Dear [FIRST NAME],

At Future Innovations Associates (formerly Forward Metrics Corporation, an Allyn-Crane Acquisition, and part of the Squimm Group), your safety is our top priority.  This is because, if you die, we won’t get any more money from you.

I know you are surprised to hear from us, because you last used our services in 2011.  But, we have kept all your personal information on file since that time, and because our IT department wasn’t able to filter out prior customers from current customers, we just went ahead and emailed everyone in our database.  Rest assured, however, your data and privacy are important to us, in that order, with “making money from your data” in between the categories of “data” and “privacy”.  Plus, when’s the last time you heard that a company in Corporate America was hacked and that the personal info of millions of its customers was leaked onto the dark web?

This email is to update you on how we are responding to the COVID-19 crisis.  Just like you, we don’t actually know anything useful, but nevertheless we will repeat below what literally everyone in the world knows anyway:

•Our [associates/teammates/partners/ninjas or some other made-up name for employees] are being told to wash their hands;

•We are monitoring the situation closely, which you probably assumed, but we wanted to specifically tell you that anyway.

Please stay safe.

Also, please follow our social media channels, because if there is one thing that will help you persevere through these long weeks of quarantine, it’s the Instagram account of a large corporation.

Sincerely,

Blaise Unconvincingname

Senior Executive Vice President for Hospitality, Marketing, and Emails

Future Innovations Associates

UPDATE: I kid you not: I wrote the bogus letter above and then right afterwards actually received the following email, which I’m including as an update below. Note particularly the use of the well-worn African proverb in the last paragraph. Again: THIS IS AN ACTUAL EMAIL. Some things just can’t be satirized. —Andrew

UPDATE #2: From the files of You-Can’t-Make-This-Up, I just received the following email from Marriott, posted below. At least I know I am a "Valued Guest”.