a mass email and hide recipients in Outlook with the ‘Undisclosed Recipients’ feature:
- Select ‘People’ in the Outlook Navigation menu
- Go to ‘Contacts’, choose ‘Home’, and click ‘New contact’.
- Set the name ‘Undisclosed recipient’ for the address you want to use for bulk emails as sender.
- Save your changes. Now to send an email to multiple recipients you can just select created contact and add it into the ‘To’ box. Other steps are similar to those described above.
How to Send an Email to Undisclosed Recipients From Gmail
Let’s find out how to set the ‘Undisclosed recipients’ contact in Gmail. Gmail is simpler than Outlook and takes just three steps to send an email with hidden addresses.
- In Gmail, click ‘Compose’ to create a new email.
- In the ‘To’ field enter ‘Undisclosed recipients’ and add your address after it (for instance, myinfo@gmail.com). Example:
- Next, click on ‘Bcc” (upper right), and enter your addresses into the Bcc field.
- Now you are ready to compose your email, and send it out.
That’s it! Your contacts will not see each other!
It is recommended that you only use Bcc to communicate with recipients on an infrequent basis. If, however, you want to communicate with many people, fairly often (i.e. with customers), you should consider using bulk email services.
Bulk messaging and email services
Instead of using basic email for business promotion, companies send email campaigns via special services.
Here are some popular email marketing services that you might wish to use.
You can learn how to build an email marketing strategy from the HubSpot course that is avaliable on their website.
Benefits of email marketing services for bulk messaging:
- You have access to delivery reports and campaign statistics. A service will provide info about sent, delivered, and opened messages.
- Your email has a low chance of going into the spam folder.
- Email service will generate statistics for you, and keep track of your customers’ interests, best delivery times, etc.
- User segmentation and personalization are extremely important features of email marketing services. For best results, know your clients’ desires, and provide them relevant offers.
- You can customize emails with your own professional templates.
- Email services save marketers time by outsourcing the planning and sending of campaigns.
- Your contact list is hidden from recipients automatically.
TIP
To get more clicks on your emails, try complementing emails with push notifications for your website. Push subscriptions typically grow faster than email subscriptions, and you can nudge push subscribers to join your email newsletter.
How to send Push Notifications
To complement your marketing strategy even further, you might wish to try messaging on LinkedIn and extracting the contact information of your potential customers from there. To do this, use a LinkedIn lead generation service such as Impasto.io. It is for searching and connecting with potential customers and generating B2B leads. You can also continue communicating with these leads by downloading their email addresses and using the above email marketing services.
How to generate leads on LinkedIn
Conclusion
Let’s summarize.
To hide the email addresses from recipients:
- Enter addresses into ‘Bcc’. Find this option in your email settings. It is perhaps easiest in Gmail.
- To help prevent your emails from going into spam folders, add your own address into the ‘To’ field.
- Note the number of contacts before sending an email. ESPs may have limitations.
- Use ‘Undisclosed recipients’ to warn your addressees about bulk messaging. Add this name to your email address, and enter it into the ‘To’ field.
- Use Email services for email marketing campaigns. Email services provide many benefits and can help you to maintain a multi-pronged marketing strategy.
