A Guide on How to Send Emails to Multiple Recipients Individually

If your work demands you to live in your inbox, how to send emails to multiple recepients one at a time might be useful to you. 

Email marketing specialist are familiar with the struggle of sending emails to multiple recipients individually. 

Composing emails one by one is time-consuming and not feasible, given that you might have to send them to a list of 300 recipients, and they have no idea that the same email was sent to 299 others.

Sounds like a Herculean Task?

Moreover, marking everyone in the same email where recipients can see each other doesn’t look professional. Data privacy may be at risk.

The silver lining is that there are smarter ways to address this. 

This blog can be used as a ready-to-refer hack to send emails to multiple recipients individually. However, before using it to your own benefit, just try looking for its appropriateness to your use case. 

Why to send the same email to multiple recipients

Before proceeding any further, let’s understand why we must email multiple recipients. 

Here are some use cases wherein similar needs may arise: 

• Let’s say you’re a recruitment specialist looking for a particular position for one of your clients. You may want to reach out to your existing list of candidates with similar requirements. 
• You are running a retail grocery store in your locality. You want to reach out to your customers with incredible Black Friday sales offers.
• You are working with a non-profit and want to raise funds for Cancer patients through donation appeals.
• Assume you are the Chief of Communications in an MNC. There’s a significant policy change that will impact employees worldwide. And now you would like to reach all the employees. 
• You are a Sales Delivery Head in a lead generation agency and have asked your team to reach out to as many prospects as needed to increase the daily meetings booking quota.   

However, sending emails to multiple recipients without knowing them is a tricky game, a slight error, and you end up dating the spam filters. To avoid such situation, test your emails before sending with email spam checker.

Can we use the Cc and BCC fields for multiple recipients? 

It doesn’t look professional when recipients can see one another in case your team is marking everyone on the “Cc” field. “Cc” stands for “Carbon copy”.

This means recipients will receive the same exact email copy as the primary recipient in the “To” field. “To “What does CC means in email? This means recipients will receive the same exact email copy as the primary recipient in the “To” field.  The primary and “Cc” recipients can see each other’s email addresses in the respective header fields.

The next evident approach is to send emails using “BCC”. 

Recipients can’t see the email addresses of other recipients, and the message will look as if it was sent to “Undisclosed recipients”. This means the email was sent to a larger number of people, and it’s not a message just for you. It is a perfect scenario for which you may get a warrant from the spam filters. 

Moreover, if any recipient replies, it will go to all the recipients in your list. 

Both fail when it comes to offering you a solution. 

Why to hide recipients from each other? 

To put it in simple words–spam. 

If recipients can see each other’s email addresses, the possibility of getting your emails marked as spam increases. Spammers often send emails to large groups of people with visible recipient addresses.

Moreover, hiding recipients from each other can also help to reduce the risk of phishing attacks. Phishing attacks are done to trick people into revealing sensitive information, such as their passwords or credit card numbers. 

Now, coming back to the original question of why it is essential to hide recipients from each other, the below points can make things clearer:

• Privacy: Hiding recipients from each other can help to protect their privacy. This is especially important if you email people who do not know each other well or if the email contains sensitive information.
• Personalization: If you are sending an email to a large group of people, you may want to personalize the email for each recipient. Besides, this will increase your email engagement with the recipients. However, personalization becomes meaningless if the recipients can see each other’s email addresses.
• Compliance: In some industries, there are regulations that require businesses to send emails to customers individually. For example, financial services companies are often required to send account statements and other important communications to customers individually.
• Tracking: When you use “Cc”, “Bcc”, or multi-send to send an email, it can be difficult to track who has opened, read, or responded to your message. This can make it hard to gauge the effectiveness of your email and may prevent you from getting the desired results.
• Sending limit: Most ESPs come with a daily sending limit. You may quickly reach this limit if you use Cc, Bcc, or multi-send to send out emails. This can’t be a solution if you must send mass emails daily.

Benefits of sending emails to multiple recipients individually

Some of the apparent benefits are discussed as follows:

Save Time: It’s a productivity booster. Instead of typing out individual emails, you can just hit a bunch of inboxes simultaneously.

Consistency Matters: Also, it’s great for making sure everyone gets the same message loud and clear. 

Segmentation: Here’s another trick: break down your email list into segments. Then, you tailor your message to each group. It’s like customizing without all the manual labor.

Better Visibility: Sending emails to many recipients at once can give your email better visibility. More eyes on your message can lead to higher engagement. 

