Business Writing Essentials

Did you know email delivers an average ROI of $42 for every dollar spent? In a world driven by fleeting social trends and evolving AI tools; Newsletters remain one of the most reliable channels for B2B marketers. Why? → They build direct, lasting connections in a space decision-makers trust: their inbox. Why newsletters matter more than ever: 1. High-value content: → 82% of B2B buyers engage with educational content early in their journey. → This makes newsletters a perfect delivery channel. 2. Control over reach: → On social media, algorithms dictate visibility. → Newsletters ensure your message lands directly with your audience. 3. Executive engagement: → Decision-makers do not like chasing. → Deliver them concise, actionable insights. Secrets to winning newsletters: a. Segmentation: → Craft audience-specific content that resonates deeply. b. Strong CTAs: → Guide your readers toward meaningful next steps. → Like signing up for a demo or downloading a resource. c. Track & tweak: → Use analytics to understand performance. → Optimize for higher clicks & conversions. Let’s take a look at newsletter innovations in 2025: 1. Interactive features: → Polls, quizzes & video embeds drive engagement → They also make your newsletters stand out. 2. Hyper-personalization: → AI tools now enable content tailored to each reader’s industry & challenges. 3. Dynamic formats: → Combine text, visuals & even brief audio snippets. → This appeals to diverse preferences. The bottomline here is: Newsletters aren’t relics—they’re revenue engines. When crafted with precision, they: → Educate → Nurture → Convert This makes them a vital tool in any B2B marketer’s arsenal. Are your newsletters driving the results they should?

How to build an off-platform newsletter audience through LinkedIn. The Carta Data Minute (great newsletter, check it out) is officially 100 weeks old! Every Thursday, 24,386 subscribers receive a drop of Carta insights in their inbox. Short, sweet, thought-provoking (I hope). We don't do much promotion for it outside of this feed. So it's a pretty clean example of how to move folks from followers here to subscribers over there. So why create a company insights newsletter at all? Three reasons: 1. Great place to speak to your target customers (and hear from them) without selling, which they will appreciate.     2. Conversion from newsletter to event attendee is 8-10x a cold email. Worthwhile.     3. Moving a rented audience from social to an owned audience on a newsletter allows for all sorts of education and awareness opportunities for your products. I'll dig into some key points along the timeline and drop some tactics at the end. 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝘂𝘁 - 𝗟𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗝𝘂𝗹𝘆, 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟮 • Hooray we started! • Quickly turns to "damn this kinda sucks". Multiple weeks of single-digits new subscribers. Didn't have my writing or my promotion dialed in. 𝗝𝗮𝗻 𝟮𝟵, 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟯 • Over 1,100 new subs that week off of a single viral LinkedIn post. 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵-𝗦𝗲𝗽𝘁, 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟯 • Clear NMF (newsletter-market fit). 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟰 • Steady, if unspectacular, growth. Probably need to try some new strategies. 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀𝗹𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 𝗧𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀 • Start a waitlist that folks can join before you send the first newsletter - much better to send to at least a few real people on week 1.    • Newsletter 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱𝘀 to be weekly. Monthly or even every two weeks just is not enough habit formation. Another reason why Insights is a useful function, given it creates things to talk about.    • Include a link (not clickable) in every graphic you post on LinkedIn. Include a link (actually clickable) in the body of 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲 of your posts. Which ones? That's the nuance. I'd say maybe 30%, including some that you think will get large reach. Links do limit reach so this is a delicate balance.    • QR codes at the beginning or end of presentations you give in the wider world generate solid new subscribers!    • Open rates: 50% okay, 55% good, 60%+ great    • Unsubscribes: Should hover between 0.1%-0.4% every send    • 25% of our subs came from the top 10 weeks. You can't predict the spikes!    • Write as a human not a worker. If you're excited about the content the audience will be as well.

