Give Your B2B Marketing Materials a SMOG Test and Find Out if They Read like Newsweek or The IRS Tax Code (Part Two)

Overview of Findings from Part One

In Part One , we looked at the benefits page of enterprise software company, IQNavigator of Denver. IQNavigator technology helps large organizations manage all of the services they outsource to other companies.

It being a benefits page, I was stunned to find its Flesch Reading Ease index at zero in Microsoft Word. So, Part One was dedicated to giving IQNavigator a completely fair review. This meant we had to accomplish two things:

• Ensure Word was accurately assessing the passage
• Prove the Flesch Reading Ease metric itself was a reasonable measure

We found Word's calculation of Flesch Reading Ease to be reliable because:

• My spreadsheet calculation, while slightly negative, basically agrees with Word's zero finding
• The freely downloadable Java Application called Flesh also scored the passage at zero

The Flesch Reading Ease metric proved to be trustworthy. To come to this conclusion, we analyzed the passage using another measure called SMOG (Simple Measure of Gobbledygook).

Whereas Flesch Reading Ease index rates how easy it is to read a passage on a scale of 0 to 100, SMOG gauges how hard it is to read a passage by calculating the proportion of words with 3 or more syllables.

The SMOG Calculator of G. Harry McLaughlin (its founder) rated the passage as more difficult than the Harvard Business Review yet slightly less difficult than The IRS Tax Code. This is a vote of confidence for the Flesch Reading Ease as a metric and for the results shown in Word.

Why Should IQNavigator Care?

The IQNavigator benefits page is very difficult to read. If we can make it easier to read, IQNavigator will attract new business and deepen its position with existing customers.

Copywriting Tune-up (Part Two)

Clearly, IQNavigator has the right idea dedicating a webpage to call-out their benefits. Still, as we've seen with other enterprise software companies, they write in third person voice and use passive sentences. This makes it harder for anyone to read and understand no matter what their IQ.

IQNavigator wisely uses bullet points to enumerate their benefits; however, each bullet makes for long and dense reading.

So, the challenge for this tune-up is to:

• Inject the second person voice
• Eliminate passive sentences
• Maintain an appropriate corporate tone
• Make the benefits easier to understand
• Convert each lengthy bullet into several shorter ones

Before	After
Fast cost savings, Ongoing investment Enterprises in diverse industries have found that sustainable cost savings and process improvements can be achieved through implementation of an end-to-end services procurement and optimization solution. IQNavigator's market-leading solution provides several bottom-line benefits: Cost reduction: Reduce costs by 10-35% by implementing best -practices for sourcing services, eliminating manual invoice reconciliation, gaining consistent terms and renegotiating with more accurate spending and performance information, and enforcing approvals for all spending, contract extensions and exceptions. Process efficiencies: Automate the procurement and payment processes to reduce cycle time and cost over 70% while improving the resulting services quality, contract terms, and payment speed and accuracy. Manage compliance risks: Ensure compliance with company policies, supplier contract terms and government regulations through configurable compliance rules and approval requirements, and enforcement of contract terms and rates. Financial compliance is also achieved through spending approval requirements and process controls, auditability, and accurate invoicing and cost allocation. Optimization: Improve the business results achieved through outside services by aligning services spending with business priorities and initiatives, continually improving deliverable quality and value, and linking purchased services to internal key business measures. IQNavigator's distinctive business intelligence capabilities provide visibility and analysis capabilities into spending, supplier performance, and business results.	Gain Control over the Service Procurement Life Cycle Join the companies in every sector who have reduced their costs and streamlined their processes with a complete solution to manage the services they procure and the quality of the services performed. Address this challenge head-on and you can: Lower your costs by 10 - 35%. Adopt the best practices to procure services. Stop reconciling invoices manually. Standardize the terms in your contracts. Renegotiate your contracts using more accurate spending and performance information. Enforce approvals for all your spending, contract extensions, and exceptions. When you automate your procurement and payment processes, you will: Reduce cycle time and related costs by 70%. Improve the quality of the services performed. Gain better control over contract terms, accuracy, and speed of payment. Setup compliance rules so you can: Ensure your company complies with its own policies, suppliers' contract terms and government regulations. Meet your financial compliance goals with approval requirements, process controls, audit specifications, and accurate invoicing and cost allocations. Enjoy better performance from your service providers when you: Match your spending with your business priorities. Link the services you purchase to your key business metrics. Improve the quality and value of the specifications you give to your service providers. See the relationships among spending, supplier performance, and business results when you apply the unique business intelligence capabilities of IQNavigator.

