Commentary

Email Is The Condensed Soup Of Marketing

by Cynthia Edwards , March 8, 2010

How much time do people spend reading an email? Not much. They spend a second or two deciding whether to keep or delete an email, and usually just a few seconds reading the ones they keep. This means the pressure's on the creative team -- the writer and designer -- to communicate the maximum amount of meaning in the least amount of time.

The craft of writing for a specific space is one that must be learned. Academia rewards us for writing essays studded with ten-dollar words and complex sentences. In advertising, and especially email, the writer has to throw those habits out the window and start learning a new form of word craft: the art of writing powerfully by concentrating and simplifying the message. Great email is like condensed soup -- it has all the goodness of the full meal, but with the water removed.

Squeeze out clutter in the planning stage

The task of crafting streamlined emails starts with content strategy. Sometimes clients want to throw the kitchen sink into their emails, so an early discussion about the right messaging to include is crucial.

Create categories for key content areas and reflect the space allotted to them in the wireframe. If the wireframe scrolls too much or appears cluttered, imagine how crammed the email will look with graphics and copy added.

Tell a story in mini-sequels. The brand story -- with all its features and benefits and reasons to buy -- can be spun out over a succession of emails. This technique works especially well for any series of emails such as e-newsletters, welcome streams, and reactivation programs.

Keep emails focused by using a theme

It's a best practice in all motivational communications, from speeches to commercials, to keep the messaging unified. If you assign a theme to each email, whether overt or covert, it will be easier to write memorable messages that communicate quickly.

To borrow a metaphor from music, a leitmotif is a recurring theme related to a particular person, place or idea. The musical piece enlarges on the theme, repeats it in different forms, and develops it in new directions; but like DNA, the leitmotif guides the music and gives it an identity. A themed email takes the same approach, with each element underscoring a single desired impression.

Do away with transitions and repetitions

Setting up propositions and transitioning between them waters down the writing and interferes with the reader's ability to scan the content quickly. Obviously I am not suggesting you use a series of unconnected sentences or attempt a Hemingway-esque terseness, which would probably just set your readers' teeth on edge. But do:

Make your point as quickly as possible in the subject line, pre-header, masthead or headline, and in the primary call to action.

Use bullet points to avert the need for more transitions, as well as to make the text easy to scan.

Root out repetitive sentences.

Express features or benefits in the subheads.

Turn any summaries into a call to action instead.

Apply the lessons from Writing 101

Email writing needs to be as crisp as a Macintosh apple and just as mouthwatering.

Select words and phrases that work hard: ones that are fraught with meaning, carry a punch, elicit an emotional response.

Use the active, not passive voice.

Boil down the writing so you say the same thing in draft four as you did in draft one, but in half the space.

It isn't easy to write lean, compact emails that make a powerful impression. Blaise Pascal once wrote to a friend, "I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter." As email writers, we need time to ideate, write, edit, smooth, and write again. Remove a little more filler with each iteration, and your emails will be beautifully condensed in the end.

3 comments about "Email Is The Condensed Soup Of Marketing".

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Ronald Stack from Zavee LLC, March 8, 2010 at 12:50 p.m.
I think most of these suggestions are spot on and could apply to many types of communications, not just email. Two comments, however:
First, there is a difference between brand and product messaging, and some of the stylistic suggestions, especially bullet points and unadorned feature/benefit statements, are better for the latter than the former. It's easy for the sell to become too hard and "email-y" when too much connective tissue is stripped away from the copy. Brief doesn't have to mean brutal but too often it does.
Second, the suggestion to tell the story in a series of connected emails is just brilliant. Here, the best use is probably to communicate brand rather than product messages unless the product is easy to separate into components. For example, I think you could more readily do this with a car (one email about exterior styling, one about interior amenities, one about safety features, etc.) than with, say, a dishwasher. This technique is risky, because it puts a lot of weight on the first email in the series. But if the first one gets opened and read, the likelihood is that the second will, too. And so on.
This technique also invites leverage using Social Media. Use Social Media to build awareness and anticipation of upcoming installments among recipients and non-recipients alike. And when you're done, turn the whole series into a microsite or Facebook fan page. Or let consumers vote on what the next email should be about. Who knows? You might even gain conventional media traction for your unique campaign and build awareness through an unpaid channel. Anyway, lots of opportunities for the right brand or product in the right strategic and creative hands.
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Debbie Kwiatoski from Hudson Valley Business Journal, March 8, 2010 at 4:52 p.m.

Good piece - but I would add one BIG thing:

Tailor your email to best suit your 'end reader.' We are NOT in a "one size fits all" world.

For example, if you are sending a press release keep it all VERY SIMPLE. No wire frames, no cells, colors or special formatting and, definitely, no sequential emails..

As an editor with an extremely overstressed inbox and very little time to deal with it, any calendar entry or newsmaker submission I cannot easily download and throw into my lay-out, I ditch. Any press release where I have to search past the glitz to get to a contact name/number and a first class "pitch" gets ditched, as well.

Save the fancy direct marketing stuff for your B2C targets. Don't just assume that - when trying to get the press' attention - the same rules (and formats) apply.

Cynthia Edwards from Razorfish, March 8, 2010 at 5:17 p.m.

Hi Debbie - thanks for your comment. To clarify, this article was aimed at email marketers, not those who send press releases or one-off emails. As always, I write about general principles. Each project will differ in the details.