I have always been surprised by the unique way many Chinese manufacturers / sales teams are addressing their leads by email. Even knowing the culture and history, email marketing for international business is quite different in China than the rest of the world.
Typical examples I can divulge are introductions from people and companies I have never heard about, like:
– “My dear friend” or “Hi my friend”
– “Hey dear”
– “Good day, dear Sirs”
– “Hello, How are you?”
– “Dear Partner”
I once even got a manufacturer sending an email with a bible extract believing that most Canadian are Christian and it would be a good way to engage the leads. Overall, I would estimate about 70% of email marketing that have this kind of introduction.
Might could work on some people but in western culture, this kind of approach is mostly considered either rude for first contact or suspicious. As a result, most of these kind of emails will appear as spam and undesirable.
Why so many Chinese manufacturers, suppliers, or traders continue using such emails?The roots can be summarized in two parts:
1. Lack of international business knowledge:
The days when westerners where looking for manufacturers, and Chinese factories just had to wait customer knotting at their door, are over. More Far East suppliers need to build marketing campaigns to promote their products and increase their sales. Email marketing is the cheapest and easiest way to create awareness and reach customers.
However, English being the core language for that type of action, most companies hire a young graduated to take the lead and they start without any international business training. Naturally, they will do it based on Chinese culture, language translation and also their teaching from school, with the result we know.
2. Business culture:
With background of negotiation and bargaining, Chinese tend to consider business partners as friend and is actually slightly mixed with Guanxi concept of business network as Guanxi is defined by trust and friendship. In short, by considering their customers as friends, they expect them to be part of their Guanxi.
Now you know that, how it helps in day to day business? Well, this is a negotiation value. As manager doing business in China, you have to accept this friendship as a business rule and never over estimate it, business is still business in the end...
To close the topic, this situation will change over time, Guanxi is becoming less important than before and Chinese business being more international than ever, I believe that within 10 years, Chinese email marketing will be more conventional, if emails are still existing…