Readability Statistics

In Part One , we promised to use composite results for Flesch Reading Ease and SMOG. We found consistent results across all the different tools. The only real deviation was Aella Lei's Writing Sample Analyzer with a Flesch Reading Ease of 11.05 for the Before snippet.

Averaged across 3 different tools (Word, Flesh, and Writing Sample Analyzer), the Before snippet scores a 3.68. The After snippet, with an average of 36.60, improves the Flesch Reading Ease composite by a factor of 9.95.

The SMOG composite is the average of results from the SMOG Calculator and Writing Sample Analyzer's FOG measure. The Before snippet scored a 20.67 – well into IRS Tax Code territory for difficulty of reading. The After snippet average is 13.06 – just enough to take it out of Time Magazine and into The New York Times.

Finally, the After snippet eliminates all passive sentences for added clarity.

Place Heady Headlines in a Guillotine but Don't be Afraid to Stick Your Neck Out

Nouns are "headier" than verbs. Nouns require us to think, "What is this thing?" whereas verbs prompt us to, "Just do it." As a B2B marketer, you don't want the reader to ponder anything. Instead, with zero friction, you want to answer their most pressing question - "what's in it for me?" If you answer what's in it for them then your headline also serves to summarize the main takeaway of the piece.

The first half of the Before snippet headline, even if it doesn't start with an action verb, has the right idea by focusing on a benefit. Unfortunately, the second half doesn't contain a verb either and its meaning as a noun is cryptic at best. Does it mean an investment paying regular dividends or having to continually shell out precious investment capital to get the full benefit of the software?

So, "Ongoing investment" can sound positive or negative depending on the context. Since the context is not yet clear, this only compounds the confusion and confusion in a headline means the reader will:

• Fail to see what's in it for them
• Abandon the page

The After snippet opens with an action verb. More importantly, it offers a promise – go wth IQNavigator and you'll get your house in order when it comes to managing all of the services you outsource. Frankly, I think I could have written a more powerful promise but this does the job because it clearly states the main takeaway to be gleaned from reading on.

State Your BIG IDEA Clearly and Avoid Weasel Words

The body copy immediately following your headline is "The Lead." The Lead delivers your BIG IDEA and in so doing, emotionally hooks your prospect into reading the rest of the page. To do this, the BIG IDEA must be powerful and compelling.

The Before snippet opens this crucial part of the copy with a passive sentence in 3 rd person voice. In a previous post , we discussed passive sentences at length and how they are harder for readers to understand because they leave out the subject of the sentence. Often, writers will use passive sentences to avoid assigning responsibility for the outcome of an action.

In this case, the first sentence reads as if we're discussing a phenomenon in nature with no readily identifiable cause. The culprit words are "can be" as in, "Sustainable cost savings and process improvements ‘can be' achieved through implementation…" The phrase "can be" will register with the reader as "weasel words" and undermine any promise made in the headline.

Some might say it's reasonably clear who the subject in this sentence is – "it's enterprises in diverse industries." Not so. All it says is what these enterprises "have found." For all we know, IQNavigator is relating the findings of research these enterprises undertook and nothing more. Nowhere does it say an enterprise implemented an "end-to-end services procurement and optimization solution."

Several other things dilute the power of this lead. One of them is using the verb "found" in the present perfect tense as in "Enterprises in diverse industries have found…" You won't find what I'm about to say at English Grammar Online . By placing "have" in front of a non-action verb like "found," we add another layer of indirection between "Enterprises in diverse industries" and the result IQNavigator wishes to communicate.

Yet another layer of indirection kicks in with the word "that" following "have found." "That" is a signal to the reader to get ready and think at a more abstract level. Nothing kills a trance like having to think more conceptually.

