The email was from the Red Cross. I know the Red Cross, I respect them, I even sometimes donate. I was busy when the email arrived and probably the easiest way to have stopped me from opening the email would have been to say something dramatic and challenging like ‘Could you live like this?’ or ‘In Syria they’re operating on children without anaesthetics’ or ‘We’ve never needed your help more urgently’. I would have felt guilty about it, but I would have ignored it. Because I would have known they wanted my money.

Instead the subject line email subject line simply said:

A quick update

Three little words that made me relax.

A: not THE, not the most important thing in the world, just A. One little thing among many.

Quick: that’s good, won’t take up too much time.

Update: fine, it’s just going to tell me what’s happening, perhaps something I ought to know.

What it didn’t say was equally important. It didn’t lay guilt on me. It didn’t sound remotely challenging or difficult. It was just light and easy.

So I clicked and read it. It was also calmly, clearly written and didn’t pressurise me. I read much more of it than I expected to.

The key lesson is that people’s inboxes tend to be stressful places. They’re bombarded with incoming emails. Stuff to deal with, stuff to take time we haven’t got.

So being light and quick and easy and stress-free can be a marvellous way of letting people off the hook so they go, ‘OK, why not?’

Most big brands aren’t their customers’ friends. We might have an affection for them if they’re very lucky indeed. But even so we like to be treated with some respect. Most of all we don’t like them acting as if they really are our friends.

I recently received an email from PayPal with a subject line that read:

‘Piers Alder, what’s new for you?’

My first reaction was: why are you asking ME what’s new? If you’re emailing me then you’ve got a reason, haven’t you? Well tell me what it is then.

My second reaction was: And why are you talking to me like that, anyway? That’s how friends talk, and you’re not a friend. You’re a convenient service I use. Remember that and we’ll get along fine.

My third reaction was to muse on how much I dislike having my name in a subject line. It’s meant to show it’s a personal email to me, is that correct? Well I don’t believe it. I know how easy it is to ‘personalise’ an email, just like a letter, by shoving my name on it, even when it’s going out to millions of people. I don’t mind that generally, but putting it in the subject line just highlights its falseness. (When did a friend last put your name in the subject line of an email to you?)

I call that fake personalisation.

So, combining an inane fake question with a fake tone of voice with fake personalisation… and you’ve got an email I was not in the least inclined to open. When I eventually did (because I was writing this post) I discovered I’d missed the chance to win £100 worth of clothes. Not that I cared, but if I’d known what was in the email I might have opened it.

If my reaction were repeated across millions of people then it would have a serious impact. All because of a failure of tone, derived from a failure of attitude towards their customers. Something worth thinking about for any business.

One of the people who attended a recent course wrote:

I found this course very useful and it highlighted great ways of re-writing lifeless copy into exciting new text. I would certainly recommend this course to people who write for the web or produce other marketing materials.

Basically, you’ll be given a bunch of different techniques to use in your writing and – crucially – in editing your own writing. And you will be forced, mercilessly, to practise these techniques in a series of exercises. If you like you can bring along your own materials to get feedback from me and work on them during the day.

If you work in marketing, or have to play a marketing role as part of your job, or you simply want to be able to write more powerfully, then this course can help you.

Find out more about the next training day on the University College Falmouth website.

Some bright spark in the marketing department at Qantas, at a time when the airline was already beset with problems, decided to use Twitter to invite people to suggest ideas for their ‘dream luxury in-flight experience’. Oh dear. The tweets started coming in saying things like ‘Getting from A to B without plane being grounded or an engine catching fire’.

You can read the full story here.

It sometimes seems that companies display awesome credulity when told by self-appointed marketing experts that they need to be doing something or they’ll fall behind. Especially when there’s some truth in what the experts say. The latest marketing trend is of course to use social media – unless that’s already been superseded by something else. Before that the happening word was SEO and no marketing director could avoid using it in important meetings. And before that, I seem to remember, the buzz was around the importance of having your own content. All these things are still important, or can be, depending on your brand and your circumstances. It’s all a question of using these things intelligently.

Which brings us back to Qantas. When you’re failing to get the basics right, you don’t start chattering about luxury. That’s pretty basic. A prerequisite of being a luxury brand is doing whatever you do very well indeed. Seems Qantas forgot this in their urge to be all bright and clever and contemporary on Twitter. ‘Hey, why don’t we do some crowd sourcing on how we can add some cool sounding gimmicks to our first class service?’ It would save them thinking up the ideas themselves, show responsiveness to their customers, and generally give the person tasked with tweeting for Qantas something to do.

Except what it showed is that you can’t control social media, unlike old-fashioned ‘push’ technology. People on Twitter are pretty sarcastic. It’s dangerous territory. It’s especially dangerous territory for any company failing to get the basics right. Even the very act of sounding chirpy on Twitter when you keep messing up people’s travel plans is a mistake.

Perhaps it comes back to understanding tone of voice (and customer psychology). There are certain ways of talking, and writing, that are appropriate at different times and for different brands in particular circumstances. Speak in a totally inappropriate way and people will react with disdain or contempt or just not believe you.

