Know Your Audience

I was sitting at work today when I received an email from a vendor of ours.  The email template letter began with with three words that caused me to tune out everything else:

Dear Valued Client

In this world where new ways to communicate seemingly evolve each day, to receive a letter with this greeting on it tells me two things about whether you truly believe we're a valued client:


1) You chose convenience over thoughtfulness - Rather than spend the extra 10-15 minutes to mail merge with your customers' last names, to simply have everyone listed as "valued client" makes me feel anything but that way.


2) You chose chest-thumping over caring - Half of the letter from this vendor trumpeted every great thing this company has done during his long and storied history.  Unfortunately for them, I didn't read a single, solitary word once they decided to not identify me by name.

 Now, it could just be I'm overly sensitive to greetings because of the thousands of times in my life I have had people misspell my last name in a greeting (which actually doesn't bother me as much as when people start a letter to me Dear Tony!); however, when I get emails from vendors who have taken the time to learn my first and/or last name, i am certainly going to at least open the email and read it.

The bottom line: If you're calling someone a valued client in your greeting, it's as if you don't know them at all.