Understand the recipient, CC and BCC fields in an email

Last updated on 26 October 2024

Master the differences between “To”, “CC” and “BCC” fields in an email

 

We all use email every day for so many purposes we don’t even realize we’re using it, it’s become such an integral part of our daily lives… but are we always using it in the right way?

 

A typical case that many people have problems with is the following question: “How do I notify someone of the email I’m about to send, so that he will get a copy of this message? Should I use the “To” field? Or the “CC” field instead? Or even the “BCC” field instead?
Some people will think that it’s all the same, and that whatever solution is chosen, the message will be copied to the mailbox of the person indicated… But even if the purpose can be simplified in this way, it’s important to understand that there are nuances and uses that are more or less suitable to the use of the “A” field, the “CC” copy field or even the “BBC” invisible copy field when sending an email, and that once you’re familiar with their differences, you can make the best use of them depending on the circumstances!

 

In this technical article, we’ll take a closer look at the differences between these 3 possible ways of addressing an email to someone (A / CCCC, which stands for "Carbon Copy", is a computer term used in connection with emailing. When an email is sent, the main... More / BCCBCC, which stands for "Blind Carbon Copy", is a computer term used in connection with emailing. It's an optional field t... More), and when it’s more appropriate to use one or the other. Just a few minutes reading, and you’ll know all about it!

 

Choosing the recipient or recipients of an email?

 

When you write an email to a given person, the first thing you need to know is his email address (and if you’re not sure, check to see if it still exists )… and the next thing you need to do is position it in the right field to send the message.

 

In the most standard case, where you only have a single contact with whom to communicate, there’s no need to ask yourself any questions: simply put his email address in the “To” field, write the message content and you’re done!

 

If, for example, you need to write an email to “Jeanne”, you enter her email address in the “To” field and send the email with just two clicks: simple and obvious, isn’t it?

 

 

 

 

Now let’s imagine that the same email is to be sent to both Jeanne and Thierry.

 

As soon as you need to send an email to more than one recipient, several possibilities open up, and it’s usually at this point that you start to get confused about where to put the email addressesEmail addresses, also known as "electronic addresses" or simply "emails", represent a form of digital communication popu... More concerned…

 

The first simple question to ask yourself is: “Are the two people who will receive my email both my direct contacts for this content?” If this is the case, and in our previous example both Jeanne and Thierry are directly involved and likely to react to my email, then we can consider that they should both be direct recipients of the email, without distinction.

 

In this case, in the recipient’s “To” input field, we’ll enter the two email addresses successively (one after the other) so that they appear side by side as recipients.

 

 

 

Email addresses using copy function (CC) in a message

 

In practice, we use the copy field (CC) instead of the main recipient field (To), when the content sent is simply to inform the person added as a copy, so that he is not the real recipient of this content. We therefore want the person receiving the copy to be informed of the content of this message, but we don’t necessarily expect a response from him on that topic, unlike the person who is identified as the direct recipient (To) of the content sent.

 

This type of copying is often found between professionals, where, for example, an employee writes a message to another employee in the same company (or to a supplier), including a copy to a person of a different department who must have the information transmitted (even if this person is not intended to participate directly in the exchange started between the sender and the recipient).

 

It’s worth noting that the person receiving a simple copy (CC) of the message will see by himself that he is not the main recipient of the email, and will therefore be able to deduce on his own that a reply is not necessarily expected from him on this precise content.

 

To include an email address as a copy of a message, simply enter it in the CC field of the message’s text field. In the example below, we can see that Jeanne is the main recipient of the message to be sent, and that Thierry will be a simple copy (CC) of the message.

 

 

 

 

Note: it is not possible to send a message with ONLY one person’s address as a copy (CC): at least one email address must be entered in the “To” recipient field, so that an additional copy address (CC) can be used in addition.

 

Email addresses using blind copy function (BCC) in a message

 

The Blind copy (BCC) field is a special field that differs quite markedly from the use of the primary recipient (To) and simple copy (CC) fields. Just as the preferential use of the “To” or “CC” fields can sometimes be subjective and interchangeable, that of the BCC field is radically different.
The aim here is to deliberately conceal from the recipient the fact that a third party has also obtained the message that has been sent: and this can be useful in a variety of contexts.

 

For example, it can be used to inform a third party of the content of a message sent, without disclosing the latter’s email address: this is useful in the context of professional use of email, for example through correspondence with a customer about the requirements of an order, with a company internal support person added as a blind copy.

