Email Workshop.md

Hi every person in Palácio's IdeiaHub,

I'm Pedro Coelho, a software engineer with a desk in there somewhere. So great to meet you all!

Thought I'd take the chance to treat yourselves with a fantastic FIVE MINUTE EMAILING MULTIPLE PEOPLE WORKSHOP, in which I give you some great pointers about how to convey information to a group of people via email.

This mini tutorial is divided into convenient bite sized sections that you may peruse as you will.

1. What are those pesky email fields? To? CC? BCC? What BS!

When writing an email the first thing you notice are three recipient fields. Fear not, understanding them is quite easy!

• To: the person, or people, or bot, or whatever to which you wish to send this email
• CC (carbon copy): behaves the same way as the "To" field, but it is for recipients that don't need to act upon this message, just read or archive it. E.g.: mailing your boss for a raise and adding HR in CC
• BCC (blind carbon copy): again behaves the same way as the "To" field, with similar purpose as of the "CC" field, but the recipients of the message won't be able to see the other recipients that were put in the BCC field. Hence, it's perfect for mailing list purposes! E.g. if this earlier email had its recipients under the BCC field instead of the CC field, I wouldn't be able to see every single email of every single person registered in the IdeiaHub coworking space and hence reply to all with this silly content

2. Ok, how about that subject field?

The subject field should follow simple rules to ensure engagement:

• Should be short and stout, to aid people skimming through their huge pile of email
• Should NOT have "caller" words like "PRIORITY", "IMPORTANT" or even the classic "YOU CAN'T MISS", as it triggers many spam filters, and people's subconscious bullshit filters as well
• Should NOT have sensitive information, as it will show up in the clear on every client in the list of messages, and it won't be encrypted when using PGP

3. Great! And how do I do content?

Write as your heart desires, but keep in mind one thing: you should not waste the first characters in frivolities or in silly greetings! It is precious real estate that is usually featured in previews either in notifications, mobile clients or web clients.

Take the chance to engage with your customers there, or at least write a cordial and relatable greeting.

Oh, and do yourself a favor and properly close the email with a greeting and your name. Doesn't need much—a "Best regards" will often do—but it is basic good manners.

4. That's a truly fantastic guide! But how do I get all of that right in the first try?

You don't. You improve over time.

However, failures will cause your message to lose credibility! People won't pay attention next time, and if they feel they don't benefit with the content, they might even want to unsubscribe, which they can do by clicking the mandatory by law automatic unsubscribe button that should be included in every mass email communication, again by law.

But that's OK! Nowadays one can count on dozens of tools online to manage mass email mailing lists that will manage email templates for you, will test out those templates with your content before you send it to everyone, will automatically manage unsubscriptions, and so on! What a glorious world.

If you're bored check out Sendgrid, or Sendwithus or even Mailchimp for mailing list management tools! They're quite good at it and, again, they are in compliance with the law regarding email lists unsubscriptions as well as this whole GDPR shenanigans. So not only this makes life easier to you, it dodges liability on costly lawsuits on European courts!

And that concludes this micro workshop. I hope it has been to your liking!

For any comments or questions, feel free to reach out to me at... well.. y'all already got my email, right?

Best regards, Pedro Coelho