Note that bouncy ‘Be creative!’ in the original Qantas tweet. Everything’s great here in social media land, it seems to say. Never mind the people stuck on the tarmac in Bangkok.

How to use email subject lines is an interesting little subject, if you’re interested in why people respond to some cues and not others. One of the great dangers is that people perceive an email as spam and don’t even bother opening it. So the general advice is don’t sound like spam. This is partly to avoid getting caught in spam filters, but also so as not to trigger people’s own spam antennae.

So I’d always advise against using all caps subject lines. Why? Because spammers use them and organisations I’ve signed up to generally don’t.

But then I came across this:

In an unequivocal A/B test it turned out that an all-caps subject line got 14% more people opening the email than the same subject line but in lower case. Like me, the company was surprised so they tried again with a different email: 20% more people opened this time.

What’s going on here? It could be that people recognise the company, know it’s not spam, and have their attention caught when otherwise they wouldn’t – because they get just so many emails. Essentially, this subject line worked because it stood out.

Well we know that as organisms we’re designed to register novelty not sameness. Novelty sells!

Another lesson: in the digital space, be direct. Say it as clearly as possible.

And using your own judgement? You can’t help but use your own judgement, but you have to test it, challenge it, and change it as often as you can. This is where research can be incredibly useful. A/B testing of emails, yes, but also of website home pages. Serve up two different versions of the same page and see which get a better response. You’ll often be surprised.

You can never know enough about people’s psychology when it comes to marketing, writing or selling. Much of that has to be instinctive, intuitive and ‘felt’, but not all. Or you’ll only succeed with people exactly like you.

Source: the immensely useful Which Test Won?

Or at least so some very limited data suggests – an internet entrepreneur found sales doubled after a spelling mistake was corrected on a clothing site. But it’s plausible. Tiny changes to ecommerce interfaces can make really big differences to the purchase rate on a website – like a 50% or even 100% difference. This small change to an email signup box made 122% difference to people signing up.

People are very easily put off in the digital environment. It’s partly because we’re all usually rushing from one thing to the next. Partly because we know there’s always another website or other digital distraction waiting for us to click on it. Partly because we’re wary of being scammed.

So what does a spelling mistake say about your site? (Let’s admit it – they’re easy to make. I’ve published spelling mistakes before. But that’s why I, and you, should get someone else to proof read, always.)

It depends a little on the spelling mistake. There are some that are just typing errors. Like writing ‘miskates’ instead of ‘mistakes’. Others, though, are because the person writing didn’t know it was wrong. Like writing ‘your’ instead of ‘you’re’.

The former kind says ‘we’re in a hurry’, ‘we’re a bit slapdash’ and possibly ‘we’re not very professional’.

The latter kind is worse. It says ‘we don’t know the right way to do things’. It suggests that beneath the veneer of credibility and professionalism, the people running the site are dodgy.

Of course, to people who don’t notice the spelling mistake it says nothing of the kind. But to those who do notice, it’s a big red danger signal. And, like nervous prey animals, online buyers are easily spooked.

It’s clear. Bad spelling costs money, and damages your brand.

Here’s the original story.

What it lacked was sincerity. It came across as a pose, as marketing copy so often can do.

The News of the World was in the business of holding others to account. It failed when it came to itself.

We are sorry for the serious wrongdoing that occurred.

We are deeply sorry for the hurt suffered by the individuals affected.

We regret not acting faster to sort things out.

I realise that apologising is not enough.

No one can doubt that this is a hard thing to write, and of course it would be impossible to solve News International’s problems by wording it better. It’s just intriguing to see an organisation that lives by the written and spoken word struggling to sound believable.

I think there are some clues as to why it fails. ‘The wrongdoing that occurred’ is a classic use of the passive when faced with an awkward situation. Like a bank saying ‘an error occurred in processing one of your transactions’, rather than saying simply ‘we made a mistake processing one of your transactions’. The wrongdoing just occurred. It’s not as if anyone actually did wrong. Or at least the letter doesn’t say so.

Then there’s the peculiar use of one sentence paragraphs. Well, not so peculiar in the world of tabloid newspapers – in fact standard practice. But it’s one thing sexing up a story about a footballer’s marital unfaithfulness or an opinion piece about why a politician is a plonker by delivering it in breathless one sentence paragraphs, stark and in your face. It’s quite another to do it in a letter expressing sincere remorse.

The letter comes across as if it was written with an eye to the gallery: self-consciously aware of the impact it’s making. As if it’s posing at the same time as grovelling. That’s never going to be convincing.

Then there’s that abrupt switch from the familiar corporate ‘we’ to ‘I’. Suddenly Rupert elbows aside the massed marketing teams and says ‘I realise that apologising isn’t enough’, and then he’s gone again. It has a certain impact, the sudden switch to I, but it jars. If it’s really Rupert Murdoch writing from his heart then it would all be from ‘I’. But of course it’s not, as its use of language reveals.

