[2-minute read] How to be BRIEF, not BORING

Are they bored to tears? Your senior email recipients that is. If your email doesn’t get to the point quickly they will quickly stop reading and hit delete. You got an open but no click to your webpage. Perhaps they’re patient and read far enough to click on the hyperlink or ‘read-now’ button. That’s an improvement but what will they see when the page loads?

Brevity is a skill and like a muscle, it must be exercised to work. The old adage ‘less is more’ is certainly true in digital communications and even music.

Listen to a professional band and what do you hear? Each instrument doing its part sparingly and then disappearing into the background. There’s sonic space so that when the guitarist is hammering the lowest bar chords, the keyboard player or lead guitarist play at least one or more octaves above. Listen to your typical amateur band and you’ll often hear someone playing over the top of a bandmate.

Like music, digital communication requires space, timing, and hitting the right notes at the right time.

Here’s a quick checklist to consider before drafting your next email or landing page.

1. Lead with the headline– Tell people exactly what it is you’ll be discussing.
2. Use a narrative– Stories will keep the reader’s attention better than paragraphs of data.
3. Trim the fat– Scrutinize every word. Does it need to be there? Does it advance the narrative? Is it absolutely essential to avoid confusion? If not, nix it.
4. Show respect– Your readers are likely dealing with a glut of information. The more time you waste the more they become annoyed. If you’re short and sweet you’re likely to stick out from the crowd.
5. 5 lines or less– Can you get to the point in your email in five lines or less?
6. Why should they open your message? Make your subject line attention-worthy.

For those marketing to realtors and developers do you know how many interruptions they face each day? The average worker is interrupted 60 times a day, or 8 times a minute.

And with that in mind, we’ll wrap it up here. Watch your inbox for more videos and blog posts on how you can master the art of brevity in all your communications, whether they be digital or spoken.

Cheers!