Dear Client

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At the JC we struggle to understand the pathology of someone who addresses an out of office auto-reply to “Dear Sender”, but we suspect it is along the same lines as the commuter who cheerily says “Thanks, Driver!” as he alights, thereby showing unusual courtesy and then trampling all over it in the space of two words.

“Dear Client” is much the same. It is bad business: “dear” conveys a degree of (professionally appropriate) intimacy with your correspondent. Nothing untoward or smutty about that even in these perpetually outraged times, of course, but it does imply you at least know the person’s name. “Client” implies quite the opposite: either that you don’t know or that you don’t care: it conjures a faceless bovine — usually a herd of them — tethered to a stall in the milking shed.

“Dear Client” is to say, “you are special to me and, I suppose, I could go to the effort of setting up a mail-merge and injecting your actual name from my immaculate client static data repository but, actually, hang it, life’s too goddamn short.”

This is no paradox, folks. There’s a simple solution if you find yourself sliding onto the floor between these particular stools: don’t use either “dear” or “client” when addressing your communication.

There is nothing wrong with not including a client’s name in the right circumstances: it might be a to-all communication going to 5,000 people updating them about MiFID 2 roll out, and the simple logistics of setting up a mail-merge might just not be worth the bother. Fair enough, if so, but then don’t call them “dear”. You’re running an ad in the paper for crying out loud, not inviting them to your son’s barvitzvah.

See also

• Out of office replies
• Farewell email