However, before you jump into your next mass mail, hang on a bit. 

Watch Out. Spam can be a spoilsport. 

You’ve got to be careful, though. Sometimes, when people see the same email popping up in everyone’s inbox, they might think it’s spam or just some generic blast.

These are some of the hacks that you can use with Gmail or Outlook or maybe with other email clients. However, as said before, be careful while using these hacks and see their usefulness in your use case. They have their shortcomings. I have covered those in the challenges section.

Sending emails to many recipients in Gmail

Let us go through step-by-step guidelines for using the BCC field while using Gmail:
Open your Gmail account and click Compose to open the compose window. Add your subject line and email text. 

Now, you can start typing in the recipient’s email addresses in the “Bcc” field. Leave your “Cc” field blank.

A little tip: make sure to leave at least one recipient in the ‘To’ field to avoid spam filters. Let’s say the one email ID included in the “To” field is the sender’s email ID i.e. [email protected]. Now all the recipients in bcc will know that the email was sent to the email ID mentioned and that they were bcc’ed.  

Remember, if you’re emailing a large group, try not to go beyond 10 recipients. Going beyond that might raise some spammy red flags.

TIP: You can use the “undisclosed recipient method” to keep the primary recipient’s address confidential. Biting nails, thinking, what is this? 

 We have discussed this below in detail.

The undisclosed recipient method is a method of sending emails where only the sender can see the recipients. Nobody else in the email list, including your primary recipient, Cc’ed recipients or Bcc’ed recipients, can read an undisclosed recipient’s details.

However, the only trick to sending undisclosed recipients is to include your email ID as the primary recipient while including everyone else as BCC recipients.  

How to add  Undisclosed Recipients in “To” field:

(This additional step will be required only if you want to follow the “undisclosed recipient method”)

Type “Undisclosed recipients” in the “To” field of the new message and include your own email address within angle brackets (<>).

For example, if your Gmail ID is [email protected], you must type “Undisclosed recipients <[email protected]>”.

To recipients, it may be weird to see the sender has included his email ID in the “To” field. So, if you want to keep your email recipients’ addresses private, instead of using “Undisclosed recipients,” you can get a bit creative. 

For instance, let’s say you’re emailing your cigar club buddies. You can just type “Cigar Club Members” as the label and then put your own email address in angle brackets (<>).

Hope this clarifies how to use undisclosed recipients.

In the final step, write the subject line, compose the email, and click send. 

Sending emails to many recipients in Outlook

Step 1
Click “New Email” after you log into Outlook. 

Then, under the Options tab, select BCC. You will find the BCC box for the new message.

Step 2
Next, enter the sender’s email ID  as the primary recipient’s email address in the To field.

Now, in the BCC field, you must enter the email addresses of hidden recipients (keep the CC field blank).

If you have a multiple-recipient list, you can separate each address with a comma, semicolon, or space by pressing the enter key.

Step 3
Now, compose your new message, select the Message tab, and click the Send button.

The primary recipient can’t see your hidden recipients included in the BCC field, but each BCC recipient will know they have been BCC’d.

Challenges while using CC and BCC in Gmail and Outlook

# Reply-to-All by Mistake: So, here’s the thing – with BCC emails, there’s always that one person who accidentally hits “Reply To All” instead of just “Reply.” It can turn into an unintentional mass email situation and be super embarrassing.

# Bulk Limitations: Microsoft Outlook and Gmail have your back when it comes to BCC, but they do have limits. Outlook lets you BCC up to 500 folks, and Gmail gives you a bit more room with 2,000. They’re just playing it safe to avoid any shady business.

# Spam Alert: Watch out for this one. If you’ve got a massive list of hidden recipients, some email providers might flag it as spam. That means your email might not even reach the inbox, and your sender’s reputation takes a hit.

# Unprofessional Vibes:  When you BCC a bunch of people, they can still tell they’re part of a BCC group. Not preferable in a professional setup. It’s like saying, “Hey, I don’t really care about you individually.”

# Not for Huge Groups: BCC is okay for small groups, but don’t try it for a massive mailing list. Trust me; manually adding dozens of email addresses can lead to typos and other mistakes. It’s just not worth the hassle.

# No Personal Touch: BCC isn’t your friend if you’re into personalization. It’s more like sending everyone the same generic message. 

# No Actionable Analytics: Gmail and Outlook are cool but don’t give you the fancy analytics that email marketers crave. You won’t know who opened your email when they did it or what they clicked on.

