I suspect I may be somewhat old fashioned, but I always like to start my emails with some sort of greeting. “Dear Mr. Smith:” for business correspondence; “John,” or “Folks,” like above for more informal contacts. Going headlong into the body of the email without some sort of opening seems terribly abrupt.
I’m placed in a quandry, however, when I send an email to an essentially unknown recepient. Most frequently, this arises in the context of a customer service-type email address. This morning I had to send an email to “salesnewyork@<hotelname>.com,” which is what brought this question to mind.
What is the proper greeting to use, if any? I never much cared for “To whom it may concern,” or “Dear Sir or Madam,” even in traditional paper correspondence; the former sounds distressingly anonymous and the latter downright Victorian, which is only amplified by the less formal medium.
If you are addressing a truly impersonal name like sales@megacorporation.com, I don’t see why you need any salutation. The person reading your email is unlikely to care, and probably just wants you to get to the point quickly so he/she can solve your problem.
I’ve always looked at e-mail as sort of a hybrid of the written letter and the telephone call, so I always start my e-mails with a simple “Hello” or “Hi”. If I know the recipient’s name, then I’ll include it: "Hi Mom - ", "Hello Bob - ". If I don’t know the recipient’s name, then it’s just "Hello - ".
Frankly, I’ve always disliked the greeting “Dear Whoever,” for letters to people who aren’t relatives or close friends. Some unknown Sir or Madam at a company is not especially “dear” to me, even after I’ve learned his or her name.
For the record, I used to work in sales at Megacorporation, and we would ship orders a week late for anyone who e-mailed us with any greeting other than “I do hereby beseech your eminences to give careful attention to the following:”.
Because email is formatted like a memorandum, not a letter, no salutation is necessary. The to: line takes care of it.
I can think of at least two valid reasons to use one:
Your boss expects you to use one.
It is a group email and you want to make it clear who was on the distribution without showing all of the email addresses. Then it is helpful to address it to “Regional Managers” or “Customer Service Staff.” Meaningful email group names would also serve this purpose, but sometimes people use other methods (like bcc) to send group emails.
