Effective writing that gets a response is written for busy people. The message should be constrained to a single idea. The message should be brief, reducing as many words as possible.
The longer a message is the more time people think the task will take. In the Book “Writing For Busy Readers”, the authors tested a request for a survey. Resonse rate doubled when the number of words was cut down from 127 to 49. In another example, donations increased 16% when deleting every other paragraph in a fundraising email.
Read In favour of simple writing.
See also:
- Always give the summarizing idea first prevents the reader for having to dig for the point, so does a BLUF
- The Pyramid Principle has many techniques for business writing
- Business writing should always answer a key question (similar to “a single idea” raised in this article)