 

Another classic use case for this functionality is to warn an employee of a situation concerning him, while keeping a copy of the message to a company manager via blind copying.

 

It should be noted that the person receiving the message for which he was blind copied (BCC) will see by himself that he is not the main recipient of the email, and will therefore be able to deduce on his own that a response is not necessarily expected from him on this precise content.

 

To include an email address as a blind copy of a message, simply enter it in the BCC field of the message’s text field. In the example below, we can see that Jeanne is the main recipient of the message to be sent, and that Thierry will be get an blind copy of the message.

 

 

 

 

Note: it is not possible to send a message using ONLY a person’s BCC address: at least one email address must be entered in the “To” recipient field, so that an additional BCC address can be used.

 

 

What can email recipients see and deduce from the To, CC and BCC fields?

 

The choices made by the editor of the message sent will be clearly visible as such to those who receive the message: everyone will be able to know who the main recipient(s) of the message was (were), and who was only marked as a simple copy (CC) of the message.
A person who is a blind copy (BCC), however, will not be known to the other recipients of the message’s To and CC fields, and will not know if there were other people (besides himself) who got blind copies too.

As a concrete example, let’s take the following message:

 

 

 

If we put ourselves in the shoes of the various people who received this email, each one will be able to deduce the following by opening the contents:

 

– Jeanne:

* will know that she and Thierry were the recipients of the message

* will know that Frederic received a copy of the message

* will not know that Sophie and Marc also received the contents of the message

 

– Thierry:

* will know that he and Jeanne were the recipients of the message

* will know that Frederic received a copy of the message

* will not know that Sophie and Marc also received he contents of the message

 

– Frederic:

* will know that he received a copy of the message

* will know that the main recipients of the message were Jeanne and Thierry

* will not know that Sophie and Marc also received the contents of the message

 

– Marc:

* will know that he got an blind copy (BCC) of the message, and therefore that Thierry, Jeanne and Frederic are not aware that he also got it

* will know that the main recipients of the message were Jeanne and Thierry

* will know that Frederic simply received a copy of the message

* won’t know that Sophie also received a blind copy (BCC) of the message as well

 

– Sophie:

* will know that she got an blind copy (BCC) of the message, and therefore that Thierry, Jeanne and Frederic are not aware that she also got it

* will know that the main recipients of the message were Jeanne and Thierry

* will know that Frederic simply received a copy of the message

* won’t know that Marc also received a blind copy (BCC) of the message as well

 

 

Technical and legal limits for multiple email recipients

 

One aspect we’ve all experienced at least once is receiving an email addressed to a very large number of people as direct recipients. This is typical of a person who has an email address book of contacts and decides to use his personal messaging system (gmail, yahoo, outlook, etc.) to send the same message to all of his contacts.
Messaging systems can simplify this process by making it possible to write to a group of contacts (rather than a single address), and the result of this operation is the inclusion of each of the group’s email addresses in the “To” field of the email to be sent (depending on the size of the address book, this can sometimes involve hundreds of contacts who will be included as direct recipients of the message).

 

 

 

 

Although this is a simple operation, making it easy to select all your contacts at once, in fact it can quickly become problematic, for a number of reasons.

 

First of all, from a legal point of view, and depending on the regulations in force in the country concerned (for example, compliance with the GDPR for people residing within the EU), the distribution (and therefore disclosure) of email addresses to a whole list of people may not be authorized. Indeed, if you include several hundred contacts from your address book in the “To” field of the message, this implies that each recipient will see all the email addresses of all the people contacted, because as we saw earlier, this information is displayed in plain text in the header of the email received.

 

Moreover, sending the same email to many people via your personal messaging service can lead to the message to be blocked if the maximum daily email quota has been reached. In fact, free personal messaging systems are not dedicated to bulk mailing, and this is why daily quotas are applied (with various tolerance thresholds depending on the messaging system), preventing senders from using their messaging system as a mass newsletter mailing system, for example.
As bulk emailing is a specific branch of email (called “email marketing”), the best practices/rules for its use are different from those for personal use, and must be sent via services dedicated to this type of marketing traffic, called “email routers”.
The problem of disclosing all contacts in the address book to all recipients is fully managed by email routersAn email router is an online service that simplifies and enriches (through statistics and tracking) the email marketing ... More, who send successive unitary emails with a SINGLE recipient contact each time, guaranteeing confidentiality and compliance with legal regulations such as the GDPR.

