The human voice
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Previous topic: Approaches to newsletter writing
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So what do we mean by the human approach? Well, it's the combination of a human voice and a personality.
What makes a human voice? Let's keep it simple:
- One to one communication.
- First-person approach.
- Absence of jargon.
- Honesty and absence of pushiness.
This human voice is nothing more than speaking to the reader as you would if they were across the table from you in the coffee shop.
You're not addressing an audience. Each recipient of your email is sitting alone in front of a screen. They're not sitting in a crowd of people all hearing the message simultaneously.
Your subscription list may number 100,000 readers, but each person still gets your message as an individual. So Rule No. 1 is to write as if the email was a one-on-one communication.
So you're having coffee and a conversation with a reader. Would you say, "Brownlow, Inc is pleased to announce the launch of our auto-comb" or "I'm excited because we've just launched..."? Rule No. 2 is to use "I" and "we" where possible, and don't talk about yourself in the third person. Remember, talk like a real person.
Would a real person put down their coffee cup, look the reader in the eye and say, "Dear coffee consumer, as an experienced user of automatic hair care products, we know you'll value the new TX7 sidewinder technology in the auto-comb"? I don't think so. Rule No.3 is to skip the jargon; talk normally.
And since we're talking about building a long-term relationship, one built on trust and respect, then we need rule No. 4, which is to be honest. If you have an ulterior motive, don't be overt about it. Think about all I said about providing valuable content and having the readers' interests at heart. I can't put it better than Kim MacPherson...
"True relationship-building dialogue is about engaging those subscribers so completely that they yearn for the next issue to arrive. It's about losing the "pitch" and, instead, having a one-to-one conversation with them. It's also about taking a good, hard look at what people signed up for and making sure you're truly "delivering the goods."
Exceptions to the rules
A rule wouldn't be a rule without a few exceptions. As always, there may be cases where the combination of audience, publication and publisher objectives means you should break a rule. For example, addressing your reader as a member of a group might be more appropriate...
- Where the email is intended to come across as a broadcast message.
- Where you want to emphasize the value or values of the group or community to which the reader belongs.
The President of the USA might prefer to start his newsletter with "Dear Americans", to mirror a public broadcast and emphasize shared values.
I can also imagine circumstances where the third person might come across better. If you want to establish distance from your readers, perhaps to reinforce a hierarchy, tradition or venerable institution. Think Queen Elizabeth II or the Pope. (Does the Pope have an email newsletter?)
The friendly, first person approach is suited to talking to people as equals, which is a solid basis on which to build trust. If you want to talk at a different level, then a different approach might be required.
For some audiences, jargon is speaking normally. But don't confuse specialist vocabulary with jargon. Use the vocabulary shared by your readers, but remember rule 1. It's a one-on-one conversation, so the jargon prevalent at group meetings, conferences, trade shows, etc. is not desirable.
Even marketers, the undisputed champions of turning simple concepts and expressions into jargon-filled grammar nightmares, have expressed a clear preference for those newsletters that talk normally.
Human voice - human face?
When people talk of a human voice, there is often the assumption that this is only something a human can do. In other words, can a corporate newsletter, for example, have a human voice when it's ostensibly published by a faceless marketing department?
The human voice can be used for just about any newsletter, regardless of who publishes this newsletter.
It's a way of communicating that certainly implies that there's a human being involved, but it can remain just that - an implication. Indeed, that's one of the benefits of the human voice - it adds a human element to the newsletter and touches readers at a level that a "department" or "company" can't reach.
In most cases, a newsletter promotes a product, service, website or organization in some way. Even if your objectives are non-commercial, you'll still be promoting the newsletter itself. As such, most newsletters come from a "place" or "object" rather than a "person". The issue is then how much of a human face you can put on that "place".
Having names (and faces) associated with a newsletter has its own benefits. It's an additional reference point for readers. It gives them something more to relate to. It strengthens the personal nature of the reader relationship and gives them the sense that they're interacting with a human and not a machine.
In addition, it's very hard to give a newsletter any kind of credible personality if there is no name or person (whether real or invented) attached to that newsletter. So I always recommend that every newsletter have at least one name attached to it, even if it's just the editor listed in the administrative section.
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