Wow, I’ve just gotten another one of those mouthy emails. You know the kind. They drone on and on about everything under the sun without getting to the point. This one was a doozie. I copied just the message part and pasted it into Word and it came to 3,028 words. Now if you estimate a single double spaced page being 300 words we’re talking about a 10 page email!
I’m a copywriter and I’ve heard all the arguments about short copy vs. long copy. I’m pretty sure these folks know what they’re doing when it comes to online business but I’ll be honest. I lost interest in the email about 35% of the way into it. It was so tedious that it just wasn’t worth the effort.
Now here’s the amazing part. This was a top level marketer. He was offering free information that most probably would have been helpful. Yet, his boring, tedious, long-winded approach turned me away. I’m even seriously considering unsubscribing from his newsletter. I’ve got several newsletter writers like that.
Apparently they think that since they have all he time in the world to write wads of words into an email I have just as much time to read that massive mess of soap-box diatribe.
In a world where attention span is so short that as a copywriter I have like 3 seconds to capture someone’s attention these marketers are bloating their messages with frilly fluff that is actually shooting themselves in the foot. How is it that people can succeed on the web and then ignore everything they’ve learned? Why do they turn to bad methodology after they’ve succeeded?
I guess it’s just one of those marketing mysteries that we’ll never solve.