How to Send an Email to Undisclosed Recipients in Gmail

gmail is, without a doubt, one of the best email clients on the market today. one of its biggest assets is the number of features it offers (oh, and that it’s free). but many features also equate to steep learning curves.

In this article, we will see how to send an email to undisclosed recipients in gmail and some reasons to do so.

what does undisclosed recipient really mean?

You may not realize it, but you probably already have experience with undisclosed recipients.

an example is bcc: you’ve probably used it at some point, but weren’t familiar with the more technical term.

if you haven’t heard of it, bcc stands for “blind copy”. It works similar to when you send someone a copy in an email; the only difference is that only you can see the list of recipients.

With that in mind, let’s discuss why you might want to use undisclosed recipients (or BCCs), as well as the pros and cons of doing so.

reasons to use undisclosed recipients in your emails

There are several reasons why you might want to use cco. here are the most common:

• Send a newsletter when you don’t have access to email marketing software. Not every business needs software like mailchimp. if you just send a weird email, you probably can’t justify the price. in that case, using undisclosed recipients and cc’s is a great free alternative.
• sending PR pitches. it’s important to send personalized pitches to journalists these days, but there are times when that just isn’t feasible. maybe it’s a last minute release, for example. well, nothing is going to annoy a journalist more than knowing that it has been sent to multiple people at the same time. in that situation, use bcc.

step by step guide on how to send an email to undisclosed recipients in gmail

Sending emails to undisclosed recipients is very simple in gmail. that’s how it’s done.

Step 1. Sign in to your gmail account and then click the compose button, just like you would with any other email.

step 2. in the to: field of the gmail compose window, type “undisclosed recipients” and then enclose their email in angle brackets. We promise this is the hardest part. so if your name is terry pratchett, and you happen to work at discworld, it would look like this: for undisclosed recipients <terry.pratchett@discworld.com >.

Extra tip: You don’t need to write undisclosed recipients; you can write anything. with our friend terry, you might want to write “terry’s fun and slightly weird book club”.

step 3. click bcc to the right of the message window.

step 4. that will open a bcc field. you just need to add all the recipients you want to send this message to in that section.

Step 5. Now, you need to add the subject of your email, as well as the body copy. just like you would in any other email.

step 6. press send. ready!

what are the benefits of using bcc’s and undisclosed recipients?

These are some of the benefits of using BCCs and undisclosed recipients.

1. Spam filters can be a hassle. Of course, they are useful most of the time and our lives would be more difficult without them. but they are wrong. using undisclosed recipients helps prevent the possibility of your email ending up in someone’s spam folder.
2. reduces the risk of spammers gaining access to the mailing list. email. If you only use the to and cc fields, and a spammer finds them, they will have access to the entire list of emails. using bcc prevents that.
3. it’s good for privacy. as simple as that. if you use bcc then everyone’s email is hidden from all other recipients. this makes it a good option for group emails where you don’t necessarily want everyone to have access to each other’s emails.

is there any downside?

There are downsides to everything, right? these are the disadvantages of using bcc.

1. when someone accidentally presses the reply all button. this happens, and as soon as it happens, your response will be shared with each email in the bcc section of the email. Not only can this cause problems with people seeing messages that weren’t intended for them, but it’s technically an unintentional security breach for that sender. it also means there could be a bunch of unrelated emails flooding other people’s inboxes, and who has time to deal with that?
2. not that professional. undisclosed recipients still know they are on a list with other people and have no idea who. that’s when the human brain kicks into gear. who are they? why don’t I know who they are? Is someone trying to hide something from me? you don’t want to arouse suspicion and people wonder why you used bcc.
3. there is no way to personalize the email. Here at Inbox Right, we’re passionate about customization (that’s why we built some of our most popular features). bcc does not allow any customization at all. why? The answer is quite simple. if there were personalized parts of the email, people would get the information you’re trying to hide. why cc if you’re going to mention people’s names in the email?

And there you have it: sending to undisclosed recipients isn’t always recommended, but it’s easy to do if you ever need to.