At Elsevier

The past few days I have been training a team at Elsevier Publishing Services. They are an intelligent lot whose main role is communicating to authors in Europe and UK through mails. So, they come up with genuine problems that they face while writing to authors. Emails are not only vital channels for sending and receiving information, but they are a tool to build rapport. This is a big responsibility for the Elsevieran - authors are their clients so they need to be sensitive to their needs, and this becomes more difficult as they need to understand the cultural nuances involved.
One question that they ask me often is: How do I address my client? Most of their clients are renowned authors with doctorates, and expect to be addresssed as Dr or Professor. One way to decide this is to simply address them with their titles in the first mail and look for how they sign off their mails.
One participant in training said she had an devised a method to check this. She starts her mail like this: Dear Chris (May I address you as Chris)?
She says this has been pretty successful as some of them reply like this: Dear Bharathi ( Of course, you can call me Chris). Well, if they ignore this question of hers, she goes ahead and addresses them with their titles.
I don't see anything wrong in doing this. A pretty direct way, and you anyways leave the choice to the receiver.