Hello! I’ve been so lucky to take over the Asian market in my company. I am about to send out some intro mails to our Japanese customers, and in some cases there is more than 1 person in the company.
So how do I adress them correctly? If we assume one is named “John Doe” and the other “John Wick”, I would normally write “Dear Mr. Doe & Wick”. But I feel it would not be respectable towards John Wick, start with Doe and then have Wick follow after? Am I overthinking? Or what is the best approach here?
And if I was to only send an email to John Doe, would I then write “Dear Doe-san?” Or is that too much?
Thanks in advance!
https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/14e61g8/how_do_i_adress_2_people_in_one_email_and_one/
3 comments
Are you writing in English or in Japanese?
If the former, write how a normal email addressing multiple people is written. Their last name-san is normal, but you should probably consult internally with where you work on how your company has managed your Japanese clients.
Let’s say John Doe is the CEO and John Wick is a person under him, you will first write the CEO and then anyone under him. I also recommend writing only their last name and with “san”
Dear Doe san,
Dear Wick san,
​
Like this.
Now if this is a Japanese email, please do not attempt and ask for a Japanese person to write it for you (or ChatGPT. It does pretty good with Japanese emails).
If they are your customers, do not use “san.” You should lower yourself and use “sama.”
I would suggest that if you are writing in English, you use neither, just Mr. Ms. etc.
When you’ve become more familiar, you may want to use Doe-san or Wick-san (without Mr.)
First impressions are huge. Be humble. Be overly polite.