Have you ever sent an email to several people at work and for whatever reason you forgot to put someone in the TO: field initially? Instead of putting them at the front of the TO: field in your email email you added them to the end of the TO: field. Depending on various circumstances what do you think you just said to that person subliminally? I think the order you place people in your TO: list dictates their importance in the conversation, how serious they should take your email and if a response to it is in order. Do you think about this or am I just weird? Let's look at a couple of examples.
Work Example #1
Let's use a work example to start with since a lot of us that do email spend most of our time emailing people at work. Let's say we need to communicate something to people at work. Let's start with this list:
- A & B are 2 team members
- C - Your team leader
- D - Company CIO
The email is about A & B (your team members) who completed a task recently and who both did an outstanding job. For the record, B did more work than A on the task. What order do you go with? The order A, B, C, D doesn't make sense because you are emailing about A & B. They would go onto the CC: line since you would want them to know you are emailing to brag on them to leadership.
In the TO: line do you put D first or C? In this case I think you could go with D or C first but the safest bet is to go with D then C and place A & B on the CC: line. D out ranks C and it is safer to just order them in that manner since they have an implicit ranking. Be careful on the CC: line though and be sure to order A & B properly based on the amount of work they did. If B did more work than A, then B should be first on the CC: line indicating he was thought of first in your mind.
Looking at the email when received by D, I think subliminally D looks at the order on the CC: line and makes a mental note of the order without thinking about it, but somehow remembers that B did more work than A on the task.
Work Example #2
Let's say you are composing an email to your team members and there are 10 people on the email. Who do you put first? Do you put people in order of rank or do you place them in order of their personal priority on the email. For example if person #10 is really on the email just an FYI, would you put them first? Probably not. You'd put the person that needed to take action the quickest first and then order it from there based on everyone's priority (still considering rank).
An optional approach in this scenario is if #10 is really on the email as an FYI move them down to the CC: line. However, if you really want #10 to read the email and possibly respond or take action quicker, leave them on the TO: line.
While this may sound weird to some I think the order and where you place people on email matters. Think of it this way. If you had everyone sitting in your office and were speaking your email to the group instead of writing it, would you or would you not direct your conversation to certain people more than others? Absolutely. I think the same thing applies to email.
There's two quick examples where order can matter and why it matters. The next time you send an email be sure to think about where you are placing people. Not only does it tell them how they maybe should respond it also tells them how seriously they should take your communication in a lot of cases. If you can think of some other examples where this is applicable add your comments below.