Finding the Forest In Spite of the Trees

Trying something different to reach your audience...and get better response rates.

Sometimes we’re too close to what we’re doing to see how it could be better. Thanks to my position as an outsider on my client's project, it only took me about two hours on Monday to help him get a 200%+ lift in responses on an email campaign. He was trying to reach C-level execs on Sales Force.

He was grateful and I was really glad to help, but my point is that my distance from his project has at least as much to do with our success as my writing skill. I’m increasingly convinced that everyone could be a 10X better communicator if they would take just these three steps:

1. Write down what you know about the audience you’re trying to reach in as much detail as possible

2. Write down what you want that audience to know and/or do as a result of reading your message.

3. Put these away for a few days and when you come back to your document, put yourself in your audience’s shoes before you start writing. Consider where they’ll be when they receive your message, what other things will be pulling on their attention, and what you could say—as shortly and sweetly as possible—to get them to take the action you want them to take.

If you don’t have a few days to kill, get help from someone (friend, spouse, customer, colleague), ideally outside your company. Show them your lists from items 1 and 2 above and then ask them what they see as the key benefit/message/etc.

When you're ready to write, focus on that ONE key message and explain it in concrete detail as quickly as possible. (Freewriting is a good way to access some good right-brain insights on how to do this.)

In the case of my client, we asked a favor (“could you forward this info to the appropriate person?”) and built the subject line and message based on that request. For an audience of CXOs who are receiving pitches everyday, requesting a favor stands out from an inbox full of catchy subject lines marketing features and benefits.