Things get even more abstract when you refer to benefits in noun form instead of connecting them with a subject using verbs. "Sustainable cost savings" and "process improvements" are heady ideas when expressed as nouns. The After snippet gets around this with "Join the companies in every sector who have reduced their costs and streamlined their processes…" Using the past perfect tense with tangible verbs works well when placed in an active sentence.

Can You Describe Your Product in Plain English?

It's important to refer to the noun you're selling as concretely as possible. Does an "end-to-end services procurement and optimization solution" seem easy to digest? Remember, this passage is still in overview mode, so an adjective like "end-to-end" is completely opaque. Adding to this sense of mystery are the two abstract nouns embedded in this product definition – "services procurement" and "services optimization."

Again, nouns are heady and verbs go to the gut. This is why the After snippet refers to the product as a "complete solution to manage the services they procure and the quality of the services performed ." Sure, the After snippet takes 15 words to describe the product where the Before snippet needed only 6 but what's more important here – being brief and indecipherable or longer and easy to understand?

Is it About You and Them or What You can Do for Them?

If you're still in The Lead conveying your BIG IDEA, the last thing you want to do is shift the focus from the prospect to yourself. The Before snippet slips into self-centeredness by starting the second sentence with "IQNavigator's market-leading solution…" This sentence recovers the appropriate focus by ending with "…provides several bottom-line benefits." Still, it comes up short for a couple of reasons.

First, it leads into the bullets with a noun ("bottom-line benefits") and it forces each bullet to start with an even headier noun (e.g., "Cost reduction", "Process efficiencies", "Optimization"). The one bullet starting with a verb ("Manage compliance risks") has an awkward flow if read straight from the lead-in.

Second, this sentence is written in the third person at just the moment we're setting up the prospect to picture this benefit in their mind's eye. Third person prompts the prospect to imagine these benefits in a fainter way because they must now try to make sense of them in a context external to their own situation. As such, the Before snippet turns this "picturing process" into an academic exercise.

Thanks to a clear promise in the headline and an unambiguous BIG IDEA in The Lead, the After snippet flows into the "picturing process" with a simple sentence focused on the prospect's interests. This lead-in sentence ties cleanly into 6 short and sweet bullets, each one starting with an action verb and describing a benefit to support the promise.

Ever Get the Feeling Something's Missing?

Ideally, we'd follow these bullets with copy to prove IQNavigator delivers on these benefits. After a promise and a picture, proof helps cement the bond we're trying to establish with the prospect.

An additional section on what makes IQNavigator unique would flesh out this benefits page. Once our prospect has shown an interest in the promise, pictured the benefits in her mind's eye, and agreed with the proof, learning how IQNavigator is unique would bring us dangerously close to what we want – follow-through on our call-to-action.

Oops, we have a problem…. there is no call-to-action.

Obviously, with enterprise software, we're not going to hypnotize anyone into making a purchase on the spot but all kinds of things are possible:

• Check out upcoming events
• Signup for a webinar
• Read drill-down documents like a datasheet or white paper

Wrap-up

By using action verbs liberally and sprinkling "you" and "your" throughout, we use what I called, in a previous post , "implied second person voice." Implied second person voice helps convert features into benefits with a more immediate feel so prospects can easily see "what's in it for them." If you're a B2B marketer, implied second person voice is your ticket to bypass "sales cheesiness."

As a B2B marketer with complex products, you should use bullets to make your benefits and proof points come across clearly and forcefully. Avoid cramming too much into a single bullet – additional scrolling is worth the added white space and clearer copy. After all, "easier to read means more sales and leads."

To your marketing success,

Eric Rosen
Strategic Marketing Writer
eric.rosen AT clearcrisp.com
Clear Crisp Communications
Easier to Read Means More Sales and Leads

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Give Your B2B Marketing Materials a SMOG Test and Find Out if They Read like Newsweek or The IRS Tax Code (Part One)

Overview

Sometimes, a piece of B2B marketing literature defies conventional wisdom when it comes to measuring its ease of reading. The one we look at this time scored a zero on the Flesch Reading Ease and for me, alarm bells went off. After all, no piece is completely unreadable, right?

Nevertheless, I want to make it clear I'm doing everything humanly possible to give this piece a fair shake.

To eliminate Microsoft Word's implementation of Flesch Reading Ease as a factor, we look at several alternative tools for calculating Flesch Reading Ease. To eliminate the Flesch Reading Ease as an unreliable metric, we use an additional measure called SMOG (Simple Measure of Gobbledygook).

