In this post we look at 3 simple mistakes that emailers make that can cost their companies everything from a few wasted minutes, to upset co-workers to lost clients.
We also look at steps that organizations can take to protect their people and themselves from these mistakes.
Protect your organization from the following common email mistakes by using SendGuard for Outlook.
Hitting Reply All too often
Just because the email that you received was addressed to multiple people does not mean that your reply should also go to them all.
We all already receive too many emails and it can be annoying to receive emails with one or two words acknowledging receipt of the emails etc.
They may not be as bad as spam but they have a similar effect… they take our attention away and waste our time.
For Individuals: Your unneeded reply-to-alls could be annoying your contacts and even training them to start ignoring your emails. Think carefully before you click Reply All.
For Organizations: Unneeded Reply-All emails cost businesses many hours of lost time and productivity every year. Reclaim this time by using addons that get users to confirm that they do in fact want to email everyone when they click Reply-All.
Forgetting to email everyone
On the flip side to the above, sometimes a Reply-All makes senses (or at least a Reply-to-Some of the original recipients).
This may be required to keep everyone in the loop or for your own personal protection.
For Individuals: Always check if an email has multiple recipients and decide who should be part of your reply
For Organizations: A lot of valuable time can be wasted resending emails to missed recipients. Use an addon similar to SendGuard which will prompt when you do a Reply (and not a Reply-All) on an email with multiple recipients that you may also want to include others in it. SendGuard even lets you change the recipients without having to go back to the email.
Emailing the Wrong Person
Outlook has a great (and also greatly dangerous) feature called Auto-Complete. You don’t need to remember anyone’s email address… type in a few characters in the To, CC or BCC field and Outlook fills in the email address for you.
Unfortunately, this makes it very easy to accidentally send the email to the wrong person. The Internet is fill of disaster stories where this has led to lost clients, large lawsuits etc.
For Individuals: Check your email’s recipients before clicking Send. Better yet, install software similar to SendGuard that will display the recipient’s name(s) to you again before sending the email out.
For Organizations: Deploying software similar to SendGuard for Outlook may also provide additional legal protection because it shows that the organization took extra steps to protect against accidents of this king.
How to Protect Yourself and Your Organization
Our SendGuard for Outlook is already protecting thousands of Outlook users in businesses of all sizes around the world.
- SendGuard detects potential mistakes in emails and prompts users before emails get sent out
- Organizations may have additional protection in lawsuits because (if needed) they can show that they took extra steps by using SendGuard to minimize incidents of mistakes such as this.
SendGuard consists of a number of different email security features, but based on user feedback we recently introduced the new SendConfirm and Reply Guard bundle to specifically protect against the mistakes identified in this post.
