I have a special folder (digital and snail mail) where I collect interesting marketing pieces I receive. Of course, I like to save those that are amusing for one reason or another. The coupons aren’t bad either, but I never seem to use them. How does a nice iced mocha latte for $.99 sound? Oh sorry, that coupon expired last year.

My all time favorites are the personalization gaffes. I don’t mind that you bought or stole a list that didn’t include my name, but for crying out loud, why does your default title have to be so cheesy?

These are the top five most frequently used default-salutations.

#5. Dear Marketing Professional: Believe me I am flattered that you consider me a professional and that you know I am in marketing, that’s impressive data quality.

#4. Dear Professional: Okay, this is a little less impressive because you didn’t know I was in marketing, but heck, you consider me a professional. I thank you for that because I have been called much worse.

#3. Dear Sirs: Okay, I am a male and occasionally someone calls me sir; but I am only one sir, not two or three, so no need to make that salutation plural. I see this frequently for some reason. It makes me wonder under what circumstance this would be correct. Perhaps if me, and a few of my colleagues (who were male) happened to all open the same piece of mail together. In that case, this would be dead on.

#2. Dear Communicator: Well now this is just plain lazy. You don’t know my name so you have to put something. Technically, I do communicate, so you do get points for that. But so do birds and monkeys, so I am not feeling too warm and fuzzy about this one.

#1. Dear Sir or Madam: This is my favorite and the all time most used by spammers and lazy marketers alike. Somehow you got my email or mailing address but you were not supplied with my name or anything else about me that would indicate my gender.  However, you are pretty sure I am either a male or a female. Well, I can’t argue with that logic.

So that’s my top five. I was going to do a top ten but these are really the most frequently used salutations I have seen. I think the moral of the story is, be sure to personalize with a name, at the very least. Besides, if you don’t know my name than the odds are you got my information from a terrible list broker, skimmed it off an article or website, or obtained it through some other unethical manner. Either way, if I am not that important to you, your message isn’t going to be that important to me.

Surely, you have seen some funny salutations in your day. I would encourage you to share them with us below in the comments section.