How to Start a Professional Email: Greetings and Opening Lines That Work

Mikhail Konkov · Founder, Limato

Non-native English speaker. Spent a decade writing client email in a second language before building a tool to fix it.

The first two lines of an email decide how the rest is read. Written for people who use English as a second language: which greeting fits which relationship, and which openers quietly mark you as an outsider.

Openings are harder than closings, because you are making two decisions at once with almost no room: how formal to be, and what the email is actually about. Get the first wrong and you sound like a printed letter with a letterhead. Get the second wrong and the reader is three lines in with no idea what you want.

The four registers of a professional email greeting

Every greeting sits somewhere on a formality scale, and the scale in American business English is lower than most ESL textbooks teach. The default is not "Dear". It is "Hello".

Formal: Dear Dr. Herrera, Dear Ms. Ruiz, Dear Professor Lastname

Use when: job applications and cover letters, anything academic, a formal complaint, legal or regulatory correspondence, a first email to a government office, or anyone whose title is the reason you are writing: a judge, a physician, a consul. Anywhere a printed letter would not look out of place.

Backfires when: you use it in ordinary work email. "Dear Anna," on the fourth email this week to the same project manager reads as ceremonial, and by the tenth it reads as distance. This is the single most common way non-native writers land a register too high — the greeting is correct English and still wrong.

Two mechanics worth getting right. Use the last name with a title (Dear Ms. Ruiz), or the first name alone (Dear Anna), never a title with a first name. And in email the greeting takes a comma; the colon (Dear Ms. Ruiz:) belongs to printed US business letters and to the most formal applications.

Neutral-professional: Hello Anna, Hi Anna, Good morning Anna

This is the default band. Most of your email belongs here. "Hello Anna," works with clients, vendors, strangers, and executives, and there is no relationship it is wrong for. "Hi Anna," is the same register with slightly less starch and is completely standard in US and UK business email, including a first contact.

"Good morning Anna," is a pleasant variant with one trap: your morning is someone else's evening. Across time zones, "Hello" is the safer choice.

Backfires when: almost never. That's the point of a default. The only place it's underdressed is the formal band above — an application, a professor, a lawyer.

Warm: Hi Anna! Hey Anna, Morning!

Use when: you have an actual relationship. A colleague you talk to daily, a client six months in who opens with "Hey", the freelancer whose fourth invoice you just paid.

Backfires when: you haven't earned it. "Hey Anna," in a cold outreach email claims a closeness that doesn't exist, and to a native reader it reads as a sales move. The exclamation mark has the same problem: fine between people who know each other, oddly eager from a stranger asking for something.

The rule that removes most of the guessing: mirror, don't lead. If they wrote "Hey", you can write "Hey". If they opened with "Hello Mikhail," stay there. The same rule governs how you end the email — greeting and sign-off should sit in the same band.

Internal-casual: Hi team, Hi all, or no greeting at all

Use when: you're inside a team or inside a live thread. "Hi team," and "Hi all," are the standard group openers. And in an active exchange, native speakers simply drop the greeting and start with the content — the fifth reply in a same-day thread does not get another "Hi Anna,".

Backfires when: it leaks outside the team. No greeting in a first-contact email reads as brusque, and to someone senior at another company it reads as careless. The other failure is the reverse: keeping a formal greeting alive inside a fast internal thread, which makes every reply feel like a memo.

Professional email opening lines: the sentence after the greeting

The greeting is two words and takes two seconds. The line under it decides whether the email gets answered, and it is where most professional emails are lost.

The default instinct — warm up first, get to the point later — is exactly backwards for English business email. Your reader is scanning. The first line should name the reason for writing, and everything social comes after it, if at all.

Opening lines that work, by function:

On a first contact, add one line of who you are — but put it after the reason, not before it. "I'm the founder of a small Chrome extension for non-native writers" means nothing to someone who doesn't yet know why you're in their inbox. Reason first, credential second, ask third.

None of the lines above contain "kindly", "esteemed", "I am writing to you in order to", or "I would like to take this opportunity." In modern business English, precision is what reads as professional and courtesy vocabulary reads as padding. One specific noun — an invoice number, a date, a project name — does more for your register than three polite phrases.

ESL mistakes at the start of an email

I have written every one of these, and I still get them weekly from non-native colleagues. Not one is a grammar error. Every one changes how the sender is read.

1. "I hope this email finds you well" on autopilot

The phrase is not wrong. It is just the most predictable sentence in business email, and it burns the one line the reader is guaranteed to look at. On a cold email it reads as a template — which it usually is.

There are two fixes. Cut it, and open with the reason. Or replace it with something only you could have written: their talk, their release, your last call. The test is simple — if the sentence would fit in an email to anyone on earth, it isn't doing work.

2. "Dear Sir/Madam" and "Respected Sir"

"Respected Sir" and "Respected Madam" are standard in South Asian formal correspondence and read as an obvious import in US and UK business email. "Dear Sir/Madam" and "To Whom It May Concern" are English, but belong to the formal letter, not the email — and when the recipient's name is usually two clicks away, both mainly announce that you didn't look.

