• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, September 11, 2023

Email copywriters are some of the best and most economical writers to be found anywhere. But sometimes it pays to be reminded of the basics.

A pair of Harvard researchers found that concise emails greatly out-pull wordy ones.  

The authors sent this verbose email inviting school board members to take a survey:

Hello,
I am a professor at Harvard studying the opinions, decision-making, goals, and expectations of school board members. As a school board member, you have an important and difficult job. You and your fellow school board members are making critical decisions right now that will profoundly impact the lives of students, teachers, and families in your schools and communities. I know you are busy with many urgent and important decisions as your schools reopen. School district leaders like you are balancing many competing interests. Your participation will be very helpful to the research I am conducting. I would like to learn from you how school-district leaders are thinking about the challenges facing schools right now. Would you please complete this brief survey? The link is here: http://surveylink.com.

Thank you for your time,

Dr. Todd Rogers, Professor of Public Policy

They ran it against this version (note the parts that were edited out)::

Hello, 

I am a professor at Harvard studying the opinions, decision-making, goals, and expectations of school board members. As a school board member, you have an important and difficult job. You and your fellow school board members are making critical decisions right now that will profoundly impact the lives of students, teachers, and families in your schools and communities. I know you are busy with many urgent and important decisions as your schools reopen. School district leaders like you are balancing many competing interests. Your participation will be very helpful to the research I am conducting. I would like to learn from you how school district leaders are thinking about the challenges facing schools right now. Would you please complete this brief survey? The link is here: http://surveylink.com

Thank you for your time,

Dr. Todd Rogers, Professor of Public Policy

How did they do? The concise version pulled a 4.8% response rate versus 2.7% for the wordy one. Moreover, a separate study found that 29% who saw the Concise email believed the survey would take less than five minutes, compared to just 15% who saw the Wordy version. 

Sorry for being so wordy. 

The article, excerpted from Writing for Busy Readers by Todd Rogers and Jessica Lasky-Fink, was published in Behavioral Scientist.