Keep Your Copy Short and Sweet
People like nugget-sized information, and even depend on it, especially when so many view their e-mail on handheld and mini e-mail readers. Therefore, make your newsletter concise and to the point, and make it very easy to skim by using headlines and subheads to help the reader along.
Research has found that newsletters with several short stories typically get read more than e-mails with one long story, which is frequently saved for later and then often deleted unread. Always, always, always remember that, in today’s world, time is in incredibly short supply, and people will see a long story as requiring too much of a commitment unless it is of immense interest or importance to them personally.
An e-mail with several short stories gives people a choice as to what they want to read, whereas a one-story e-mail is a hit-or-miss proposition. If the reader doesn’t like the one story you provide, you’ve lost him.
Don’t doubt your ability to convey a message in a short two- or three-paragraph story. Boil it down to the key message, use bullet points, and offer a link to more detailed information on your Web site. This is also a great way to drive traffic back to your site. Just make sure that the e-mail content can stand on its own, so you aren’t annoying your readers.
If you can’t shorten the story, a good strategy is to serialize your content. In other words, break a long story into several short stories. Decades ago, the publishing world used to serialize novels by printing two or three chapters and selling them weekly or monthly. This would build anticipation among readers and have them yearning for the new installment. You can apply the same idea to your newsletters and leverage the same excitement.
Matt Blumberg is the driving force behind Return Path, an e-mail performance company. Collaborating with him on this project are his colleagues, e-mail strategists Stephanie A. Miller and Tami Monahan Forman. This article was excerpted from their new book, “Sign Me Up! A Marketer’s Guide to Creating E-mail Newsletters That Build Relationships and Boost Sales (iUniverse Inc., 2005) © 2005 Return Path, Inc. All rights reserved.