Loosely speaking, SMOG complements Flesch Reading Ease because it measures how difficult it is to read a passage whereas Flesch Reading Ease calculates how easy it is to read. The SMOG level depends on the proportion of words with 3 or more syllables. The higher the SMOG level, the more difficult it is to read the passage. The SMOG level helps equate a passage with other well-known reading materials of similar complexity. This is how references to The IRS Tax Code and Newsweek made it into the title of this post.

So, this edition of Copywriting Tune-ups is Part One and it focuses on my efforts to arrive at a genuine assessment of how easy or difficult it is to read the B2B marketing piece we discuss below. In Part Two, we'll do the usual deconstruction of how the tune-up transforms the piece into a new and improved sales tool.

Those of you only interested in Part Two may find Part One useful because it relies on the tune-up to tell its story. Originally, I hoped to write a self-contained, one-part tune-up emphasizing the value of using bullet points. Along the way, I discovered how the After snippet readings fluctuated wildly depending on whether periods followed the bullets.

In particular, bullet points without periods greatly influences the results we get with both Flesch Reading Ease and SMOG. For this reason, we'll see the Before and After snippets in Part One and Part Two.

For the balance of Part One, we:

• Set up the makeover
• Show the Before and After snippets side-by-side with the usual Microsoft Word screenshots of Flesch Reading Ease
• Explain the methodology and findings I used to eliminate the Flesch Reading Ease metric and the various Flesch Reading Ease calculation tools as factors in the B2B marketing piece's zero score on Flesch Reading Ease

Call Out Your Benefits - Just Don't Lose Them in SMOG

Since converting features to benefits has been a prevalent theme in recent tune-ups, let's review the Challenge and Benefits webpage of an enterprise software company, IQNavigator of Denver . IQNavigator technology helps large organizations manage all of the services they outsource to other companies.

Clearly, IQNavigator has the right idea dedicating a webpage to call-out their benefits. Still, as we've seen with other enterprise software companies, they write in third person voice and use passive sentences. This makes it harder for anyone to read and understand no matter how well-educated.

IQNavigator wisely uses bullet points to enumerate their benefits; however, each bullet makes for long and dense reading.

Copywriting Tune-up

So, the challenge for this tune-up is to:

• Inject the second person voice
• Eliminate passive sentences
• Maintain an appropriate corporate tone
• Make the benefits easier to understand
• Convert each lengthy bullet into several shorter ones which are easier to read

Before	After
Fast cost savings, Ongoing investment Enterprises in diverse industries have found that sustainable cost savings and process improvements can be achieved through implementation of an end-to-end services procurement and optimization solution. IQNavigator's market-leading solution provides several bottom-line benefits: Cost reduction: Reduce costs by 10-35% by implementing best -practices for sourcing services, eliminating manual invoice reconciliation, gaining consistent terms and renegotiating with more accurate spending and performance information, and enforcing approvals for all spending, contract extensions and exceptions. Process efficiencies: Automate the procurement and payment processes to reduce cycle time and cost over 70% while improving the resulting services quality, contract terms, and payment speed and accuracy. Manage compliance risks: Ensure compliance with company policies, supplier contract terms and government regulations through configurable compliance rules and approval requirements, and enforcement of contract terms and rates. Financial compliance is also achieved through spending approval requirements and process controls, auditability, and accurate invoicing and cost allocation. Optimization: Improve the business results achieved through outside services by aligning services spending with business priorities and initiatives, continually improving deliverable quality and value, and linking purchased services to internal key business measures. IQNavigator's distinctive business intelligence capabilities provide visibility and analysis capabilities into spending, supplier performance, and business results.	Gain Control over the Service Procurement Life Cycle   Join the companies in every sector who have reduced their costs and streamlined their processes with a complete solution to manage the services they procure and the quality of the services performed. Address this challenge head-on and you can: Lower your costs by 10 - 35%. Adopt the best practices to procure services. Stop reconciling invoices manually. Standardize the terms in your contracts. Renegotiate your contracts using more accurate spending and performance information. Enforce approvals for all your spending, contract extensions, and exceptions. When you automate your procurement and payment processes, you will: Reduce cycle time and related costs by 70%. Improve the quality of the services performed. Gain better control over contract terms, accuracy, and speed of payment. Setup compliance rules so you can: Ensure your company complies with its own policies, suppliers' contract terms and government regulations. Meet your financial compliance goals with approval requirements, process controls, audit specifications, and accurate invoicing and cost allocations. Enjoy better performance from your service providers when you: Match your spending with your business priorities. Link the services you purchase to your key business metrics. Improve the quality and value of the specifications you give to your service providers. See the relationships among spending, supplier performance, and business results when you apply the unique business intelligence capabilities of IQNavigator.

