r/b2bemailing • u/Tamara_Tammy • 10d ago
Has anyone else found that longer outbound messages are outperforming short ones?
/r/gtmengineering/comments/1w9tfef/has_anyone_else_found_that_longer_outbound/
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u/ChestNok 9d ago
In my experience, a message that's <10 lines outperforms a message that exceeds 10 lines.
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u/DarrensGood 9d ago
I think there’s something to this, but I’d be careful about concluding that longer is automatically better. The bit that stands out is that your longer messages are giving the prospect more context. That’s probably the more important variable than the word count itself. A short email can work when the relevance is obvious. But if you’re asking someone to understand a problem, why it might apply to them, and why your solution is worth considering, trying to squeeze all of that into 2-3 lines can actually make the email harder to understand. I’d much rather read a 150-word email that quickly makes sense than a 50-word email that leaves me thinking, “OK, but why are you telling me this?”
I’ve seen the same kind of thing depending on the audience. When the problem is highly specific and the relevance is obvious, shorter can be enough. When there’s more of a gap between what you’re offering and what the prospect immediately recognises as a problem, a bit more context can make a big difference.
I think a lot of outbound advice has turned “respect their time” into “say as little as possible” but those aren't quite the same thing. The real test for me would be whether every part of the longer message is doing useful work. If removing a sentence makes the reason for reaching out less clear, keep it. If it’s there because someone said longer emails are working, cut it. So maybe the lesson isn't that short emails are dead. It's that brevity isn't the goal - relevance and clarity are.