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(Part one of ‘Effective copywriting: the basics‘.)

Relevance means connecting your message with your audience. Before you start writing, you must really understand your message and your audience. So good copywriting depends on preparation.

This isn’t relevant:

Don’t be like the monster.

Understand your Unique Reason for Joining

The message of membership packs or other material is the URJ. URJ is Unique Reason for Joining. It encapsulates why people would want to join your organisation.

An effective URJ should be:

• Crystal-clear
• Memorable
• Compelling
• Unique

Your organisation needs to be absolutely confident about its URJ. It’s not unusual for there to be some tension within an organisation over its URJ. Don’t let internal struggles compromise the URJ!

Understand your audience(s)

Relevant writing addresses their needs in their language.

Segment your audience

Don’t lump everyone in together. Different people in your audience will have different needs. Sometimes those needs will conflict. In any case, you don’t want to distract people with information that isn’t relevant to them.

Here’s an example of segmentation at work:

So think about how your audience falls into different groups. Here are some very simple example segments:

• Existing members/non-members
• Individuals/corporations
• Chief Executives/Front-line staff
• Warm-prospects/cold-prospects

Now you can target each group with much more focussed marketing material. For example, a new joiners pack will be different from a membership renewal pack.

What if you don’t have the budget to create several versions of your membership material? You should at least check that it contains something for each major group. You could also divide pages up by audience segment. Flag each part of the page using suitable subheadings and graphics.

Create concrete personas

Ask yourself, what do I safely know about my readers?

• What are their needs, desires and fears?
  Effort, professional status, risk, ill-health…
• What is their history with your organisation?
  First contact, very familiar, recognise the name…
• Where are they likely to be reading this material?
  Over their cornflakes, at their desk…

Beware of making assumptions or being patronising.

Build up a file of real-life encounters. You can use complaints, news items, quotes from events, telephone messages.

Now you have an idea of the language your readers use, who they are, and how they will approach your membership material.

Put it all together into an imaginary person – a persona. The better you can imagine what they’re really like, the better you can write for them.

Visualise as you write

Put the preparation to work when you write. Imagine your reader sitting across the desk from you. You should have a good idea of what kind of person they are, and how they will react to what you are writing.

This helps you avoid the trap of writing marketingese.

I try to imagine reading what I have written out aloud to my reader. If I would feel uncomfortable saying it to their face, it indicates that I should rewrite it.

» Read part two: ‘Effective copywriting is persuasive’ »