Yes, such politeness phrases are very important. In many commercial circumstances I add a few words that are not strictly necessary, just in order to avoid giving the impression that I'm being too casual.

When I write an e-mail from scratch, as opposed to a reply, I open with a line which contains only the recipient's name. For example:

   Chris,

I'm not aware of any program that will automate this.

Pegasus already has template commands that can isolate the name from an address so is it feasible to add an option to automatically add this greeting if I address a message to only one recipient? It would be easy and still useful even if it only worked when the addressee is already in my address book.

This is a small thing and perhaps not useful to many people, I don't know, but I do get bored of having to type these simple greetings all the time. Before anyone gets clever, yes, I do have to put them in. I consider it polite and it provides some degree of confidence that the message you are reading was actually meant for you.