Ensuring a Balanced Comparison of Before and After

As mentioned above, we need to adjust for bullet points without periods. To ensure a balanced comparison between the Before and After snippets, the After snippet mimics the Before snippet by placing a period at the end of each of its own bullets.

How Bullet Points without Periods affects the After Snippet

Remove all bullet periods and the Flesch Reading Ease result for the After snippet is 22.6. In my opinion, this dramatically understates the ease of reading we feel intuitively when we read it. Place a period at the end of the last bullet in each group and Flesch Reading Ease rises to 27.1 – still too low - based on my experience with previous tune-ups.

Eliminating Different Implementations of Flesch Reading Ease as Unfair to the Before Snippet

Now, let's look at the Before snippet. At first, I thought the Microsoft Word implementation of the Flesch Reading Ease index may be unduly stern with the Before snippet. After all, it defies common sense to say it's completely unreadable.

I calculated the Flesch Reading Ease myself in a spreadsheet and came out with a slightly negative number. In search of a more satisfying sanity check, I downloaded a free Java application called Flesh and came away with these Before and After results:

Before	After

 

Well, Flesch Reading Ease at 0.0 across 3 measuring tools is hard to dismiss.

No doubt, the After snippet grade level looks inflated and its Flesch Ease of Reading, understated. Whether we can accept the grade level figures of Flesh at face value is beyond the scope of this posting.

Eliminating the Flesch Reading Ease Metric as Unfair to the Before Snippet

Still, I felt a nagging sense, Flesch Reading Ease was treating the Before snippet unfairly. Perhaps, something other than Flesch Reading Ease would provide reasonable results. Enter the SMOG Calculator of G. Harry McLaughlin, founder of the SMOG:

Before	After

 

With a SMOG reading of 18.49, the Before snippet verges on the same reading level as The IRS Tax Code. Unfortunately, like Flesh and Word, the lack of periods following bullets leads to a highly skewed reading for the After snippet - a higher SMOG level than the Before snippet! When we add in periods as shown in the After snippet above, the SMOG level falls between Newsweek and Sports Illustrated:

One Last Attempt to Second-guess both Flesch Reading Ease and SMOG

If SMOG equates the Before snippet with the IRS Tax Code, I can accept it, but it still seems unfair to give it a Flesch Reading Ease of zero. Enter Aella Lei's Writing Sample Analyzer .

Like Flesh and Word, Writing Sample Analyzer is vulnerable to bullet points without periods but the most interesting thing about Writing Sample Analyzer is its calculation of Flesch Reading Ease:

Before	After

 

Instead of zero, Writing Sample Analyzer returns 11.05. Why? I don't know yet but once I hear back from Aella Lei, I'll let you know. While a jump from 0.0 to 11.05 is considerable and raises questions about this implementation of Flesch Reading Ease, 11.05 still makes for difficult reading.

Also note, the Fog Scale really is the exact same thing as SMOG. It looks reasonable for the Before snippet. The Before snippet's grade level also falls in-line with expectations. On the other hand, its results for the After snippet are out-of-whack across-the-board due to periods following only the last bullet point in each bullet point group.

When we add periods to each After snippet bullet, Writing Sample Analyzer responds with:

The Flesch Reading Ease looks about right but the Fog and Grade Level seem too high. Even so, comparing the Before and After snippets for Flesch Reading Ease, SMOG, and Grade Level all seem reasonable on a relative basis.

So, this B2B Marketing Piece Really is Hard to Read

All in all, both Flesch Reading Ease and SMOG support one another. In addition, while various tools for calculating Flesch Reading Ease give slightly different results, we can safely assert none of them are skewing the results to the point of denying this B2B Marketing piece a fair shake.

