Given that we’ve been commenting on copywriting lately, I’ll continue down that path with these two observations from How the Web Makes Direct Mail Better by Douglas Broward of Grizzard Communications, writing originally in Convio’s Connection Cafe.

First, on direct mail copywriters learning from the web world …

” … reading — still the most effective means of absorbing complex information — has been profoundly altered by the web’s use of hyperlinked, encapsulated summary exposition.

Several years ago, my agency began testing direct response letters that included more white space, more “chunked” copy as well as incorporating graphic side bars to call out important parts of the letter text. In every case, we beat existing controls and soon replaced them.”

His point, our massive exposure to online writing/design styles has shifted the way we now like to see things in print … and this is true across the age spectrum. So don’t be surprised that the old-timers who still love to hold and read your mail might be looking at it differently.

Second, on web designers/writers learning from direct mail copywriters …

“Well-designed direct mail, although deprived of clickable links and dazzling multimedia, retains its own unique advantage in delivering a warm, tactile reality. For now, it still expresses authenticity and tangible intimacy better than the cool surface of a screen.

So it shouldn’t be unexpected that web designers have been using the Internet’s improving speed and stability to incorporate what they can of print’s qualities. Expect subtlety. There will be increasing emphasis on legibility, reassuring textures and the printed quirks of a writer’s individuality — none of which are necessary, unless you realize that donors want not just information, but a person’s voice, telling a story meant wholly for them.”

I really resonate with this last point. Too much online writing (especially website copy, as opposed to email copy) completely lacks personality … it lacks a sense of “warm reality” and “intimacy”. Copy in print surely can suffer from being institutional; but I do think this is even more of a problem with web copy, most of which reads like brochure copy, when a ‘voice’ would be more compelling.

Great comments Douglas.

Tom