In E-Mail Copy, Length Matters

An age old direct marketing debate is getting new attention in e-communication circles: copy length.

The number one concern on the minds of e-marketers, dwarfing factors like e-mail delivery and tracking, is inbox overload. What’s keeping us up at night are the issues of too-full e-mail inboxes and a lack of trust among recipients due to spam.

The obvious take-away is that the subject line is probably the most important part of your e-mail and deserves quite a bit of attention.

The not so obvious take-away is that increasing trust is central to increasing open and conversion rates. That means your copy is the key to gaining and keeping a high level of confidence from your recipients. What length works best?

Just Get to the Point

The majority of arguments typically revolve around the copy being too long.

“People will never read that, it’s way too long.”

Or,

“With e-mail, people’s attention spans are shorter, thus you need to keep copy succinct and to the point.”

The same is often said for Web copy, microsites, blogs and even good old fashioned direct mail pieces.

While these statements may very well be true, we recommend you test and prove them based on your target audiences with your product/service.

Just as the sales process is different from business to business, so is the way various companies promote their product or service.

So, will shorter or longer copy work better for you? Testing is the only way to uncover the true revenue potential of your e-mail campaigns. Since there is no universal rule for copy length, you must take a proactive approach and test, test, test.

Continue Reading on Next page: Three steps to help determine what copy length to test first

These three steps will help determine what copy length to test first:

1. Test your copy length against your leading competitors’ e-mails.

Collect your competitors’ e-mails, online promotions, printed sales and marketing materials.

I read somewhere that if everything was done the same way, what in the world would make a difference? The same goes for your e-mail campaigns. If you do exactly what your competitors do, how will you differentiate your company in the eyes of your recipients (and stand out in their inboxes)?

For offer-driven e-mail campaigns, shorter copy – stating the offer, deadline and call-to-action right off the bat – may indeed be the way to go. However, for one of our clients, we discovered an opportunity to expand on copy to increase the audiences’ confidence and increase clickthroughs.

The two leading competitors were e-mailing offer-heavy messages with very little supporting copy at all. We proposed competitive offers with more descriptive copy about how the timeliness and great value of the offer would impact the audience. The strategy worked.

2. Test your copy length based on the type of sales communication.

For example, if your message’s goal is based on a one-step program, you may need more copy to successfully persuade the reader to buy now. For a one-step program, the e-mail communication must feature the offer, benefits and one single step to place the order.

You can be more persuasive with longer, more engaging copy, and it’s a better form for “story selling” which is typically used when the purchase price is higher and multiple payment options are used. In a two-step program, however, your e-mail can afford to be more brief. The call-to-action is not to convince the recipient to buy now, but instead take action that is less commitment-driven.

For example, your e-mail offer may be a free kit to learn more. The call-to-action links the reader to a microsite where he/she can complete a simple online form to request the complimentary information. In this case, you can extend a great deal of persuasive copy in parts: some in the e-mail message, and even more on the microsite and online form page.

For two-step programs, shorter copy seems to work better in getting people to take quick action and respond. If you make it too difficult for your audience to respond (or bore them with your text), he/she will close-out of the email or opt-out of future correspondence.

It is best to intrigue the reader with a brief explanation and a link to guide them to the next step. It is at this next step, commonly a landing page, microsite home page or interior page of a Web site, where you can provide more detail and collect personal data (but don’t ask for too much information at this stage). By the way, statistics show that visitors are more likely to provide personal information at microsites or campaign-dedicated sites.

3. Measure the right metrics when testing your e-mail copy.

For each test group and e-mail send, track the open rate, clickthroughs, cost, cost per click, revenue generated, return on investment and conversion rate. These metrics will help you measure “apples to apples.” When testing copy, be sure to control your other email variables. Page design, layout, graphics, etc. can all affect its performance. For each copy test, the other test elements should remain the same.

When it comes to copy length, there really are no hard and fast rules. Generally, but not always, higher-priced products tend to warrant longer copy. The rationale lies in the fact that it takes longer and more thought for a customer to commit to a more expensive purchase.

Complicated products or information-based products, life insurance for example, can benefit from longer copy. Take the time to walk your readers through the decision-making process so they can make an educated, confident decision.

Whether short or long, it is the quality of your copy that counts most. Your readers must perceive the messaging as relevant to their needs, credible, interesting – even entertaining – and informational. High-quality copy will outperform poorly written copy, no matter the length.

Grant Johnson ([email protected]) is president of Johnson Direct.