How to Start an Email: Greetings, Openers, and Examples

The first two lines of an email carry more weight than the rest of it. The opening sets the formality for everything that follows, signals how much attention the message deserves, and on a cold email it’s often the only part anyone reads before deciding whether to keep going.

I’m Nir Sabato, co-founder of Catch, the admin savior for executives. Most of what our users hand off is email, so I spend a lot of time staring at how real messages open: the ones answered by lunch, and the ones that just sit there. Knowing how to start an email isn’t a matter of memorizing phrases. Pick a greeting that matches the relationship, then write an opening line that gets to the point.

This guide covers both. Which email greetings fit which situation, opening lines by context, the openers worth dropping, and examples you can copy straight out.

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The two parts of an email opening

Every email opening has two parts, and they do different jobs.

The greeting (or salutation) is the “Hi Sarah,” line. It has one job: set the register, formal or professional or casual, and get the person’s name right.

The opening line is the sentence right after. That’s the part that earns you a reply. It tells the reader who you are if they don’t know, why you’re writing, and roughly what this will cost them in time.

Most people agonize over the greeting and then blow the opening line on filler, which is the wrong way around. Greetings are close to a solved problem, and the table below covers them. The opening line is where the thinking goes.

Email greetings: which one to use and when

Start with the most formal greeting the relationship warrants, then loosen up once the other person does. Mirroring their register is the easiest way to sound like you belong in the conversation.

Greeting	Formality	Best for
Dear Mr. Patel,	Formal	First contact with someone senior, legal or contractual notes, formal applications
Dear Hiring Manager,	Formal	Applications and outreach where you can’t find a name
Dear Sarah,	Semi-formal	Client-facing notes, first contact where warmth still fits
Hello Sarah,	Professional	Cold outreach, external partners, anyone you’ve met once
Hi Sarah,	Professional-casual	The default for most business email, internal and external
Good morning Sarah,	Professional	Notes you’re confident land during the workday; slightly warmer than “Hi”
Hi all, / Hi team,	Casual	Internal group email
Sarah,	Direct	Ongoing threads with someone you know well; can read as curt to anyone else

A few rules hold up in almost every case:

• Use a first name if you have one. A named greeting reads as a message written for one person. “Dear Sir or Madam” reads as a message written for anyone.
• Don’t mix registers. “Hi Sarah Chen,” lands wrong. “Hi” and “Hello” want a first name. “Dear” is the flexible one, since it works with a first name, a full name, or a title plus last name, and the formality climbs as you move along that list.
• Match the honorific to what they use. Their signature, their site bio, how they signed off last time. “Dr.” and “Prof.” matter to the people who hold them.
• Comma after the greeting in US business email. A colon is also correct and reads more formal, which suits a cover letter and looks stiff on a Tuesday note.

Formal email greetings

Reach for these when the message carries weight: a first approach to an executive you don’t know, anything contractual, an application, or a note likely to get forwarded to people you’ve never met.

• Dear Mr. Patel,
• Dear Dr. Alvarez,
• Dear Ms. Chen,
• Dear Sarah Chen,
• Dear Hiring Manager,
• Dear Selection Committee,

Professional email greetings for everyday use

These carry almost all business email. Warm enough to sound human, neutral enough that nobody reads anything into them.

• Hi Sarah,
• Hello Sarah,
• Good morning Sarah,
• Hi Sarah and John,
• Hello everyone,

When you don’t know the name

Spend two minutes looking first. The company site, LinkedIn, the reply-to on an older message: one of them usually coughs up a name, and a named greeting is the cheapest signal you can send that this message was written for one person.

If you genuinely can’t find one:

• Dear Hiring Manager,
• Dear Support Team,
• Hello there,
• Dear [Company Name] Team,

Skip “To Whom It May Concern.” It’s still technically correct, and it still tells the reader you didn’t look.

How to start an email: opening lines by context

The right opening line depends entirely on why you’re writing. Below are the five situations that cover most business email, with examples you can lift.

Cold outreach

Say who you are and why this person specifically, in one sentence. Drop the goodwill preamble. They don’t know you, so “I hope you’re doing well” is noise. Earn the second sentence by making the first one about them.

Hi Sarah,

I’m Mark Ellis, co-founder at Ridgeline. I saw your post about cutting your ops team’s meeting load in half and wanted to ask how you handled scheduling during the transition.

Hello Mr. Patel,

I lead partnerships at Northline. We work with three of your portfolio companies on the same procurement problem you described at the summit last month, and I’d like to show you what changed for them.

Hi Sarah,

Quick question about your March pricing update - we’re evaluating a switch and I want to make sure I’m reading the enterprise tier correctly before I take it to my CFO.

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Replying to an email

Acknowledge, then answer. Four words is plenty for the acknowledgment. All the sender wants is proof their message landed and that you’re dealing with the thing they asked about.

Hi Sarah,

Thanks for sending this over. Two of the three dates work on our end - Tuesday is out.

Hi John,

Got it, and I agree with your read on the timeline. Here’s where I’d push back on the scope.

Hi Sarah,

Apologies for the slow reply - I was out last week. Picking this up now.

