The salutation is the opening line of your email where you address the recipient directly, usually by name. In business letters, your choices for salutations are limited to phrases such as:
Dear Ms. Smith:
Dear Max:
To Whom It May Concern:
In the world of email, however, a number of salutation styles are acceptable. Which one is best for a given situation depends on factors such as your relationship to the recipient, the culture of your firm or department, and the content and context of the message. In addition, salutations for a single recipient generally differ from those for multiple recipients.
Although recipient information appears in the To field, for most professional emails you should still greet the person in the body of the message. A greeting adds warmth that a name and email address in the remote To field do not. In ongoing dialogues, you may consider deleting the greeting after the initial exchange, but if you are writing to clients or to people at your firm who are senior to you, don’t delete the salutation until they begin doing so themselves.
Listed below are various salutations commonly found in email messages directed to a single recipient. Their inclusion here does not necessarily mean they are broadly acceptable; there are comments elaborating on the relevance and appropriateness of each greeting for business email. The salutations are loosely organized from more formal to less formal.
EMAIL SALUTATIONS FOR A SINGLE RECIPIENT
To Whom It May Concern:
- Although this formulation sounds rather old-fashioned and stuffy, it has long had a place in business letters to unknown recipients. A very formal greeting, it could be appropriate in cases such as an emailed inquiry regarding a potential vendor’s services or an emailed complaint.
Dear Sir or Madam:
- This option is similar to the one above.
Dear Mr. Smith:
- This formal salutation is appropriate when you are emailing a person you do not know well or at all — for example, a prospective client. Depending on your corporate culture, you may also want to use it when writing to someone in your firm who is quite senior to you, particularly if you don’t know the person.
Dear James:
- Some people find Dear along with a first name to be a strange opening for an email, complaining that it feels either too intimate — like a personal letter — or too formal. If you aren’t comfortable using Dear with co-workers, there are certainly other options, but the salutation Dear has a long and happy history in business correspondence. Even if you do not use it much internally at your firm, it has a legitimate place in your email repertoire, particularly for external, international, and formal communications.
James,
James -
- Fine in many contexts. Occasionally the name by itself can sound a little abrupt, but it is a solid opening for many types of email messages.
Good morning, James.
- This salutation can be a useful way to begin email messages as it is both businesslike and friendly. Of course, at the time you send the message, it should actually be morning in the recipient’s time zone.
Hello, James -
- This salutation can be used in a business context with someone you know reasonably well. Many people don't include the comma after "Hello," which is also acceptable to most.
Hi James,
- This salutation is common and in many contexts in the US is the preferred approach.
As you can see, it isn’t easy to figure out how to address an individual. Addressing a group of people through email can pose an even more formidable challenge. To formulate a salutation for multiple people, consider the composition of the group you will be addressing. If you are writing to your co-workers in the marketing department, for example, you could perhaps begin your message with one of the following salutations:
Dear Colleagues:
Dear Marketing Colleagues:
The appropriateness of these salutations, however, depends on the context and your corporate culture. Below are comments on various salutations, some good and some not so good, that appear in group email messages.
Greetings,
Good morning,
Good afternoon,
- Any of these salutations can be used in email going to multiple recipients. In addition, Greetings can act as a salutation in an automatic reply you might set up when you are going to be out of the office.
Dear Sirs:
Dear Gentlemen:
- In today's working world, these salutations are out of date in almost all cases. Theoretically they could still be used with relative safety in a context where every recipient was male, but even in those cases, the formulations would be likely to come across as old-fashioned.
Dear Colleagues:
- This salutation is both respectful and friendly. It can be used to address the people in your department or division, assuming that you have a good working relationship with them and that the members of the group are of similar professional status or junior to you. Do not, however, use this salutation with a group containing people senior to you.
Jane and Tim,
Dear Jane and Tim:
Good morning, Jane and Tim -
- If you are addressing two people, you may use their names in combination with various greetings from the table of email salutations for individual recipients. Some common options appear to the left. For emails going to more than two people, it can sound awkward to refer to all of them by name.
No salutation at all
- Many people don’t like to receive emails without salutations. Nonetheless, if your corporate culture supports it, sending a mass email with no greeting at all can make sense. Such an email is, after all, virtually identical in form to the traditional memo, which does not contain a greeting.
Hello,
- If you can’t figure out a way to address your recipients directly, whether as Marketing Staff, Colleagues, or something else, the first three salutations in this table (Greetings, Good morning, or Good afternoon) may be preferable to the more casual, less professional-sounding Hello.
Hi, all!
Hi all,
Hi,
- These are fine in many modern working environments, but they could be perceived as unprofessional or overly casual n some.
Guys,
- Like Dear Sirs and Dear Gentlemen, this salutation may be unacceptable to female recipients, so proceed with caution. In addition, it is too casual for many environments — but not all!
