Melon Corporate Blog
Email Goes wrong - Case Study and Prevention
Every so often there it is - an article in a mainstream newspaper describing how someone has created havoc by using CC instead of BCC.
Email is a powerful tool - and like all powerful tools - it can be used for good or evil - furthermore when things go wrong they can go spectacularly wrong.
[Cartoon image is from the Financial Review 17 April 2008]
The Financial Review Wednesday 16 April 2008 has a story about Kevin Rudd’s 2020 Summit and how the secretariat sent an email cc’ing recipients instead of bcc’ing them.
[ As an aside we are very impressed that Tamerlaine Beasley the principal of one of our clients Beasley Intercultural has been selected to participate in the Summit.
Tamerlaine will be involved with the ‘Australia’s Future in the World’ stream. Tamerlaine will canvass opinions regarding Australia and its future in the region and the world.
We interviewed Tamerlaine for one of our previous newsletters.]
Over the years we have seen all sorts of avoidable mistakes made by email - both in relation to one to one emails and broadcast emails.
Most of these mistakes can be avoided by implementing your own simple quality control mechanism.
As you are about to press send - whether it be to 1 person, or 100 000 people, STOP!
Review the following:
- Are there attachments? If so click them, review them, no matter how sure you are that they are the right files.
- Who is this email going to? Not just what name, but what email address(es).
- Are the correct email addresses in the "to" field, the "cc" field and the "bcc" field?
- If sending it through an email marketing system - does the number of recipients the email will be going to match up to the number of people you are expecting it to go to.
Once you get into the habit of double checking all emails it will become second nature - and mistakes like the one Kevin Rudd's 2020 team made won't happen to you.
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Comments - oldest entries appear first, most recent entries at the end.
Well if they don’t know how to use email, we sure hope they know how to balance a budget!
By Susie Pels on 22 04 2008
I notice wrong cc happen at least once a month, maybe the Rudd Government can pass a law against it?
By Craig Genoz on 22 04 2008
I made a bad mistake once, I emailed a work contract to the wrong person, that is the candidate I didn’t want to offer the job too.
That feeling of dread is very memorable.
I now triple check my emails.
By Julie Roseinweigstein on 22 04 2008
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