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There are a number of cases when you might need to send an email to multiple contacts without them knowing who else is receiving the message. Salespeople may want to get in touch with their clients and prospects, while marketers might need to run email marketing campaigns to reach a wider audience and promote their products or services. Similarly, recruiters may need to update applicants or organizations on open positions.
The main benefit of hiding the entire list of recipients is that it creates the illusion of a personal email, rather than a mass-sent one. This often leads to higher engagement rates and less chance of ending up in the recipient’s spam folder.
Hiding people’s contact information is also a way to make them feel safe and secure.
If you want to send an email to several people at the same time, you can use either the Cc (Carbon copy) or Bcc (Blind carbon copy) option.
Adding someone to the Cc list means that they will receive a copy of the email that is being sent to the original recipient. However, everyone on the Cc list will be able to see who else is receiving the email.
Bcc allows you to send an email to multiple recipients separately (without them knowing who else is receiving the email).
You can send mass emails without revealing all the recipients by putting them in the Bcc line.
To send an email with hidden addresses in Gmail, follow these steps:
When you use the Cc or Bcc methods to send emails to multiple recipients via popular email services like Gmail and Outlook, there may be some downsides, such as:
Sending an email to multiple recipients simultaneously using the Cc or Bcc methods may trigger spam filters. If you use email tools that aren’t designed for mass email campaigns, your emails could end up in the recipient’s junk folder — or worse, never make it to their inbox at all, resulting in poor or zero deliverability. To avoid this scenario, follow these simple tips on how to stop emails from going to junk.
Some email services have a limit on how many addresses you can include in a bulk email to prevent possible fraudulent activity. For example, Gmail and Outlook limit the number of external recipients to 500 addresses per email. If your contact list exceeds the limit, you will need to take a break and return to the mailing the next day, which is quite inconvenient if you are running a marketing campaign. Moreover, there are quite a few other limitations in these and other similar services.
When someone hits “Reply all” to a Cc email, everyone on the list gets that reply. This can quickly become annoying for people who are not interested in the conversation.
But it won’t happen to those contacts who are on the Bcc list. If you are a Bсс recipient of an email, by hitting the “Reply all”, you will only reply to the original sender and any contacts in the ‘To’ field. The other Bcc recipients will not see the reply.
The Bcc method is not practical for professional mailings because the recipients can see that they have been added as a Bcc object. This looks unprofessional and might leave a bad impression on your clients and partners.
There are professional email marketing services (ESPs) that can help you send multiple emails to large contact lists more conveniently. What’s more, they help you target your audience better than using a regular email account. These services have features to help you measure your results, and you can easily send out mass marketing emails without having to use the Cc or Bcc options, and without any other limitations.
Let’s take a closer look at some popular email marketing services.
Selzy is a professional email service provider that offers a wide range of features, including a built-in constructor for subscription forms, 1000+ free templates in the template library, and a convenient AI-enhanced email builder and block editor, and an AI email assistant that helps generate email copy, images, subject lines, and more.
Selzy’s tools allow you to segment your lists, automate your email campaign, and track your results with detailed analytics. You can use Selzy’s A/B testing to see what works best for your audience and apply an automation tool to scale engagement with customers, and employ the new AI features to speed up processes. Plus, Selzy makes it easy to grow your list with email subscription forms.
Selzy’s clients praise the service for its fast email delivery and helpful customer support. Additionally, the service has an extensive knowledge base that features loads of information on how to use the platform effectively. It also has a great price point, starting at just $5.25 per month.
Mailchimp is an advanced email service that offers a range of features that help boost sales and improve email marketing campaigns, including a bulk email verifier, custom domains, and behavioral targeting.
Marketers use Mailchimp to create and share social ads, personalized emails, landing pages, and postcards. Their support team is award-winning. However, the abundance of features in this service might be too much for smaller companies, plus it may turn out to be on the expensive side when you count all the costs.
The AWeber email service is an all-in-one package for building, sending and tracking emails. Users can create professional-looking messages with their drag-and-drop builder or choose from ready-made templates to save time.
Other popular features such as segmentation and automation are also present, as well as an AI writing assistant and a smart designer to help you create branded emails. On the downside, there is only a free 14-day trial available, and the pricing is not the lowest on the market with the Lite plan starting at $12.5 per month.
Brevo, formerly known as SendinBlue, is a robust multi-platform marketing suite that includes an email marketing service among other solutions such as a sales platform, a customer data platform, and more. The email service offers a range of tools to optimize campaigns and is said to deliver excellent performance.
Some standout features include a simple drag-and-drop editor that makes it easy for newcomers, as well as the ability to personalize campaigns and integrate with existing CRM tools. Brevo also updates statistics so that their users know how effective each of their campaigns has been. There is also a free plan available, but the limits are rather low with just 300 emails per day available at this tier. Other plans are affordable, but not the most cost-effective on the market.
HubSpot is a well-known brand among email marketers that offers a bulk email marketing service among the vast variety of its products. This service comes packed with several automation features to help improve email marketing.
Other essential and advanced features are also there: a drag-and-drop builder, a selection of beautiful templates, bulk emails, an AI assistant, and more. However, this service, although it offers a free plan, might be too much for beginners and small business owners because they just wouldn’t know where to start with it.
Kit, known earlier as ConvertKit, is an email marketing tool that allows users to easily create and send mass emails, as well as to build landing pages to convert more visitors into subscribers and customers.
With multiple integrations, users can connect their favorite third-party marketing apps with Kit, making it a convenient solution for beginners and experienced users. Initially designed for bloggers and content creators, this service is still particularly popular with this audience. The ESPs free pricing plan is a rather generous offering, although it does have considerable limitations.
There are many reasons you might want to email multiple addressees without letting them see who else is on the list. One reason is, this can make an email seem more personal, as if it was meant just for them. It also allows you to keep your recipients’ addresses private.
If you are wondering how to send mass emails without showing recipients, the only way to do this in email clients is to manually send emails using the Bcc option. Just keep in mind that Bcc has some limitations, such as:
In general, it is best to use Bcc sparingly. If you need to frequently send emails to large groups of people, it is better to use a professional email marketing service. This software has many advantages over regular email services, including reports on campaign success, lower chances of triggering spam filters, the ability to send highly customized messages, and more.
This article was originally published in June 2022 and was updated in January 2025 to make it more relevant and comprehensive.