Wrap-up

To be completely even-handed with a B2B marketing piece scoring zero on the Flesch Reading Ease index, we looked at several implementations of the index. This helped eliminate quirks with any given tool as a contributing factor.

To eliminate Flesch Reading Ease itself as an unreliable barometer, we introduced a measure of reading difficulty called SMOG. SMOG gave us the most intuitive sense of how hard this literature is to read because it equates the piece with other well-known publications in the same SMOG range. On this basis, the piece ranks with The Harvard Business Review at the low end and The IRS Tax Code at the high end.

All of the tools used were susceptible to a lack of periods following bullet points because:

• they rely on periods to determine the number of sentences in a passage and
• number of sentences is an input to further calculations.

Since the After snippet breaks out the 4 long bullets of the Before snippet into 14 shorter ones, the After snippet figures improved most dramatically when we added periods to every bullet. It's reasonable to do this because the mind processes bullets as if they were separate sentences or ideas.

Also, adding bullets to the end of each bullet makes for a fair comparison since the Before snippet ends each bullet with a period as well.

In Part Two, we will:

• use composite figures for both the Before and After snippets
• rely on those figures to gauge the improvements the tune-up demonstrates

Finally, in Part Two, we'll deconstruct the Before and After snippets to address the challenges we set forth for this tune-up.

 

To your marketing success,

Eric Rosen
Strategic Marketing Writer
eric.rosen AT clearcrisp.com
Clear Crisp Communications
Easier to Read Means More Sales and Leads

Our Growing Community of B2B Marketers

Thank you to all of you who have subscribed to Copywriting Tune-ups. You are truly an inspiration.

By the end of this week, Copywriting Tune-ups will have been subscribable for 1 month. In this short time, if present trends continue, we will be 200 people.

So, how can Copywriting Tune-ups serve you better?

For example:

• are there other B2B Marketing resources you would like to see links to in a Resources sidebar? If so, which ones?

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• How about guest commentators? Anyone you'd like to read here at Copywriting Tune-ups? Is there a blog you'd like me to guest on?

These are just a few brainstorms. It's your turn to howl. Be creative.

To your marketing success,

Eric "Rocket" Rosen
Clear Crisp Communications
Tel: 408.506.0719
Fax: 814.253.5142
Email: eric.rosen AT clearcrisp.com
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How to Improve B2B Marketing Materials Already Blessed with a B2C Feel

Overview

Our first tune-up of September 2006 analyzes a product description for The Palm® Treo™ 700w and 700wx smartphones.

Companies like Palm, Apple, and WebEx are known for their extraordinary branding prowess. Part of what makes their B2B Marketing material so impressive is a consistent, benefits-oriented, B2C feeling in all their literature.

More specifically, they know to use the second-person voice. They avoid passive sentences at all costs. Verbs are always close by. They’re clear, direct, and polished too. No question, these companies know the value of great copy and it shows.

Taking on the product description for Palm’s flagship smartphone is a challenge. It took some time to find room for improvement, but it’s there if we look hard enough.

Full disclosure before going further – I spent 1999 working at Palm as a developer of classroom and web-based training for their technical support staff. I left in December of that year to evangelize e-learning standards with Saba.

Break with Tradition to Find Room for Improvement

In reviewing Palm and similar sites, a pattern emerged. For a given product, it’s common to find mention of a technology the product incorporates without a clear explanation of how said technology will benefit the customer. It’s as if there was some urgent need to include a reference to the technology or lose face to a competitor guilty of the same awkward convention.

To break with this “tradition,” I state a benefit for any technology the product description mentions in passing. This lengthens the description but the extra clarity is justified especially when an additional product benefit enters the foreground.

Accept the Challenge – Assume Your Audience is Ignorant and Lazy

At the risk of sounding politically incorrect, I assume the reader of this product description is, in effect, ignorant and lazy. I do this for a virtuous reason – it places an even greater challenge on the writer to satisfy the reader’s need for clear and complete ideas.

