Did Your Email Get Lost in Translation?

I’ve written before about how the “cold call” email can leave the recipient feeling, well, cold. Below is a guest post from Nadia Nassif on the topic from the international perspective.

I work predominantly with international folks grappling with English. Often their well-meaning intentions are buried by grammatical errors and a lack of awareness of the context of culture — either understanding mine or expecting I will know theirs.

But sometimes the problem is that the writer comes across as insincere and impersonal. Here’s an example that was sent to me recently:

From: Sridar Patel

Subject: Make your site work harder!!!

Hi, Nadia

I noticed you recently made major work and revision to your current website. First, congratulation! This is good indication that your firm is excelling and doing well. I also see you did most right things by connecting your site to LinkedIn, Twitter, and many other important social media sites.

But, Nadia, these efforts maybe not enough! Technology is demanding new changes every day. It’s not enough to be “tech-savvy” but innovator, too. Companies that do not adopt interactive and multimedia platforms will be left behind.

Vashwar Technologies is market leader in IT solutions. We offer our clients a broad range of services…

In all fairness, email communication is the primary mode of 1st-contact communication and using shared platforms such as LinkedIn to reach people is no secret in the business world. Sridar has at least come this far.

If you are like me, however, you would have stopped reading after the first paragraph. It’s unnecessarily long, grammatically unpolished, and most important: it’s primarily about the sender, not about me.

If Sridar really had something I needed, I would never know. To give him that chance, let’s try a re-write:

From: Sridar Patel

Subject: Some Personal Observations About Your Web Site

Dear Nadia,

My name is Sridar, Owner of Vashwar Technologies, and I’m writing to you as a fellow member from the SMART IT Professionals Group on LinkedIn. I noticed you recently said that you were having your site redeveloped so I took a look.I liked the clean flow of your new design, but noticed that you do not have dynamic content.

Have you ever thought of embedding an educational video for your site, or an interactive quiz? Based on your services and target market, these or other dynamic content might help drive sales. Since I work with companies to create exactly this kind of material, I have attached an in-depth white paper that discusses their value.

If you are interested, I would be glad to set up a time to talk with you about some of the steps you could take to improve your PageRank and site user experience.

Best regards,
Sridar

This is better because it has:

Personalization and context: He explains that he has looked at my site and what brought him to it.

Focus: The emphasis is on the value for me. This makes it worth reading.

A call to action: He suggests I contact him to set up a call. Juxtapose this self-confident approach with the desperate overtones of the first email.

Clear language: It’s well written and error free. This says he took the time to care, which makes me feel more respected.

Now let’s just hope the Nigerian oil executives aren’t reading too closely about how to make more effective use of email.

What do you think? Is Nadia giving to much information about how to write a good cold call email? Is there any hope that the salespeople of the world will hesitate before pressing “send” to really do their research?