To get us started, here’s a small drill you can try. Open up your email and analyze all the messages that you have sent. Notice anything peculiar?
You might notice two things, one, we send way too many emails than you think in the time frame, and the second thing is that a majority of our emails start with almost the same greeting. For instance, “I hope this finds you well”, “I hope you are doing good”, or just simply “Happy Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday…”
Now you may think, what is so important about a greeting and what impact does it have on the email content and its effectiveness? We have learnt that writing a greeting that blends into the body of your email has a substantial role on the overall engagement of your email.
Although the above-mentioned greetings are well known and work just fine, it is important to know that “I hope you are doing good” will not work well with all the emails you may want to send.
Following is a list of openings we think are great to start the email with. The only catch is to mix things up based on your audience and the overall feel of your email in harmony with the message you are trying to convey.
For those Formal or Business Casual emails:
- 1. Allow me to introduce myself
- 2. Good Afternoon / Morning / Evening
- 3. Hope this email finds you well
- 4. How are you doing today?
- 5. I hope you enjoyed your weekend
- 6. Hope you are having a great week
- 7. I’m eager to get your advice on
- 8. It’s great to hear from you
- 9. I’m reaching out about
- 10. Thank you for the update
- 11. Thank you for accepting our invite
- 12. Thank you for your quick response
- 13. Thank you for your help
For getting a follow up:
- 1. As discussed, I’m writing about
- 2. I’d like to receive an update on
- 3. I’m checking in about
- 4. I’m getting back to you about
- 5. Following up on our last discussion
For being aptly personal:
- 1. Congratulations on your achievement
- 2. I hope you had fun on your tour
- 3. How did your project / event turn out?
- 4. I loved your photos / video / article
- 5. [Mutual Contact] recommended me to get in touch with you
- 6. I was just thinking about you and our time at the
- 7. It was great seeing you at the event
- 8. I was just laughing the other day about
Looking at these, you may think, “Hey, that’s not so tough!”. And, rightly so, if executed well, the opening of your email can set the tone for the entire business relationship that you may develop with the prospect. For marketing campaigns and transactional emails, mostly the greetings suited are in the “formal” category, but it should not be considered as a rule.
I think we all can comprehend now that we should not start all our messages with the same greeting regardless of the context. This compilation helps all of us to improve our greetings. Now that we all know it, we’re certainly going to use these in our emails and we think you should also try it out and see the improving results!
If you think we missed any commonly used greeting, we’d love to know, drop a comment below!