While I don’t know the guiding assumptions the original writer used to gauge the audience, here are mine. The reader:

• Wants to gain a working understanding of the product
• Is unfamiliar with the specific technologies mentioned in this description
• Does not want to leave the page to learn more about any particular aspect of the product - if possible

Copywriting Tune-up

So, the challenge for this tune-up is to make the product description:

• Rely less on links and more on inline copy
• Easier to read and understand
• Retain its classy tone and enticing quality

Before	After
The Palm® Treo™ 700w and 700wx smartphones deliver everything you need without compromise. They combine a smarter phone with broadband-like speeds, wireless email, including Windows Mobile® Direct Push Technology, and rich-media capabilities, all in one—bringing Palm's world-class ease of use to the Windows Mobile platform. Connect with people in multiple ways—by voice, email or SMS. Your contacts are always reachable, from any application. Access email, the web, and corporate networks on one of the fastest networks available in the U.S. Or relax and play your favorite music and videos right on your device. With these easy-to-use productivity devices in hand, you can stay connected on your terms.	Make no compromises. Boost your productivity with The Palm® Treo™ 700w and 700wx smartphones. Use your smarter phone to retrieve wireless email at near broadband speed. Your contacts data stays in-sync with Windows Mobile® Direct Push Technology. Take in rich audio and video. Enjoy all these capabilities with the world-class ease-of-use of Palm delivered for the first time on a Windows Mobile platform. Connect with people several ways—by voice, email, or SMS. Access your contacts anytime from any application. Read email, surf the web, and log on to corporate networks using one of the fastest networks available in the U.S. Or relax and play your favorite music and videos right on your smartphone. With all these user-friendly resources at your fingertips, your smartphone lets you stay connected on your terms.

Readability Statistics

The ease of reading index improves by a hard-earned 24%. Note how the grade level needed to follow the passage comfortably drops by more than 2 years.

More sentences of shorter length in the After snippet go a long way towards improving the ease of reading index and reducing the grade level.

Unlike previous tune-ups, the After snippet uses more words and characters. This derives from the need to explain unfamiliar technical terms or at least mention the benefit they deliver – i.e., the “break with tradition” mentioned above and discussed at greater length below.

It’s Not About You and Me. It’s About Me and Me Only - The Reader

The first sentence of the Before snippet opens with the company name and product. Because it’s a technical product and it’s assumed, I, the reader, know nothing about it, I’m forced to think before I can even see what’s in it for me. When the sentence ends, I have some vague idea the product won’t skimp on any of its features but what it means to me remains unclear.

The After snippet opens with a 3 word sentence beginning with an action verb. Already we know we won’t be skimping on features and we haven’t even mentioned the company or product name yet. Even before the second sentence mentions the company and product name, we clearly understand what’s in it for me – boosting my productivity.

Turn Features into Benefits with Action Verbs

Sure, maybe I’m being extreme to assume the reader doesn’t know what wireless email is, but it’s not so obvious with some of the other features like “Windows Mobile® Direct Push Technology” or “rich-media capabilities.” The Before snippet lists these features as straight-up nouns tied to the pronoun, “They.” This makes it harder for me, as a reader, to picture myself enjoying the product because the passage directs me to contemplate “what” this is as opposed to “how” using it will make my life easier.

The After snippet breaks up the very long second sentence into several shorter ones. Each feature is preceded by a verb, which transforms it into a benefit. The third sentence makes it clear I can retrieve wireless email quickly (benefit) as opposed to the device having “the ability to do so” (feature).

Supply a Benefit for Every Technology Important Enough to Mention

The Before snippet slips in a reference to “Windows Mobile® Direct Push Technology” without explaining why the reader should care. I can understand the need to list it especially if competing products also incorporate this technology. So, let’s go one up on the competition and let the reader know how this technology enhances their experience.

To make good on this directive, I had to do some research about “Windows Mobile® Direct Push Technology.” The data sheets for these Palm smartphones don’t mention this technology in any explicit way. I went to Microsoft’s site to get the low-down.

Armed with this understanding of the technology, it remains fuzzy as to how these smartphones apply it to make the user more productive. Because the technology requires Microsoft Exchange Server, I figure it has to do with email applications. Also, the Before snippet states, “Your contacts are always reachable…”

Based on these inputs, I make the educated guess this technology makes certain I have the most up-to-date contact information for whomever I’m trying to reach at any given moment.