How else could the piece have been written? Maybe something more like:

‘I’m writing to the British people to say how deeply troubled and angry I am about the stories about News of the World journalists hacking the phones of innocent victims. I’m very, very sorry about the hurt that my organisation has caused…’

Well, the lawyers at News International probably wouldn’t have let it past. But one way or another, the letter they did publish came across like classic tabloid insincerity. And it came over like slick copywritten copy: copy that reeks of the professional writer using the tricks of his trade to portray ersatz emotion.

I’ve never liked copywritten copy even when it comes from my mobile phone company, let alone when an organisation is expressing remorse.

I couldn’t help but be amused this week when I read that Innocent Drinks had been a little, well, less than innocent when it came to dealing with its own charitable foundation.

The company proudly declares that it gives 10% of profits to charity. This is part of its innocent and wholesome image. But because Innocent hasn’t made any profits since 2007 the foundation hasn’t received a penny since then. In 2007 the company did make record profits, with the directors and other shareholders receiving £12m in dividends, while the foundation received  less than a million. (The dividends don’t come out of the profits; the profits are calculated after you reward yourself handsomely. Neat.)

On top of that, roughly half a million pounds of that money the foundation received was held in a company bank account as a ‘loan’ from the charitable foundation to the company. This was apparently to earn a higher rate of interest. Oh right. Except the charity didn’t get paid any interest until 2009. The interest went to Innocent, the company.

It’s not the most enlightening story. And, coming in the wake of the Coca Cola buyout last year, it just adds up to a feeling that the company isn’t innocent at all. It’s very worldly wise.

And as for that cuter than cute tone of voice, how irritating it sounds now! You’re not an innocent child, Innocent, so stop putting on that baby voice.

Names can make a bold claim that lies at the heart of your brand. But if you make big brand promises, and especially if you embed them in your name, by God you better live up to them. Once Innocent gets perceived as not being at all innocent, all the affection it has built up in people’s minds can turn sour – far sourer than if it had never claimed to be whiter than white and nicer than nice.

It all comes back to the importance of truth in good branding and marketing.

A big part of it is down to the techniques the writer is using. And you can learn those techniques.

The trouble is, few people who have to write as part of their job ever do. And this is even more important if you use writing to sell something – if you’re in a marketing department, for example, or directly interacting with customers.

One of the best and quickest ways to write better is to take the time to stop and think about what you’re doing and what you could be doing – to learn new ways of approaching and revising a piece of writing. Simply learning how to comb through and cut out repetition and flab can transform an average piece to something fresh and memorable.

That’s true whether you’re writing a blog post, a leaflet, a web page, a brochure, a press release or an advert. Or just an email to your boss.

So here’s a chance to learn some techniques to transform your writing. I’ll be running a one-day course in Bristol that takes you through a bunch of techniques for cutting out the crap, smoothing the flow, building the impact and adding punch when you sit down to write. It’s just six hours but it’s full on – and hands on too. You’ll do a lot of writing. It’s practical and it’s also going to be fun.

My aim is to get you to surprise yourself by how a good a writer you can be.

You’ll also get the chance to bring along existing marketing materials, which we’ll work on to sharpen their focus and improve their effectiveness (and style).

Date: 17 May 2011

Place: Arnos Manor Hotel, Bristol

More details at Bristol Media and University College Falmouth.

I’ve run this course and similar ones on numerous occasions and just to give you an idea of the impact it can have, here are a couple of things people wrote about it afterwards:

‘Piers provided a great insight into how writing works and the course has given me the inspiration to approach my own writing from a fresh perspective’

‘This was a great course, really helpful and very enjoyable’

‘I would certainly recommend this course to people who write for the web or produce other marketing materials’

The course is run by the very dynamic Professional Writing team at University College Falmouth.

We have two different versions of a sign-up box for email updates, the kind of thing most the ecommerce sites in the world have. And the kind of thing most ecommerce sites would love to double the number of people clicking on.

Here they are:

One of these got 122% more people signing up. The only difference is that one has a short line of text telling you that 14,000+ people have already signed up.

So which was it?

In an online survey over 75% of people – and these would be people interested in the field, very likely web professionals – chose the wrong one.

The answer is that second sign-up box got 122% more people clicking, in a simple A/B test (where some users see one, some see the other, and you compare numbers signing up on each).

So how come? The first sign-up box tells you that lots of other people have signed up, which gives you evidence it’s not a stupid thing to do, in fact it’s a desirable thing to do. Yet more clicked on the second. Why?

Because the first one is more cluttered. It’s got more going on. In a high pressure world of too much to do, too much information noise around us, we want the simple. We want the clean and easy.

More information often means less goes in. Less in absolute terms, not just as a smaller proportion of the larger total.

If you look again at the two sign-up boxes, you may notice that the second is easier to get to grips with. You look at it, and you get it. The first one takes longer. You look at it, sort of get it, then you have to read that extra line of text with a statistic in it. The statistic is oddly offputting.

Decisions online can be massively influenced by these kinds of considerations. Making things a little bit easier for customers at the right point can literally double your sales. Don’t ignore these insights.

And, when it comes to information, the utmost vigilance is needed to provide only the information that counts at that point in the process users are going through, otherwise you’re driving people away.

Source: the extremely useful Which Test Won? website