 

So, when the sender begins to have a substantial address book and emailing practices other than personal use of his private messaging service, he needs to take into account the technical and legal aspects associated with this form of email communication, which are different from purely personal, low-volume use. One of the best-practice aspects of mass emailing is to ensure that the email addresses used are always valid, in order to help the emails sent to be well delivered into the INBOX folder of the recipients.

 

Alternative to CC copy and BCC blind copy : the “forward email” function

 

Now that you’ve mastered the art of cleverly juggling recipients, copying (CC) and blind copying (BCC), let’s take a look at another way of informing someone of a message you’ve sent. In this case, the email address of the person concerned is no longer included directly when the message is sent, but rather this action is carried out at a later stage, via the “forward” action of the mailbox.
This action differs in a number of aspects from the simple copy and blind copy actions described in the previous paragraphs, and we’ll explain them in greater detail here.

 

If for example, the email was sent only to Jeanne (the unique recipient of the message, with no simple or blind copy), and you now wish to inform Thierry as well : the best way to do this is to go to the email sent, and click on the “forward” button, which allows you to send a copy of the content of the email sent, to another person : you will then put Thierry’s email address in the recipient field:

 

 

 

 

As we can see here, the forwarding function takes the content of the email sent (or received), and automatically adds the information relating to the initial email, preceded by the “Forwarded message” header. This automatic addition allows the recipient to see directly that the email he has received is a forward of an email that has already been sent (in this case to Jeanne), and which was then retransmitted to him at a later stage.
Very often, the sender of the forwarded message will add a small text before the “Forwarded message” block to tell the person to whom it’s being forwarded why it’s being forwarded to him : we’ll find acronyms such as “FYI” (meaning “for your information”), indicating to the recipient that the message sent is for informational purposes only, so that he is aware of its content, with no particular expectation of a response on his part.

 

A typical case of this type of forward action would be if one of the people receiving the message considers that the content should be shared with others who were not included as initial recipients (or copy) of the message by its sender. In this case, the receiver will click on “forward” to share the content of the message he has received with others.

 

It should be noted that during this forward function, the same rules as seen above apply, depending on whether the email addresses are entered in the “To”, simple copy (CC) or blind copy (BCC) fields. The forwarded email should therefore be considered as a standard email with a different content, and will therefore be governed in the same way as any other email when it comes to the choice of including recipients (To), copy (CC) or blind copy (BCC).

 

 

Automatic correction of email addresses entered in recipient or copy fields (CC or CCI)

 

Many people intuitively think that when they enter their email address in one of the “To”, “CC” or “BCC” fields, it will be automatically corrected (if it is misspelled, for example).

 

Unfortunately, in fact this isn’t the case : at best, some modern email clients can highlight whether an email address comes from a known contact in the address book (by giving it a different color or displaying an image associated with it, if available), but this in no way guarantees that the email address entered is still valid and can receive the message that’s about to be sent. This type of functionality represents a service in its own right called “email verification“, and is even a common and necessary practice in email marketingEmail marketing, also known as Emailing, is a digital marketing strategy that uses email as its medium. It is one of the... More to ensure better inbox deliverability.

 

For personal use, there is no immediate and obvious way to ensure that the email address entered in one of the fields is valid, but for those who use Gmail, it should be noted that the latter allows recognition of email addresses with which it has already been in contact (even if they are not necessarily in the sender’s own contact list). So with gmail, when entering an email address in one of the 3 possible fields (To / CC / BCC), if the email address is known to him and has an image, then gmail will display it next to the email address entered, giving confidence that what has been entered is correct (even if it’s not always true and some of these addresses may no longer exist and generate “hard bounces”).

 

 

Summary of the differences between recipient, simple copy (CC), and blind copy (BCC) of an email

 

 

As you will have discovered from this technical article, there are many ways of sending an email message to one or more people, and each has its own specific features.

 

Now that you’ve mastered these aspects, you’ll be surprised to see that the emails you receive often don’t respect these elements correctly, and are often sent a little haphazardly and without any real understanding. So don’t hesitate to share this article with others to help them better understand when it’s best to use single copy (CC), blind copy (BCC), the use of one or more recipients, or even the message forwarding function.

 

We hope you’ve enjoyed these technical elements, and please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any specific questions or needs regarding your email marketing management. Our team of enthusiasts is sure to have the answers you’re looking for!