Choosing email recipients: To, Cc, Bcc, and separate threads

Email in Tern now works the way it does in Gmail or Outlook. You get distinct To, Cc, and Bcc fields, you can send to any contact or typed email address, and you choose whether everyone shares one thread or each person gets their own.

These terms are used throughout this article.

Click into the To field and type at least one character. The list only appears once you start typing, and results are grouped.

Each result shows the person's name with their email address underneath. The trip's primary traveler is marked Primary contact.

Note: A typed email address is not saved as a contact. It's used for that email only. If you want it in your contact list, create the contact first.

If a contact has no email address on file, the result shows No email instead of an address. Add an email address to their profile before you can send to them.

If nothing matches, you'll see No results for "your search". Contact search returns the 15 closest matches, so keep typing to narrow a common name.

Once you have at least one recipient and click into the message body, the To, Cc, and Bcc rows collapse into a single summary line so you have more room to write. Click that line, labeled Edit recipients, to open the fields back up.

When you add a second recipient to the To field, a checkbox appears: Send separate emails to each recipient.

When you check the box, the To label changes to Send separately to so you can tell at a glance which mode you're in. Uncheck it and the label goes back to To.

Cc and Bcc recipients are copied onto every thread. If you send separately to three travelers with your assistant in Cc, your assistant receives three emails, one on each thread.

Note: When you share an itinerary, an invoice, or a form, Send separate emails to each recipient is checked by default. Uncheck it if you want one shared thread.

From a group trip, click Email all travelers. The composer opens with All travelers (N) already in the To field, where N is the number of travelers with an email address on file.

Note: this is a change from how group trips used to work. Emailing all travelers on a group trip previously always sent a separate email to each person. It now sends one shared thread with every traveler visible to each other unless you check Send separate emails to each recipient. If you don't want travelers seeing each other's addresses, check the box.

From there you can:

All travelers means travelers who have an email address on file. Travelers without one are left out of both the count and the send, and no warning is shown. Travelers on canceled or archived sub-trips, and archived contacts, are also excluded.

When you compose from a contact, that contact is already in the To field. You can remove them, add more recipients, or add Cc and Bcc. You're no longer limited to a single person.

The two recipient name variables, Recipient First Name and Recipient Last Name, only fill in when Tern can identify a single person for the email.

If you try to preview or send an email Tern can't personalize, you'll see:

"Recipient First Name" is not a valid variable for this message. Recipient name variables are only available when sending to a single recipient.

To fix it, either check Send separate emails to each recipient, remove the variable, or reduce the email to a single recipient.

Note: Recipient name variables don't work for typed email addresses, because there's no contact record to pull the name from. If you're sending separately and even one To recipient is a typed address, the whole send is blocked until you remove the variable. Nothing is sent, including to the recipients who are saved contacts.

An email with no recipient variables sends fine to any mix of contacts and typed addresses.

Cc and Bcc recipients always receive the version addressed to the To recipient. Variables never personalize for Cc or Bcc, and typed addresses in Cc or Bcc never block a send.

For more on variables, see Using variables in emails.

Open a conversation and you'll see two buttons: Reply and Reply all. Both open a reply with the same To, Cc, and Bcc fields.

You're never included in your own reply's recipients.

You can add anyone to a reply, including contacts who aren't already on the conversation and typed email addresses. Previously replies were limited to people already on the thread.

If you clear every recipient and try to send, you'll see Please select at least one recipient.

The Cc and Bcc buttons don't appear. Your email account isn't connected to Tern, or it's connected for calendar only. Cc, Bcc, and separate threads require a connection that covers both calendar and email. Go to your email settings and reconnect your inbox. See Trouble Sending Emails? How to Reconnect Your Email with the Right Settings.

I can't reply to an email thread. If you see Reconnect your email account, your email connection has dropped. Click Open Settings and reconnect. You also need to be a participant on the conversation to reply to it.

The Send separate emails to each recipient checkbox isn't there. The checkbox only appears once you have more than one recipient in the To field. Add a second recipient.

A contact shows No email in the dropdown. That contact has no email address saved. Add one to their profile, then compose again.

Nothing happens when I click into the To field. The list only opens after you type at least one character. There's no browse-all list.

My recipients disappeared while I was writing. They didn't. The recipient rows collapse into a summary line once you click into the message body. Click Edit recipients on that line to open them again.

The email won't send and mentions a variable. Your email contains a recipient name variable and Tern can't tell whose name to use. Either you're sending to multiple recipients on one shared thread, or one of your To recipients is a typed email address rather than a saved contact. Check Send separate emails to each recipient, replace the typed address with a saved contact, or remove the variable.

I can't find a contact in the dropdown. You can only email contacts you own or that another advisor has shared with you. If the contact belongs to someone else and hasn't been shared, ask them to share it, or type the email address directly.

I sent separately from a trip and only see one conversation so far. When you send separately from a trip, the first email sends right away and the rest send in the background. The remaining conversations appear in your inbox over the following moments. Long lists take longer, because your email provider limits how fast Tern can send on your behalf. Outlook and Exchange accounts are the slowest, at roughly one email per second.

I want to send to a large marketing list. Tern doesn't support bulk sending through the email integration. These features are built for individual and small-group emails tied to your trips and contacts. See Can I send emails to multiple recipients at once (like a marketing email campaign)?