When shouldn't I hit reply all?

It is amazing how many people when they get an email message that is an FYI have to do a reply all to it. In a lot of ways, what people should do if they are sending out a general email as an announcement is sent it to themselves and blind copy everyone else. In that way, it means that not everyone is going to get the multiple replies that are going to be sent.  If you receive this type of emails at work or home, think before you hit reply all because you end up just getting a lot of people frustrated because of the number of emails suddenly start filling up their inbox.

Another time that you shouldn’t hit reply all is when a person as asked everyone to simply reply to the sender with the details. I had this happen a few times when there was a group of us, and the idea was to select sessions at a conference that you wanted to do to and only send the details to myself. Well, what happened was one person out of the three would hit reply all and then everyone would know what they wanted. It didn’t take me long to change how I sent out that session request. Now it is emailed to myself and then blind copied to everyone else so that it ensures that the email only comes back to me.

Understanding when to use blind copy when sending out an email is very important. It does mean that when the reply button is selected, only you will be seeing the reply instead of everyone else in the email thread. It also means that no one is going to know who the message was sent to, so that is a great way when you are sending out emails to a group of friends and/or family.

So next time you get a broadcast type of email or an email requesting a reply just be sent to the sender, sit back and think does everyone need to see my message. It is easier to send a couple of seconds making this decision before replying to an email instead of causing frustrations to other individuals.

Conferences and follow-up emails

When you register for a conference, they normally ask you to give them your email address so that they can communicate with you. What also happens, most of the time, is the vendors and sponsors of the conference also get your email address.

I don't totally understand giving all the vendors my email address because there may be some vendors that don't meet the needs of my company or my clients. The reason I don't like this is that the vendors also normally have the scanner where they can scan your name badge to get your contact information. If they are scanning you, it means that you went to the booth and made contact with someone.

Recently, I missed a conference that I had registered to go to because of other commitments. Now I am receiving emails from the various vendors thanking me for attending the conference and stopping by their booth. It is amazing because I know I didn't go to the conference, so it is frustrating to get all these emails that if the vendors had done the work correctly I wouldn't be receiving.

In the past, I also received phone calls from vendors wanting to know if they could assist me and my organization by answering questions. Normally during this call, they also thank me for dropping by their booth at the conference. The funny thing is some of these vendors are the booths I intentionally didn't drop by at the conference because they don't meet the needs of my company, or my client's needs.

So, if vendors really want to do their job, they should only be contacting the attendees that dropped by their booth and not the entire group of attendees or worse the group of registered attendees.