Formatting your email with bullets, bold, italics and caps can be functional and useful when used (very, very sparingly) at the right times. But, if you don’t have anything really gripping to say, then putting every second phrase in bold is certainly not going to help your cause.
This was exactly the type of press release a marketing journalist received recently. About 50% of the text was in bold. And just to add a little extra emphasis, the headline and footer were in red. I felt a little like a deer staring into blinding headlights, I wasn’t sure where to start or what I was supposed to do…except to close the email. Phew, it was far too much effort to try and read. See for yourself, here’s a sample of the press release:
[Name], Managing Director, [company name] and [company name], will bring his expertise in the independent sector to [event name]. [Name] serves as the elected Vice President of WIN (Worldwide Independent Network), Chairman of the Board for AIR (Australian Independent Record labels association) and is also a current board member of MIFF (Melbourne International Film Festival), PPCA (Phonographic Performance Company of Australia) and ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association).
This reminds me of the comments that Dorin Bambus, previously the editor of Blunt, said in some Encyclomedia research a while back on PR best practices. Commenting on email formatting, he said:
Press releases should make the reader think something is cool and interesting and newsworthy, not alert the reader to the fact that the writer thinks this to be the case. I can read, I don’t need every IMPORTANT piece of info “signposted” for me. It’s very annoying.
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