How does SmartReach solve the problem?

Step 1: Sign In or Register

Sign up with SmartReach and Create a New Email Campaign. This is where you’ll set up the parameters for your email outreach.

Step 2: Add First Step

Once you name your campaign, you will be directed to the campaign setup page to add the first step of the campaign creation process. 

Next, you will be redirected to the below section. 

Here, you will have email alone or multi-channel campaign options. Since our discussion is about emails, we would select”. Accordingly.

Step 3 Create Content

This is where you create email content. Write your subject line and body copy. You can do it with our AI-content assistance. This will ask for AI prompt. The video will give you detailed steps on how to generate email communication using SmartReach AI Content Generator.

In case you don’t like videos, then below is a section where you provide inputs based on your email context, target audience and email writing style. 

Then click generate. Based on your inputs, SmartReach generates communication. You could try out different versions as shown below.

Next, click “Copy To Your Draft”. And then hit “Go To Your Draft”. You will have a “Save” option there. Click, and you will have something like this.

Step 4 – Create follow-ups

Click “Add New Steps” and write a follow-up email. A follow-up email will be triggered only if the recipient didn’t reply to your earlier email

Step 5 – Add Prospects 

This is when you can upload multiple recipients. There is no limit. The video below shows how you could add a list of recipients via different methods

If you want to skip the video then the “Add Prospects” step will take you to the following screen, where you will have to upload your prospects list i.e. your multiple recipients. 

Here, you will have a range of options to upload your recipients’ data, from manual uploading to CSV file upload to ProspectDaddy LinkedIn Email Finder to CRM data sync. 

After adding the recipients or list of prospects, you need to complete the channel set-up, campaign settings, and then you’re good to start sending emails to multiple recipients individually. The entire process will not take you more than 15 minutes and the challenges of “Undisclosed Recipients” using “Cc” and “BCC” can be overcome. 

Sum up – Sending to multiple recepients individually

Sending emails to multiple recipients individually is a tricky assignment. The one you need to watch out for is the spam filters that can be a spoilsport. 

Making your messaging clear and a touch of personalization may do the wonder. 

If you’re seriously looking to up your email game, ensuring your messages get sent, opened, and replied to, think of an intelligent sales engagement platform like SmartReach. 

With our solution, you can send personalized emails to multiple recipients without them knowing, keep tabs on how engaged they are with your emails, set up automatic follow-ups, and a lot more.

FAQs

Is it unethical to send emails to multiple recipients?

Yes. Because it is a privacy breach. So, emailing multiple users without their knowledge or prior consent is unethical. However, there are exceptions when you need to. 

What is the difference between CC and BCC, and when should I use each option?

Use CC when you want all recipients to see each other’s email addresses, and use BCC when you want to protect recipients’ email addresses from each other.

How can I protect the email addresses of recipients when sending mass emails?

To protect recipients’ email addresses, you can use BCC, create mailing lists, or use professional email outreach services that handle this.

Are there any legal considerations when sending emails to multiple recipients without their knowledge?

There are legal considerations, particularly under laws like the CAN-SPAM Act in the United States. GDPR for EU residents. It’s crucial to comply with such laws, which usually require explicit consent and the inclusion of an unsubscribe option in marketing emails.

What are the risks of not using BCC when emailing a large group?

When you don’t use BCC, the main risk is exposing recipients’ email addresses to everyone on the list. This can lead to privacy concerns, spam, or unwanted emails.

How do I ensure recipients can’t see each other’s email addresses when using BCC?

To ensure privacy when using BCC, simply add the email addresses of all recipients in the BCC field and not in the TO or CC fields. Now, recipients can only see their own email IDs.

Are there any tools or email platforms that can help discreetly send emails to multiple recipients?

Yes. Several cold email outreach platforms like SmartReach provide features for managing and protecting recipient privacy when sending emails to a large group.

How can I personalize multiple recipients’ emails while protecting their privacy?

You can personalize emails using mail merge tools that insert individual recipient details into each email while keeping other recipients’ information private. With merge tags, you can give a touch of personalization to names, job titles, and geography. You can also add new columns to have your own fields personalized with merge tags. 

What precautions should I take to avoid being marked as spam when sending mass emails?

To avoid being marked as spam, maintain a good sender reputation by sending relevant content, obtaining proper consent, and including an unsubscribe option in your emails. Also, avoid using spammy language or use the soft-start feature.