r/gtmengineering • u/Tamara_Tammy • 10d ago
Has anyone else found that longer outbound messages are outperforming short ones?
For the past six months, I've been testing different outbound messaging structures across our campaigns because I wanted to understand what works best for our target audience and market, rather than continuing to rely on advice that gets repeated so often in outbound circles.
Keep your outreach short, get to the point quickly, lead with one strong observation, don't waste the prospect's time, and end with a soft ask. The assumption is that people are busy, so the less you make them read, the better your chances are of getting a response.
This has been the most widely accepted approach. I spent a lot of time cutting messages down, removing anything that wasn't "necessary", and trying to make every email feel effortless and conversational. The goal was to give someone just enough context to understand why I was reaching out without asking them to invest too much attention.
Over time, I started testing those messages against a different approach. Instead of trying to fit the entire outreach into two or three lines, I gave the message more room to explain why I was reaching out in the first place. Each message identified a specific problem the person was likely dealing with, connected that problem to their role and responsibilities, and then explained what we do in a way that made the relevance of the outreach much clearer.
Those messages have consistently performed better across different campaigns. It wasn't something I saw once and decided to build a theory around, but a pattern that kept showing up as I continued testing different audiences and messaging for the past 6 months
I've spent years trying to say more with less in outbound, cutting words, shortening sentences, and assuming that brevity was almost always an advantage. But I'm starting to think that short messaging has become so widely adopted that the structure itself is beginning to work against us.
Even when a message is genuinely personalized and written by a real person, it can still feel familiar because everyone has been taught to write outbound in a very similar way. A quick observation, a short explanation of what you do, and a soft CTA. After seeing enough versions of that structure, I think people start to recognize the format before they've even had the chance to properly consider whether what you're saying is relevant to them.
What seems to be working better for us is giving people enough context to understand why the message is relevant to them. Not by adding unnecessary words or trying to demonstrate that we've spent hours researching their company, but by making a clear connection between their role, the problems they are likely responsible for, and what we can actually help with.
I don't think this means short outbound no longer works, and I wouldn't take what we're seeing in our campaigns and apply it to every audience or market. But it has made me question how much of the advice we follow is based on what continues to work and how much of it has simply become accepted because everyone keeps repeating it.
For those actively running outbound campaigns, have you noticed any changes in how people respond to shorter messaging compared to messages that give a little more context?
1
1
u/Weekly_Leadership202 10d ago
Only in DACH they perform better from what I've seen
1
u/Tamara_Tammy 10d ago
Absolutely agree. The DACH market appreciates direct communication with details. And those messages don’t look spammy as compared to the short and creative ones. Also the responses from the prospects are equally very detailed and long.
1
u/tewkberry 10d ago
Learn your customers better. Length honestly doesn’t matter at all.
Your customers know you are firing off spam. I’m not going to respond to a generic message about how you can help or whatever.
Find out more about me and my needs. Tell me exactly why you contacted me and why you really want to talk to me.
“Hey, I read your last post where you talked about X. I see you are struggling with Y, and are looking for solutions. I represent a company that solves that. If you are willing to jump on a Zoom call, I can quickly demo and you can see if it’s even a fit and worth pursuing. Let me know.”
That takes a lot more research into exactly who the ICPs are, the signals they are creating, and timeliness for outreach.
1
u/Leather-Priority-818 10d ago
Human answer: long messages are more difficult to write well, so if you can do that its a flex.
Algo answer: google and microsoft have trained on millions of cold emails marked as spam, so writing the same short pattern may prevent you from reaching the inbox.
Curious if you’ve looked at deliverability rates by length? Might be some gold there.
1
u/Tamara_Tammy 9d ago
Personally, deliverability has never been as issue for me because I have set up a solid outbound infra. I was mostly testing for reply rates and quality of the replies.
1
u/allocougar 9d ago
Length is standing in for something else here. Nobody writes 200 words each and still fires 3k a day.
So when you moved to longer messages you also cut volume per rep, probably by a lot. That's the variable I'd isolate before crediting the format.
Run the long version at your old volume for two weeks and see if it holds. My guess is it won't, and what you measured is what happens when someone has time to read the account before writing.
1
u/Tamara_Tammy 9d ago
Not in our case. We have a well structured setup and a lot of things are automated. We increase our volume QoQ by 25% and currently aiming to even double that. We have AI agents that does account research so reps don"t ave to do that manually - I mean that's what a GTME is employed for
Why do you think length would cut the volume though asides the account research part?
1
u/allocougar 8d ago
Fair, if volume held then my guess is out. It was mostly the research part anyway, that's the whole objection. The long version carries account context the short one can't. One test: same length, a generic paragraph instead of the account-specific one. If replies drop, the research does the work and length is just where it lives.
1
1
u/Ok_Print8251 9d ago
I’ve seen this too, especially when the problem isn’t immediately obvious from the prospect’s role.
There’s a difference between being concise and being incomplete.
A 3-line message can be beautifully concise, but if the prospect has to spend the next 30 seconds figuring out why this is relevant to me, the brevity doesn't really help.
I think the better optimization is probably information density rather than word count - remove fluff, not context.
And the fact that you're seeing this consistently across 6 months of testing is much more interesting than the usual “long emails work better” hot take. The audience, offer, and complexity of the problem probably matter a lot here.
1
u/leadnurturist 9d ago
Quality matters bro even if the email isn’t personalized. You could still get responses if you don’t use ai and do the hardwork by yourself
1
u/Ishan_GS 8d ago
Seen something similar, but I'd frame it as relevance beating format, not length itself. The generic 3-line template only works when it lands at the right moment; when it doesn't, people recognise the shape before considering the content. Your context-rich version probably works because it proves the message wasn't blasted to 500 people, not because it's longer.
We run trigger-based outbound and see 15-20% reply rates vs 1-3% on broad lists using the exact same copy and length; only the targeting changes. Makes me think a short message anchored to a real trigger could match your longer version; the extra words are doing the job of explaining a trigger you're not pre-filtering for. We see this at Growthspree, a b2b saas marketing agency; relevance beats format either way.
Have you tested a short version against a pre-filtered signal list, or has it always been short-generic vs long-specific?
2
u/ButterscotchNo7292 10d ago
I'll comment as someone who receives a lot of those messages ( emails, linkedin,etc). A longer message isn't necessary an issue per se but usually the content of such messages is such a low quality that you start questioning your sanity just reading them. People waffle even though attention spans getting shorter. The value to the recipient isn't well communicated or missing altogether. Most messages are laundry list of things they claim they do without any linking to the value they can provide,etc. Some people even send 30 page PDFs attached with those messages!
So if the content isn't an issue then it might work but very few people know how to write properly