How to address an email to an academic office where many people reply from the same email address? I have been sending emails (in English) to the &quot;visitor's program&quot; of an institute in Germany. Initially, only one person used to reply to these emails, and I addressed this person.
Recently, two more people started replying from the same account (and they seem to reply in some random order). I started addressing the person who last replied, but since then, it has happened twice that I addressed an email to &quot;Mr. A&quot;, but &quot;Ms. B&quot; or &quot;Mr. C&quot; replied to that email.
Also, some of them write Dr. in their signature, while some do not write. And they are not professors (So Dear Prof. A, Prof. B, Prof. C won't work). Since some of them don't write Dr., I feel it may not be a good idea to write &quot;Dear Mr. A, Ms. B, and Dr. C&quot;.
Can I write &quot;To whom it may concern&quot;? Is that somehow considered rude?
Although this institute is in Germany, feel free to add information about other countries.
I don't think this is a duplicate of this because I am concerned about addressing more than one people simultaneously, while that question seems to be more concerned about gender of the recipient.
I would reply to whoever wrote the latest email... it is a reply after all. When other people take over and respond, I interpret that as if the group that monitors the email is always in bbc, and is free to join in the conversation/take over when it becomes useful. When I reply, it's to the last person to have &quot;spoken,&quot; unless I need to address something specific a different person said, in which case I might write back to both (ETA: as in, &quot;Dear Mr. Smith and Ms. Jones, &quot; or &quot;Hi Sarah and Michael, &quot; matching their tone).
There was some talk in the comments of this question about etiquette in various countries. I'm from the US but have worked in Europe for four years, and I still would go with this strategy. I know German addresses combined with honorifics are notoriously more formal than other languages, but usually when the conversation is in English and among an international crowd, the international English standards take over. I've never lived or worked in Germany, but get communications from German academics and haven't noticed any deviations from that norm.