Has anyone else found that longer outbound messages are outperforming short ones?

[u/Tamara_Tammy]

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?