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Gentile, and the ladder nobody shows you
The reason Alex's first draft fails is not that it is friendly but that Italian business writing has a visible ladder and he has stepped onto the wrong rung. Egregio sits at the top and now reads as either very formal or faintly archaic; Gentile is the workhorse, usable for a stranger, a client or a public office; and below that there is nothing until Ciao. English has a long gentle slope from Dear Sir through Dear Mr Bassi to Hi Marco, and Italian does not — which is why a message that would read as warmly professional in English can read as presumptuous here. What makes the formal rung learnable is that it is formulaic to a degree English has lost. In riferimento a, Le sarei grato se, resto in attesa, cordiali saluti: these are not stylistic choices but slots, and filling them correctly costs no originality and buys a great deal of goodwill. The same holds for the titles from Lesson 68 — dottore, ingegnere, avvocato — which belong in the salutation. Note also that Italian offices treat per conoscenza as substantive rather than decorative: putting somebody in copia is telling them they are expected to know, which is why Nadia asks to be included rather than trusting that she will hear.