I received this email in fractured English on an otherwise pleasant Friday morning.

“We recently update Opt-in contacts of Executives which you can be used for unlimited multi-channel marketing. Send us now your contacts in an excel sheet from your in-house database with missing email address, telephone numbers, we can append it for you at no cost, this will help you check the quality of our services.”

Ugh. Even the street address in the signature line had a typo.

Clearly there’s a need for this kind of service, or this company wouldn’t be in business, assuming it’s legitimate. But that’s not the point. Sending something to me that doesn’t apply to my current job tells me you’re not doing your research. So right away, I already don’t think very highly of your company.

Not having someone proofread a message that represents your company makes me think even less favorably of you. Yes, you: The name on the email. I don’t care if it was tacked on to show a “face” or not. That name is my point of connection to this debacle. That name is what I’ll block, and that name is what I’ll remember if someone brings up your company in the future (it could happen).

Granted, there are far more annoying things you can receive through email, let alone other forms of contact. And I’m not saying we can magically eliminate all forms of annoying marketing. That would be unrealistic at this point.

This doesn’t mean we can’t work toward it. Think of where we’d be today if nobody ever did anything unrealistic!

So tell me: Do emails like this ever pay off?  And do you think less of a company for sending you badly written communications?

(And if you’re looking for a clever response to an annoying email, this never fails to make me laugh: Wil Wheaton collating papers.)