11.18: Long Informative Messages
- Write a long informative message.
While long informative messages can be delivered through a variety of mediums, they will typically hit the same beats regardless of the delivery method. As with all business messages, it’s important to keep concision in mind. While there certainly are more complex messages that require longer communications, remember to stay focused and only provide the information your audience needs.
The Message
This example is an email message providing a sales team with suggested verbiage for mass messaging to partners and retailers.
To: Rize Outreach Team
CC: Rize Executive Team
Subject: Happy New Year from Rize Fitness
From: Regina Black
Hello Team,
The following is the standard messaging for our long-term partners and coaches about our work in the past year. Please feel free to customize this message based on your knowledge of the gyms within your regions. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. Here’s to a great year!
As we begin the new year, I can’t help but reflect and acknowledge it’s an exciting time to be working in fitness.
Reviewing what we accomplished last year collectively across all of our gyms and our partners’ gyms, we’re proud to announce that we finished 2017 with record-smashing enrollment figures: 230,000 members across 48 gyms during 2017! We’re on track for even faster growth in 2018, with at least three new gyms opening next year.
But memberships and new locations are just part of the story. In the end, those figures are only meaningful if we are also improving our members’ lives. In 2017 we saw important progress in measurably improving not only our members’ physical health, but improving their mindsets about healthy lifestyles by introducing our new “Healthy Life Healthy You” classes.
As 2018 rolls forward, I feel it’s important to be deliberate about the commitments Rize is making to you, as well as the change Rize exists to create for its members. We commit to make fitness achievable and rewarding for all individuals, regardless of their particular goals or needs.
In 2018 and beyond, Rize is growing in ways that expand our collective impact. I invite you to read my recent blog post [1] highlighting some of our recent findings and success stories that confirm we’re on a promising path.
Thank you, on behalf of the full Rize team, for your partnership and support. I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback about the blog post, and your own reflections about your goals and challenges in our work together. Please reach out.
Best,
Regina
The situational context of a message is key to its success. Some messages will be targeted for internal employees with a specific call to action to use the text provided to expand a marketing effort. Others work as a means of communicating with customers and would-be customers to rebut apparent negative comments from competitors. Others may bring an array of products and services together conceptually for greater understanding for the targeted audience. Still others will deliver lengthy product feature details in a casual, friendly and unassuming manner.
Delivery Methods
Long informative messages can utilize multiple communication vehicles. The primary delivery methods you’ll run across are email, blog, presentation, and podcast.
- Emails can be considered the “default” delivery method for business messages. While they can be effective if written well (after all, they’re delivered directly to the person you hope will receive the message), they can also appear bland if not executed correctly.
- A blog can be used to inform about, promote, and build a brand. It can also serve to personalize a brand by showcasing the perspectives of those who work at the company or it can serve to build a community by promoting the work of outside authors.
- Presentations are a great way to communicate large amounts of detailed information or utilize graphics to convey complex ideas to a defined audience. Graphics can be utilized to inform the audience of several connected ideas.
- Podcasts can be quite effective as informative messages. They give businesses an opportunity to engage in more casual conversation, but they can still be packed with very detailed functionality information about how the products or applications work and serve customers.
- Note that in a real email, this would be the perfect place to include a link to give reciepients the opportunity to further engage with your content!
Contributors and Attributions
- Long Informative Messages. Authored by : Robert Danielson. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution