Here’s a good example of why it makes sense to really think about your prospects as real people when it comes to copywriting. So often, we all revert to a pompous “business mode” when writing sales letters or web pages, forgetting that our readers are just ordinary people with much more in common with us than not. They want things explained clearly, succinctly, and in an accessible way. Quite often, what they get is semi-impenetrable waffle which is infinitely more complicated than necessary. We might think it makes us more authoritative, but really it just makes us less attractive to do business with.
Here at BMON, we use two separate services to send out our daily article by email. This is for historical reasons, and we ought to combine the lists into one. Now, from a technical point of view, one of the services is more focused on the job we need it to do, and is the more efficient of the two. However, the other service is just so appealing that, well, we’d all regard it as letting down a friend if we left. Does that make business sense? No. But are we human? Yes.
The service we should probably drop is Mailchimp, because it’s overkill for our needs. But take a look around their website, which is a model of clarity and friendliness. The “back end”, as a user, is just as nice, if not more so. We’d miss them if we went.
I’m not suggesting that your website should feature talking monkeys. But read some of the copy on your website and ask yourself: “Would our best salesman talk like this to a regular customer?”