If I’ve got this wrong or the benefits extend beyond managing contact information, someone from Palm is welcome to comment.

Cancel Corporate Speak at Every Opportunity

The Before snippet, as many similar web sites do, uses the term, “rich-media capabilities.” Perhaps, by now, the market understands what this means, but in the interest of engaging the reader fully, we can transform this conceptual noun into a concrete verb by saying, “Take in rich audio and video.” “Take in” works well because it has positive connotations about fulfilling our senses. Breaking out “rich media” into “rich audio and video” reinforces this conversion of a feature into a benefit by eliminating ambiguity.

Don’t Let an Unclear Subject-Verb Connection Diminish a Benefit

The Before snippet closes the last sentence of the first paragraph with a hyphen followed by a clause starting with the verb, “bringing… ” It takes some study to see the subject of this verb is “They” at the very beginning of this long sentence. “ They” and “bringing” is a mismatch fueled by the list of features inserted between these two words.

Ah, but grammar is not the issue here. The net effect is to make “Palm’s world-class ease of use” merely incidental to the other features and benefits as if such ease-of-use would not be there without them.

The After snippet closes out the paragraph by making it clear “ease-of-use” is consciously “baked into” everything about the product.

Exalt Yourself - When it Really is about You

In our last tune-up, we explained how using your company name in the possessive form is like having a movie camera tilted down at its subject. It makes the subject appear less important because the viewer can “look down” upon it. This is what happens when we use the phrase, “Palm’s world-class ease of use.”

Instead, we can write, “the world-class ease-of-use of Palm.” In this form, it’s as if a movie camera were titled up at its subject. It makes the subject appear exalted because the viewer must “look up” at it.

Better still, this little change alone improved the ease of reading index by a half-point.

Choose Simpler Adjectives and Verbs for Greater Impact

In the first sentence of the second paragraph, the Before snippet uses the term “multiple ways” where the After snippet opts for “several ways.” The former is more conceptual and less friendly to those who wish to forget math class.

The next sentence is fine as is though “reachable” is a bit abstract. The After snippet opens with an action verb and follows it with “anytime from any application” to keep the meaning clear and simple.

The third sentence opens with an action verb and lists noun features afterwards. This is fine though preceding each feature with a verb would strengthen them individually and collectively. The After snippet uses this technique to give the reader a sense of empowerment with each one.

Use Jargon When it’s Already Defined and Generic Words Add No Value

In the second to last sentence, the Before snippet ends with the phrase, “right on your device.” The Before snippet never used “device” previously, so it could prompt some slight confusion. The After snippet uses “smartphone” instead because this term is prominent in the previous paragraph and it reinforces the value proposition of higher productivity for the reader.

Avoid Lengthy Adjectives Especially Before Generic References to Your Product

The final sentence of the Before snippet begins, “With these easy-to-use productivity devices…” A four-word adjective would dilute “smartphone,” let alone “device.”

Reinforce Benefits with Strong Second Person Voice for a Powerful Finale

The final sentence of the Before snippet does nothing to reinforce the benefits already listed. The final sentence of the After snippet refers to them collectively as “user-friendly resources at your fingertips.” This is concrete and easy-to-understand.

While the second person voice is evident in the final sentence of the Before snippet, it’s not obvious until the second clause. In the first clause, it’s not clear whether “in hand” refers to the reader or a third party.

The After snippet goes for a strong finish by using “your” in both clauses plus “you” in the second one. Finally, we get added oomph using “smartphone” instead of “device.”

Wrap-up

An extra line or two of copy can make all the difference between reasonably clear and abundantly clear. Better to err on the side of “abundant” when we want to ensure the reader comes away with:

• Working understanding of the product
• A clear idea of how it will make him or her more productive

Adding this extra copy helped us shave 2 years off the minimum reading skill needed to understand the value proposition. This broadens the field of potential buyers.

We maintained the sleek, B2C feel of the original while placing even greater emphasis on benefits over features. This alone is likely to boost the conversion rate on these impressive smartphones.

To your marketing success,

Eric Rosen
Strategic Marketing Writer
eric.rosen AT clearcrisp.com
Clear Crisp Communications
Easier to Read Means More Sales and Leads