Gregg Blanchard September 1, 2021
Oh, sure, you could scroll down and get a spoiler, but bear with me as I talk this through a little bit.
When you write an email to your boss, you probably try to keep it clean and concise. You get right to the point because you know that your boss won't read that email if you get too wordy. There's always someone who writes super long emails in every company, but you ain't that person!
Patrick,
I just wrote a really fabulous article about email word count. I need your approval before I push publish and we double our growth overnight. Draft is attached.
Please give me thumbs up or edits by tomorrow at 3pm ET.
Thanks,
Gregg
That email? A tidy 43 words long.
Or perhaps you're emailing the printer about that awesome swag they're going to get ready for the next show.
Once again, you know that some people would get too wordy and waste valuable minutes and seconds of that scrappy small business owner's life but not you!
Sally,
We've got a show coming up in 3 weeks. Last-minute decision so sorry for late notice. Could we get 200 more hats printed (same style as order #00141) by then? Would need them by Friday, Sep 21 at the latest.
Just let me know if that's doable. Thanks!
Gregg
This email? Slightly longer at 50 words.
Heck, you might even email your significant other once in a while instead of chatting or texting.
But are you gonna drone on and on? No way, you're not that kind of significant other. You manifest your love in brevity.
Do you remember which Lego set we decided to get Sam for his birthday? It got deleted out of my Amazon cart for some reason.
That email comes in at just 25 words.
Yet I just ran a query on one of our databases and found the average word count across more than 130,000 email campaigns and do you know what it was?
A surprising 347 words.
How long is 347 words? The exact length of this post.