Speak to an Interest You Share
Sometimes it’s not cost-effective to use people’s names. In some mass
mailings, for example, even with a mail-merge capability, the cost of
adding individual names may not be deemed an appropriate expenditure.
Instead, ask yourself why you’re writing to these people and how
that relates to something they want or need. By honing in on why your
readers might want to read your communication, it becomes easier to
identify what the shared interest is.
Julia, a manager of software development at a midsize computer company,
explained, “I was writing an E-mail to my group. I could have said
‘Dear Team’ or ‘Dear Development Group.’ Instead I focused on the subject
matter of the E-mail, which was a query about whether we were
going to be able to meet a critical deadline. Given the hours we had put
in, and especially the analysts who had been working fifty- and sixtyhour
weeks to complete this phase of the project, I used ‘Dear Anyone
Interested in Working Fewer Hours.’ Not only did it help the E-mail
get read, but it got a laugh. Always a good thing when you’re stressed
about meeting a deadline.”
Notice that Julia highlighted an area of shared interest to the readers:
working fewer hours.
Business Writing for Results