A site visitor was curious and pondered:

Does one need to list employees by seniority when sending the same email to multiple employees?

I do not believe that is necessary. I’ve never taken that into consideration when adding addresses to the To: field. Nor have I ever thought about or noticed what order my name was listed when included with other addresses.

That said, if you are concerned that folks will get upset about what order their names appear in, what I recommend you do is simply list them alphabetically. And, the only reason to have a bunch of addresses visible in the To: field is if everyone needs to know who else in fact received the correspondence and that a reply is expected of them.

If no reply from the recipients is necessary, use the Cc: field which then simply FYIs them. If the list is an arm’s length of addresses and it isn’t important that everyone knows who else received the mailing, use the BCc: field so no addresses will be visible. BCc: could also be an option to remove the whole seniority issue as recipient’s address order will not be seen.

Have you had an addressing dilemma? Let me know how you handled it and what worked for you!

Some More Info for You:

1. Copying Email Addresses: Invasion of Privacy?
2. E-mailing Visible Addresses is Not O.K.
3. Never Spam Addresses in the To: Field
4. Business E-mail Forwarding Considerations
5. Think Twice Before Replying to All