Should you write short copy for your email? Or long copy? A bigger question for direct marketers than for general copywriters, I’d say. Here’s why.
Many people on the Internet believe that the less copy you use, the better your results. The rationale is that the pace of the Internet is faster, attention spans are short, and the reader is only a click away from anything else. And the e-zines keep telling people to be brief.
General advertisers already like short copy. Their print ads, often, are big pictures and very few words. So advice that ‘nobody reads’ on the Web appeals to them.
The real problem is for long-copy direct marketers: people who publish newsletters, promote seminars, sell magazines, run book clubs, sell insurance, sell cassette tapes, or anybody who wants to persuade readers with copy.
”I get so much advice from my Web consultant telling me to make it short on the Web. I’ve tested the short copy many times. Every time it loses. Why should I do it on the Web?” asks a long-copy marketer. To him, mailings that were cheaper because they were shorter but did not work are a temptation that should be resisted.
The direct marketers are right. The Web doesn’t change human nature. The guy who needs the facts on your product is going to be the guy who needs them, whether he’s online, looking at your mailing, or browsing in a bookstore.
But the gurus of the web are partly right, too. You couldn’t paste a 4-page sales letter word for word into an email and expect the same result you get with a mailing. Most of the readers would quit long before they got to the end.
Three Rules of Thumb for the Web
How do you find the middle ground, that place where common sense applies, and you know what to do? Here are three rules of thumb for the Web.
When you look at copy length, first you have to define what you mean by ‘short’ and ‘long’. When web gurus talk about ‘short’, they mean three, maybe four paragraphs. Anything longer they rebel against.
Long copy works, but ‘long’ is relative. I use ‘long’ and ‘short’ relative to other e-mail, not to printed paper. A multi-screen email is more like a 2-page letter than a 4- or 8-page one. And 2 pages is short in direct mail.
Second, your copy can’t be exactly the same online as in a mailing. It needs to be shorter. How much? Kathy Henning, who writes about online communication, says that online copy can be half the length of print copy, or less. That’s a rough rule, but a good starting point for your planning.
Third and most important, the campaign copy isn’t all in the email. It’s in two parts. The first half is the e-mail message, where the reader reads about the product, with a link to the rest of the copy on a Web page. The second half is the Web page where the rest of the copy lives, and the online order form.
When you do a direct mail package, you have basically two parts, one very big one and one very small one. The big one is the sales letter and sales brochure, with about 98% of the copy. The small one is the order form, with 2% of the copy.
The split between email and Web page is less lopsided and varies more than in direct mail.
Format Options
Figure 1 shows the flow of copy. You have four different format options (the box in the middle of Fig. 1).
Option A: If your offer is simple and doesn’t need an explanation, you can use a short e-mail and landing page. The e-mail is one that stays inside the window, a short letter. Three or four paragraphs at the most. The landing page is a web page with a short form and a place for the reader to order. It has a headline, a couple of paragraphs, and the response device. When you run a direct mail package for lead generation that’s all you want. A simple one-page letter with a business reply card.
Option B: The same, but the email is long. I define it this way: a long copy email is any e-mail that runs more than one printed page. A short copy email is any e-mail that’s half a printed page or less.
Option C: The long e-mail plus micro site version works best when you have a lot to say. You can put your copy on a ‘micro’ site, a site with its own URL, built just for one offer. It can be on several screens, or a single long one. Here you have room for all your copy. This is where you can put your direct mail magalog online.
Option D: The short e-mail/micro site option is useful for offers with a lot of copy that must be read by prospects who won’t read a long e-mail. Here you can get all the copy online, where you want it.
Sources of E-mail Addresses
The three sources of e-mail addresses are shown in Fig. 1.
To get a good response, you should start with your in-house list, just as you would with direct mail. A list maintenance firm can append e-mail addresses to 10 to 30% of the names and addresses in your customer file. You should collect e-mail addresses from your customers in day to day operations as well.
In theory, e-zine subscriber lists are golden. In practice, many e-zine readers are not quite the buyers they were hyped up to be. There are lots of freebie seekers in the subscriber files of some e-zines, and they are not prospects you want to reach. The lists of some e-zines are very good.
And some are very poor lists.
Renting opt-in e-mail lists will cost you from $100 to $300 per thousand. The trick is to test small quantities before you roll out, to see whether these lists are the right people for you or not.
An inexpensive alternative to solo e-mailings is to run classified ads in other peoples e-zines that link to your Web page. It costs far less per thousand. But many e-zines’ circulations are unqualified and unaudited. You need to test each one to see if they are the right list for you.
There’s no need to do War and Peace-length emails when you can split your copy neatly between the e-mail and the response page.
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