| From: ABC Rag [mailto:ABCrag0809@gmail.com] To Miss Maria |
The purpose of this letter is to request for a sponsorship for the ABC Hall's Rag in NUS which is clearly stated under the subject. The letterhead and the date are stated too. The audience is Maria but her job title is not specified and the courtesy title is used inappropriately. This is a common mistake where Mr., Mrs., Ms, Dr, Prof or Rev is used together with a person's first name instead of the second name or the surname. The salutation would be better if it is ‘Dear Maria’ instead.
The approach used for this letter is direct and would be better if they added 'ABC Hall would be honored to have your company as our sponsor' and also 'Your company will benefit through publicity made by us'.
The sentences 'Feel free to call me should you have any doubts about the proposal. Hope to hear from you soon.' seem quite informal. It could be corrected to 'Should you have any doubts, please contact me through email or my contact number stated below. We hope to hear from you soon.’ This would make the letter more professional.
The letter is concise and straight to the point overall. There is also clarity with purpose and reason for this letter given. The structure of the letter is good as it states who she is representing, then her reason and purpose of writing in with a proposal attached. The connectors are used appropriately too.
I feel that there is a lack of concreteness when she mentioned 'we could provide more effective publicity if you need us to' as there is no plan explained on how it would happen. However, completeness is generally met as who, what, when, where, why and how are roughly answered in the letter.
In conclusion, using the 7Cs would guide us towards writing effectively. It is important to be careful and thorough before sending out the email or letter to the audience concerned.
Thank you for this detailed analysis, Sze Hui. I like the way you discuss both strengths and weaknesses. Your final comment is very true, but even I make mistakes doing the opposite at times!
ReplyDeleteHey Sze!
ReplyDeleteI liked how you explain all your analysis systematically as well. I could see that you followed closely to the 7C's while analyzing the article.
However the problem I felt with this email was that the sender stated that Any amount would be greatly accepted. While other forms of sponsorship / agreement could be referred to in the attached proposal. This made it seem like they had already assumed or were hoping more for a monetary endorsement. Had I been the end receiver of such an email, I would have felt that this idea of a sponsorship and agreement had little to help promote my brand item.
I thus feel that it all the more shows how important it is for us to watch the little innuendos we might send out to the end-receiver even if it was unintentional. (:
Thanks Jane for the comment (=
ReplyDeleteI noticed the 'any amount would be greatly accepted' part but didn't know how to change it. I just felt that they were quite desperate for sponsorship and were having much difficulty doing so!