Do You Worry About Your Copy Being Too Long?

Image credit: ​Pixabay

One of my project clients asked a question about his email campaign "How long should it be?" 

They wondered if a long email campaign makes sense, if it would increase the readership. But they have reservations.

Today people seem to have shorter attention spans. 

They can't hold a conversation for 5 mins without checking their phone now and then. 

They can't read anything longer than a tweet. 

So...
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Should You Go Long or Short? ​
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I’m often amused when the "gurus" swear "Your demo should NEVER be more than 2 minutes" or "Keep your email really short".

Let's consider this example.

Assume you're a great guy and looking for a girlfriend on an online dating site.  

Girl A's profile is short like this:
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Girl B's profile has more information like this:

​Which one would you be more likely to meet? 

I think the answer is pretty obvious, you want to know EVERYTHING about the girl, the more details, the better. (Oops, Elizabeth #SorryNotSorry) 

In a sense, it's less about the length and more about the content. 

Have you watched "The Walking Dead" or "Game of Thrones"? Both have considerably lengthy seasons and episodes. (Source for The Walking Dead: http://walkingdead.wikia.com/wiki/Episode, Source for "Game of thrones: http://www.slashfilm.com/game-of-thrones-season-7-episode-lengths/)

Yet, you couldn't miss an episode. 

There are plenty of shorter TV shows out there, but you don't necessarily want to watch them, do you? 

In a word, there's correlation between interest and time being invested. 


With that said...

Not All Copies Need to be a Stephen King Novel: Long vs. Short, Things to Consider
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Here are a couple of things to consider: 

#1. It's about them. (your audience). 

For example, people who work in scientific fields tend to be more receptive to a longer copy. If they're somewhat interested, they tend to gather as many facts as possible. 

A friend of mine (an engineer...) can't even buy a shampoo without reading every word printed on the bottle...It drives me nuts. 


#2 Complexity and/or price of your products/services

You may want to spend a little bit more time explaining how the product/service works especially when people aren't necessarily familiar with it. 

It may be overkill to craft a long email if you plan a campaign on toothpaste.