Lately I have been seeing many marketing messages that are rather lengthy and very verbose.  With so many marketing messages flying at us, don’t you think it would be better to be descriptive in as few words as possible?  You can always give an option to go to a web page for more information. Let’s face it, most of us do not have time to sift through a long message to get to the details.  I myself am finding it difficult to get through online newsletters with more than 2 stories.

If a marketing message is too long and the main points are not easily highlighted, I hit delete.

I believe one of the reasons Twitter is so popular is the fact we are forced to limit the amount of words to communicate a thought.  A link is provided for more information.  You can still be creative with your 140 characters to make it memorable.

Emails should follow these rules too. For example, today I sent out an email invitation that was really succinct.  We used one sentence to give details, one sentence to describe the event and then attached links to the website and a YouTube.  Many people actually took the time to write us back to tell us they were forwarding to other people.  I believe that if the email was longer trying to describe every detail, no one would want to forward it.

So I challenge all of you marketers out there to take into consideration your audience members’ valuable time.  Use your time to create copy that is short and sweet, memorable and to the point.   This way, people will more likely read it and pass it on.

Cheers to happy and loyal audiences,