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I am composing an email to a work associate who I have never had any dealings with before. I'm struggling to think of a formal yet succinct way of introducing myself.

In person, I would probably say:

"Pleased to meet you"

But this feels wrong because I am not actually meeting him- I'm just sending an email.

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2 Answers 2

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Something like this?

Dear Mr Jones,

I'm John Smith, a code monkey, and I work with Phillip in the IT pit. He suggested that you might be able to help me hack into Accounts and give myself a raise.

It would really help me in my new project - P0232 - Theft for Fun and Profit.

I'm free for the rest of the day because I'm pulling a sickie.

Boomshanka,

David

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    Wow. You didn't just do the introduction. You wrote my whole email for me! Thanks!
    – Urbycoz
    Nov 18, 2011 at 11:47
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    +1 Entertaining, yet correct : you included the introduction (who put you in contact with them), your role, and your purpose. Rather than a polite boilerplate, an introductory email requires that you start with why they should not hit the spam button.
    – JeffSahol
    Nov 18, 2011 at 11:58
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    Perhaps add: "May the seed of your loin be fruitful in the belly of your woman" and complete the subtle reference ;
    – TJHeuvel
    Nov 18, 2011 at 12:04
  • +1, although I would ditch the salutation line. They are as superflous in emails as they are in StackExchange questions.
    – T.E.D.
    Nov 18, 2011 at 13:07
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    Well you may want to say I'm John Smith, aka David,...
    – YetAnotherUser
    Nov 18, 2011 at 16:24
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Maybe something like this:

Dear Mr Smith,

my name is Neo, and as I got your email address from Mr Morpheus without having met you in person before, please allow me to introduce myself first.

My profession is that of a programmer. I have expert knowledge in search engines and one of my latest project involved developing my own search engine for automatic web page scraping and later text classifaction and rating using a semi-autonomous text analysis agent.

...

I have learned from Mr Morpheus that you are currently involved in a project dealing with similar issues. Therefore, I would like to offer my expertise to you.

If you are interested, do not hesitate to call me at +1 2317 424242.

Sincerely yours

Neo Anderson

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    It's formal (and funny), but not very succinct.
    – Urbycoz
    Nov 18, 2011 at 12:01
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    Well, formal speech is usually longer than normal speech because you spend extra effort on being formal - which requires more words. Unlike Japanese, where you change the ending of a verb and you're formal, English doesn't have a function like that. Most European languages implement formalty by using a different choice of words and a more elaborate, extended way of saying the same thing.
    – Raku
    Nov 18, 2011 at 12:18

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