That last one is worth a note. Apologize once, keep it short, move on. A three-sentence apology for a late reply turns the delay into the subject of the email.

Formal or first contact with someone senior

Context before the ask. The reader is working out why you’re in their inbox at all, and a name they recognize does most of that work for you.

Dear Dr. Alvarez,

My name is John Reeves, and I’m the operations lead at Bright Harbor. Karen Liu suggested I reach out to you directly about the clinical scheduling pilot.

Dear Ms. Chen,

I’m writing regarding the vendor agreement we signed in April. A clause in section 4 needs clarification before we renew.

Internal email to your team

Lead with what this is and whether it needs anything from the reader. Internal email doesn’t need warmth to be professional. It needs to be scannable.

Hi team,

Two decisions from this morning’s review, plus one thing I need from each of you by Thursday.

Hi all,

Heads up that the Q3 numbers moved. Nothing needs action today, but the forecast in the deck is now stale.

Hi Sarah,

Quick one - do we have the signed SOW from Meridian, or is that still with legal?

Follow-up email

Name the last touchpoint and when it happened, then restate the ask in one line. Don’t lead with “just following up,” and don’t make the reader scroll to remember what you wanted in the first place. A good follow-up email reads fine on its own.

Hi Sarah,

Following up on the proposal I sent on the 8th. Are you still targeting a decision before the end of the month?

Hi John,

Circling back on the integration scoping we discussed at the conference. I have the technical answers to the two questions you raised - happy to send them over or walk through them on a 15-minute call.

Hi Sarah,

I know this landed during a busy stretch. If the timing is wrong, just say so and I’ll follow up in Q4 instead.

That last pattern works better than most people expect. Hand someone a clean way to say “not now” and you tend to get a real answer instead of silence.

What to avoid when you start an email

A handful of openers actively work against you. They’re common enough that cutting them is an easy upgrade.

“I hope this email finds you well.” The most recognizable filler line in business email. On a cold message it reads as a template. On a reply it stalls the point. If you want warmth, make it specific: “Hope the launch went smoothly last week.”

“Just following up” / “Just checking in.” That “just” apologizes for the message before you’ve even made it. Say what you’re following up on and what you need.

“Sorry to bother you.” Either this is worth their time or it isn’t. Opening with an apology tells them it’s the latter.

“To Whom It May Concern.” A name is almost always findable, so this mostly announces that you didn’t look.

“Hey” to someone you’ve never met. Fine internally, and fine with a peer you know well. On a first approach to a client or an executive, though, it claims a register you haven’t earned.

“Dear Sir or Madam.” Dated, and it guesses at something you don’t need to guess at. “Dear Hiring Manager” or the team name beats it.

Opening with your own logistics. “I’ve been meaning to write for weeks but things have been hectic on my end” is about you. Your reader is scanning for what this means for them.

Starting with the ask before any context on a cold email. Context first, ask second. One sentence each is enough.

Quick reference: greeting and opener by situation

Situation	Greeting	Opening line
Cold outreach	Hi [First name],	“I’m [name] at [company]. I saw [specific thing] and wanted to ask about [specific thing].”
Reply	Hi [First name],	“Thanks for sending this over - [direct answer].”
Formal first contact	Dear Mr./Ms./Dr. [Last name],	“My name is [name], [role] at [company]. I’m writing regarding [subject].”
Internal note	Hi [First name], / Hi team,	“Quick one - [question or decision].”
Follow-up	Hi [First name],	“Following up on [thing] from [date]. Are you still targeting [outcome]?”
Job application	Dear Hiring Manager,	“I’m applying for the [role] posted on [source]. [One line on the strongest match.]”
Introduction between two people	Hi [Name] and [Name],	“Connecting you two - [Name] is [context], [Name] is [context].”
Bad news or a delay	Hi [First name],	“I want to flag something before it becomes a surprise: [the thing].”

Where an AI assistant fits

Getting the opening right on one email is easy. The ninetieth email of the day is where most executives lose the thread. Greetings get sloppy, openers go vague, and the two messages that genuinely needed care get the same three seconds as the ones that didn’t.

That’s the part Catch takes off your plate. It’s an AI Executive Assistant that reads your inbox in context, decides what matters, and drafts replies to your intent, not just in your voice but aimed at what you actually meant to say. It knows who Sarah is, that you’ve traded eleven emails with her, and that “Dear Ms. Chen” would be odd at this point in the relationship. Early on it checks with you before acting. As it learns how you work, it starts sending on your behalf. When something really needs your call, it pings you on Slack, by text, or on iMessage with enough context to decide, then takes it from there.

Email isn’t busywork. Contracts, negotiations, and client decisions all move through it. What Catch strips out is the overhead around it: the triage, the drafting, the deciding what deserves a reply today. It also covers your calendar and scheduling, reminders and flagging what needs your attention, coordinating with external guests, reservations and bookings, and calls it places on your behalf, on a flat $99 per month with voice included and no per-call fees.

To go deeper on the message itself, our guide on how to write a professional email covers structure, tone, and templates, and AI inbox management covers what happens to the other 200 messages.

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Frequently Asked Questions