Casual Greetings Get the Best Response Rates

Close-up of hands typing on a laptop adorned with eclectic stickers, symbolizing casual digital communication

Sending emails often come with a lot of unknowns -- when you'll receive a reply, if you'll even get a reply, and if the response will be a positive one. A recent study of 300,000 messages is helping answer some of our questions. It turns out that a more casual greeting will give you a higher response rate.

Greetings like "hello" and "hey" get the best response rates, while more formal greetings like "greetings" and dear" fall lower on the spectrum. However, having a greeting is usually better than no greeting at all.

Bar chart showing 'hey' as the email greeting with the highest response rate, according to Boomerang analysis.

We prefer to use greetings like "hey" and "hi." They serve their purpose and set a conversational tone. "Hey" is more often used with people we know, while "hi" is mostly used with people we don't know. "Hello" isn't a bad option, but can sound a bit forced (I rarely hear people using "hello" in real life).

If you've been using "dear" and/or "greetings, try switching it up to a more conversational tone. You might just find a bump in your response rate!