Short or long copy?

This is one of the most common questions asked by direct mailers.  Should you do a few lines - or even cut everything down to a paragraph or a postcard; or should you go on for three pages - or even ten pages as I saw recently?

The answer to this arises from most of the other theoretical answers here... and the answer is that much of the time it doesn't really matter. The length of the copy does not affect your sales nearly as much what you say and how you say it, especially at the beginning and end.

In other words, where people do find a big difference between short and long copy it is usually because of what was written, not because of whether it was short or long.

There are of course some general pointers that go beyond this - mostly you would expect long copy to work with more literate people and with people who are buying products that contain a lot of copy.

So if you are selling Readers' Digest subscriptions or subscriptions to Which? magazine, you might well expect to write quite a lot, since the people you are looking for are people who read quite a lot.

If you are selling to people who are not by their very nature academic or regular book readers, then you might well cut down on the words because the mere existence of a lot of text might put them off you - irrespective of what you say.

But these points are fairly obvious.  Beyond them is something else.

As we have seen elsewhere, the key point in a mailshot is whether you can get a person beyond the five second barrier so that they stay with your message, either by reading on or by filling in the form, picking up the phone, or whatever you want.

You can write 30 words, 300 words or 3000 words and it makes no odds if the opening puts the person off so they don't read on.

The length is thus not a prime issue in itself except that you have to think about the relationship between the people to whom you want to sell and print. The key thing is the way you write. If you spend the whole piece rambling on about features the chances are that you will sell less than if you use one of the four standard ways of selling via direct mail, that are outlined on this site.

Where the long or short copy does come to the fore is in the issue of variability.  In the theoretical piece on Maslow it is argued that more and more people are reaching the 5th level of his hierarchy and so want to express their individuality.   This means the chances are that in many mailings you are quite likely to have some members of your audience that respond best to short, some who respond best to long, and quite probably one or two who would sooner than you send them an orange.

So the first time round, send a long one, the second time round send a short one.

Where this is not possible, my own solution is to keep it to one page and write about 300 words.  That has the benefit that the headline and the PS, the most important parts of the work, are on the same page.  Even those people who are not particularly happy with lots of print do not get phased by this.  They don't read it all, of course, but they tend to take in the headline, placed always one third of the way down the page, and if that grabs them, they tend to read the PS too.

Short or long copy therefore is not a major deciding factor.  It is, as always, what you write and whether you are using one of the four factors.

Free analysis of your mailshot

This article is written by Tony Attwood, Chairman of Hamilton House Mailings Ltd.  If you would like to discuss the writing or design of your mailing campaign, or indeed a single mailshot, with Tony, without cost or obligation, just call 01536 399 000, or email Creative@hamilton-house.com   You can also send Tony a copy of your latest advert and he will call you back with his thoughts on how your response rate could be raised - again without cost or obligation.