If you genuinely can't find a name, address the role: "Hello Support team," or "Hello Hiring team,". That is the modern equivalent, and it reads as competent rather than dated.

3. "Dear Mr. Mikhail" — title plus first name

A title always attaches to the last name: Dear Mr. Herrera, Dear Dr. Ruiz. "Dear Mr. Mikhail" is a direct calque from languages where the honorific goes with the given name, and to an English reader it lands as a clear signal that the sender doesn't know the convention.

The related trap is guessing gender or marital status from a name. When you're not sure, use the full name with no title: "Dear Alex Meier," is always safe. And default to "Ms." over "Mrs." for women — "Mrs." says something about a marriage that is none of a business email's business.

4. Opening with an apology

"Sorry to bother you." "Sorry to disturb you again." "Apologies for taking your time." A pre-emptive apology frames your own email as an imposition before the reader has decided whether it is one. Do it habitually and your requests start being treated as the favors you called them.

Apologize when you actually caused something — a real delay, a real mistake. Otherwise, open with the reason and let the request stand on its own.

5. "Dear all" for a group

"Dear all" isn't an error. It is common in UK and European corporate email and much rarer in the US, where it reads like a memo from head office. For a group, "Hi everyone," "Hi team," and "Hi all," are the natural options, and they cost you nothing in professionalism.

6. A nameless greeting when you know the name

"Hello," or "Greetings," alone, when the person's name is in the thread above, is the easiest mistake on this list to fix. It reads as a mail merge. Names are the strongest cheap signal in an email opening — use the one they sign with, in the form they sign with. If he signs "Michael", he isn't "Mike" to you yet, and if she signs "Ana", don't promote her to "Anastasia".

The body of the email has its own version of this list — "kindly", "revert back", "do the needful" — collected in 12 ESL patterns natives rarely use.

How to start an email in five common situations

Cold first contact with a stranger

"Hello [First name]," and nothing warmer. Then three short lines in this order: why you're writing, who you are, what you want. Keep the ask small enough to refuse in one sentence. Never open a cold email with a compliment you'd give anyone ("I've been following your amazing work"); a specific detail does the same job and can't be faked.

Emailing a professor

Academic email is one of the few places where "Dear" is still the default: "Dear Professor Lastname," or "Dear Dr. Lastname,". Use the title until they drop it themselves. Then identify yourself in the first line, because they teach hundreds of people: "I'm in your Tuesday section of ECON 210." Then the question, specific and answerable. "Dear Professor," with no name reads as a mass email, and a first name unprompted reads as presumptuous until they have used it themselves.

Replying inside an existing thread

No greeting at all. This is the situation where the correct opening is none — you reply with the content, the way you'd answer in a conversation. Repeating "Hi Anna," on every message in a same-day exchange slows the thread and adds a note of formality that wasn't there. Bring the greeting back when the thread has gone quiet for weeks, or when a new person is added to the recipients and needs orienting.

First email to a client

"Hello [First name]," and then, in the first line, the thing they care about — not your introduction. "Here's the revised scope with the two changes from Friday's call." Warmth at the start of a client relationship comes from being easy to read, not from adjectives. Skip "Dear" unless their industry is formal enough that they used it first, and if their whole team writes "Hi", follow them.

Writing to a whole team

"Hi team," or "Hi everyone,". Then a first line that tells everyone whether this email is for them: "For the design side only — the handoff moved to Thursday." Group email is skimmed harder than any other kind, so the opening line should carry the audience and the change, in that order.

Professional email greetings: quick reference

1. Hello [First name], — the safe default. Any professional context, including strangers.
2. Hi [First name], — same register, lighter. Standard in US and UK business email.
3. Good morning [First name], — pleasant, but watch the time zone.
4. Dear [First name], — formal-leaning. Applications, formal client letters.
5. Dear Mr./Ms./Dr. [Last name], — formal. Academic, legal, applications, complaints.
6. Dear Professor [Last name], — academic default until they drop the title.
7. Hi team, / Hi everyone, — group email, internal or friendly external.
8. Hello Support team, — when there is genuinely no name to find.
9. Hey [First name], — casual. Mirror it, don't lead with it.
10. No greeting — active threads only, after the first message.

And the ones to retire: "Dear Sir/Madam", "To Whom It May Concern", "Respected Sir", "Dear Mr. [First name]", "Dear all" in US contexts, "Greetings," and a nameless "Hello," when you know the name.

The part that's hard to self-check

Register arrives last in a second language and gets noticed first by native readers. Knowing that "Hi" sits below "Hello" on the scale doesn't tell you which one a client who has emailed you twice expects. That instinct is built by reading thousands of other people's emails, and there is no shortcut through a textbook.

Limato exists for exactly this gap. Highlight the greeting and first line you drafted, pick a tone, and it rewrites them where you're typing — Gmail, LinkedIn, Notion, Slack — with no trip to a chatbot tab. Native strips the textbook out of the opener; Formal and Casual shift the whole message a register up or down when you've misjudged the room.

The other half of this guide — the closing line and the sign-off — is how to end a professional email. For the patterns in between, see how to make your English sound more natural.