Get the boring fluff out of your email greetings and sign-offs

Better hellos and sign-offs for email

Doesn’t it just deflate you to write the same greetings in your emails every day? “Good morning, hope this email finds you well, blah blah blah…” And yet, we keep writing them. The same old greetings and sign-offs. Every. Day.

What does your greeting say about you?

In the movie People like us the main character tells a young boy, “Most doors are closed, so if you want them to open you need a cool knock.”

The way you greet can be an enlightening prelude to a first impression.

Why not make it interesting? If you are an accountant, why not use something like “1. 2. 3. Good morning and counting!” The key is to be tactfully creative, yet polite. Surely many recipients would be more than grateful to just read something a little out of the ordinary among the endless drudgery of other emails. But you be the judge – if you know you’re writing to someone who’ll think that a creative greeting is not businesslike, rather stick to the boring stuff.

Test your creativity and unlock opportunities

See what your contacts say about your new greetings and sign-offs. You might start an interesting conversation that could lead to new business ideas, ad campaigns, marketing concepts and more. Think about your company, your services and products and how you would like to make your reader feel. Choose words that encourage connection, thinking and even laughter. Could you turn your slogan into a greeting or sign-off?

There’s plenty of consumer and marketing information about connection, so we won’t rehash it here. You can do research and compile something short and simple from other anecdotes about your industry. Lines from literature, Shakespeare, other languages and movies are all up for grabs…

Choose carefully

Albert Einstein said “creativity is intelligence having fun”. So be smart and build some fun into that email. But obviously some of these ideas are better reserved for contacts that you know very well and that do not require severely formal communication… Sometimes even random words can grab attention, as long as there is some connection to your industry. Whatever is suitable to make people read – and better still, remember – your email and your brand.

We’ll greet you today with the addictive Minions’ “BANANAAAAA!”