For most business buyers, "Hi" plus their first name and a comma is the right salutation for a cold email. Move to "Hello Dr. Okafor," or "Dear Ms. Alvarez," only for the few groups where a title is expected. And never guess a name you cannot find. Write to the role, or find the person first.
That is the short answer. The rest of this page is the table behind it, the fallbacks for when you do not have a name, and the small mistakes that make an otherwise good email look like a mail merge gone wrong.
The greeting is part of the inbox preview
In Gmail and most phone mail apps, the first few words of your message show next to the subject line. That means the greeting is often the second thing a reader sees, before they decide to open. "Hi Carla, I saw the new patio menu" reads like a person. "Hi {first_name}, I help companies like" reads like a template, and it is the commonest way a cold email gets deleted without being opened.
You will find articles that claim a greeting changes reply rates by some precise percentage. I could not trace those figures to a source I would trust, so this page does not use them. It reasons from how the reader sees the message instead.
A table of buyer type against greeting
| Who you are writing to | Greeting | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Owner of a local shop, restaurant or trade business | Hi Carla, | Everyone calls them by first name all day. |
| Founder or CEO of a small or mid-size company | Hi Sam, | A title makes you sound like a letter from a bank. |
| Manager at a mid-size company (operations, office, marketing) | Hi Anika, | Colleagues use first names; you are asking for a small favor of attention. |
| Physician, dentist, veterinarian who uses Dr. publicly | Hello Dr. Okafor, | The title is part of how they introduce themselves. |
| Public agency, school, court or procurement office | Dear Ms. Alvarez, | Formal letters are still the norm there. |
| Professor, principal, clergy | Dear Professor Lund, | Title is the form of address in their world. |
| A shared inbox like info@ or office@ | Hello, | You do not know who reads it; say so plainly (see below). |
When two rows could both apply, look at how the person introduces themselves. The About page, the signature on a reply, the way a local news story quotes them. If they write "Dr. Okafor," so do you. If every post says "Carla," the title is just distance.
Hi, Hello or Dear
"Hi" is what a colleague writes. It is the default. "Hello" is a touch more formal and works for a title ("Hello Dr. Okafor,") or when you do not have a name at all. "Dear" belongs to formal letters, public agencies and anyone you would address on paper. Using it with a restaurant owner reads as stiff, and it often hints that you are about to send a pitch.
"Hey" reads as someone you already know. Some tech founders welcome it; most other people do not. "Good morning" is a trap, since you cannot know when they will read your message across time zones. Skip it.
When you cannot find a name
Step one is finding it. The company's team page, the owner's name on a state business registry, a Google Maps listing that shows owner replies to reviews. How to find decision makers at a company walks through those places. Five minutes of looking beats the best fallback.
If you truly have nothing, use one of these. Each says honestly what you are doing:
Hello, I'm writing to whoever handles scheduling for the three Fenwick Supply branches. If that's not you, could you forward this to the right person?
Hi there, I'm looking for the person who orders cleaning supplies at Fenwick. Could you point me to them?
Avoid "To whom it may concern," "Dear Sir or Madam," and "Dear Hiring Manager" (unless it is a job). They sound like a form letter and are poor guesses on gender. Do not invent "Hi Info," either, which is what happens when a merge tool takes a first name from an info@ address.
Shortened, misspelled and unfamiliar names
Use the name the person uses. If their email signature says "Michael," do not write "Mike." If the address is mike@ and every post says Mike, write Mike. When in doubt, copy and paste the name from their own website or profile, so you get the spelling and capital letters right. Names with unusual spellings (Siobhan, Nguyen) are where manual typing goes wrong.
For names from other countries, the main trap is word order. In China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam the family name often comes first, and a profile that shows "Zhang Wei" may be written that way. Look at how they sign their own emails or how their company writes it, and copy that. The same goes for two surnames (common in Spanish-speaking countries): the first name alone, "Hi Maria," is safe. Do not shorten, anglicize or guess a nickname. If you cannot tell, a title and the surname the person uses ("Hello Ms. Garcia,") is better than a wrong first name.
Check the names before the batch goes
Before sending 30 or 50 emails, read the greeting line of the first ten aloud, by looking at the actual rendered text. Look for ALL CAPS names, initials like "J.R.," first names with two parts ("Mary Ann"), a company name where a person's name should be, and a blank. One broken "Hi ," in a batch of 30 is a bad sign about the whole list, and you can fix it in a minute. It is a two-minute step that belongs in your routine alongside the rest of how to write a cold email that gets replies.
Match the sign-off
The greeting sets the register for the whole message. "Hi Carla," goes with "Thanks," or "Best," and your first name. "Hello Dr. Okafor," goes with "Best regards," and your full name and business. "Dear Ms. Alvarez," goes with "Sincerely," and your full name. Mixing them looks like two different people wrote it. The rest of the closing, your name, business, address and opt-out line, is in how to write a cold email signature.
For the whole message, start with cold email for beginners. If the person you are writing to is a chief executive, the same rules apply with a few extras, covered in how to cold email a CEO, and if you are a freelancer writing to a first client, how to cold email a potential client shows a greeting in a full email.
A wrong greeting is a small mistake that makes a reader doubt the rest. Rocketship finds the buyers by name, so each email starts from the person it found rather than a blank merge field, then sends from your own Gmail, follows up, and books the meeting on its own. Plans that get you customers start at $24.99 a month (Launch), and every monthly plan starts with a 7-day free trial, card required. See how the AI workers fit together.