Who Goes Where In Your Email To: Field?
January 3rd, 2009
This has been an on-again, off-again issue in my email life over the years. When it recently surfaced, it occurred to me that the more people deal with email, the less they ought to care about this sort of thing.
Anyway, here’s the issue:
Let’s say you’re sending an email to five people in Company X and the names in the To: field of the email are listed like so:
manager@compx.com, seniormanager@compx.com, vicepresident@compx.com, marketingdirector@compx.com, assistantmanager@compx.com
Should the vice president in question get his (or her) shorts in a bunch because (s)he is listed “behind” the manager and the senior manager? For that matter, should the senior manager get upset that the manager is listed first?
People worry about this sort of thing. People worry about people worrying about this sort of thing. I tend to add names in hierarchical fashion to a larger cc: list, but I’m not going to get bent out of shape if someone winds up out of order.
Even so, there are people who genuinely do get bent out of shape if their name somehow breaches an arbitrary perceived email etiquette.
For my $.02, anyone who worries about their position in an email cc: list isn’t paying enough attention to what really matters in their business.
January 3rd, 2009 at 11:52 am
I don’t think it matters – but I know many people who do so I take it into account circumstanially. Because I know it *doesn’t* matter to you – it’s something I would consider when emailing.
And in far too many industries – position is everything. It is what matters in their business – right or wrong.
January 4th, 2009 at 12:20 am
I tend to list recipients in the order in which I expect them to act on the information in the email. Using that rationale, you’d often list people from lower to higher in a hierarchical sense, rather than higher to lower.
If I’m the first one listed in an email from my boss to 3 people and he’s asking for something to be done, I figure I’m being tasked with it whether or not the other two respond, and I’ll coordinate my response with the other two (who are probably from different areas of responsibility, not one long food chain as in your example).
In a long list, alphabetical order often places my email address at the front of the line. Heaven forbid I should let that go to my head :D.
@BarbChamberlain