Greetings and Salutations
The Practice Management Committee (PMC) of FICPI conducted a survey recently about how we prefer greeting when sending General Correspondence, when you cannot know in advance the name, gender or status of the person you are writing to.
The number of responses to this survey is quite satisfying since more than 160 responses have been received.
The general trend is unquestionably ‘Dear colleagues’ followed by “Dear Sir/Madam”. These are also preferred across geographies.
“Hi” and “Hello” are more acceptable in the US/Canada and Australia/NZ which are usually thought of as informal.