i built this prompt to make me proficient in any technical topic. it's been a godsend. it includes technical depth, but translates every piece of jargon into plain english with a real world example. feel free to steal it: 🧠 Deep Research Prompt Template (Extensible Version) Objective: Create a comprehensive research report on [INSERT TOPIC HERE]. The goal is to build a deep conceptual understanding of the topic — from its theoretical foundations to its real-world applications — so that I can use this as a launchpad for further exploration. Audience: A non-technical but intellectually fluent reader. I’m comfortable following complex discussions, but I’m not formally trained in this technical domain. Tone & Style: - Write in a clear, structured, and explanatory style. - Include technical depth, but translate every piece of jargon into plain English. - After each complex term, formula, or mechanism, provide: a) A plain-language translation (explain it like you’re teaching an intelligent layperson). b) A real-world, tangible example or analogy that makes the idea concrete. Content Requirements: 1) Foundations Section - Define the core principles, vocabulary, and historical context behind [TOPIC]. - Explain why this field exists, what problems it solves, and who pioneered it. - Use simple examples to show the basic mechanics at play. 2) Core Concepts & Mechanics Section - Dive into the key theories, processes, or frameworks that make up the topic. - Introduce any math, algorithms, or scientific models central to the field. - For each technical concept, pair the explanation with: a) A plain-language breakdown. b) A real-world illustration (e.g., from everyday life, business, nature, or technology). 3) Applications & Implications Section - Show how [TOPIC] is applied in real-world systems, industries, or technologies. - Include notable case studies or examples that demonstrate its impact. - Explain why understanding these concepts matters — what it enables or changes. 4) Integration & Broader Context Section - Connect this field to adjacent domains (e.g., how it interacts with math, physics, biology, economics, etc.). - If relevant, trace how the theory translates into practice (e.g., from code → circuits → behavior). - Highlight open questions or ongoing research frontiers. 5) Formatting & Accessibility Guidelines - Use clear headings, subheadings, and summaries at the end of major sections. - Define jargon inline, not in a glossary. - Use metaphors, analogies, or thought experiments liberally. - If helpful, include short “mental models” or “rules of thumb” to aid intuitive understanding. Output Goal: A research-style explainer (typically 3,000–5,000 words) that is educational, accessible, and intellectually rigorous — something that helps a curious but non-specialist reader gain a working, conceptual mastery of [TOPIC].

Want more opens, more clicks, and more sales from email? Start with these 7 simple changes. 1) Optimal Sending Time Schedule emails when your audience is most likely to engage. Analyze past open rates to identify peak days and times that have performed well. For example: Tuesday and Thursday mornings PST. Test different timings & refine based on performance data. 2) Reflect Your Brand’s Tone & Value in the Sender’s Name If your brand is playful, use a friendly, informal name like ‘Your buddy Jack at [Company]’. For a more professional tone, opt for ‘Jack, CEO at [Company]’. This alignment enhances brand consistency & recognition. 3) Craft Irresistible Subject Lines Incorporate these elements into your subject line: Numbers/data Specificity Power words Curiosity Emojis Questions This is how you make it impossible to ignore. 4) Leverage the Preview Text Use your preview text to: Tease a benefit Offer an incentive Provide a sneak peek The preview text gives people a second nudge to open your email. Make the most of it. 5) Implement a Call-To-Open Call-to-opens are phrases like: “Open to discover…” “See what’s inside…” “Click here to learn…” Incorporate these in your subject line or preview text. The simplest way to encourage an open is by directly requesting it. 6) Optimize for Mobile Ensure your emails display well on small screens. Shorten subject line/preview text Check the sender’s profile picture Ensure correct character display Most people check their email on a mobile device. Neglecting them means losing a lot of opens. 7) Strategically Resend to Non-Openers Resend with a tweaked subject line or a note like: “In case you missed this…” This approach can recapture attention without seeming repetitive. Bookmark this and follow Chase Dimond for more great tips.

We had a beautiful customer newsletter... and no one cared. Up until the end of 2023, we had a highly designed version of the newsletter. It looked great, but it took a ton of time to pull together. Every send required custom images, specific copy lengths, and with no real guardrails on content, we tried to include ✨everything.✨ And it did… fine. But not fine enough to warrant the time it required and no clear strategy, so we stopped doing it. This year, I relaunched our customer newsletter — and doubled our engagement score and click-through rates. Here's the 4 steps I took to do it: 1️⃣ I redefined the purpose. The newsletter needed to be a valuable touchpoint for account managers — something that kept customers informed and encouraged them to explore more of the Lattice ecosystem through features, events, and content. Not salesy. 2️⃣ I scrapped the overly designed template and went plain-text. The emails now come directly from Account Owners (because who’s Kerry Wheeler anyways?). 3️⃣ We segmented our customers into three key groups and tailor content to each one based on what’s most relevant to them. 4️⃣ I implemented strong content guardrails. Every send now includes just two of the most relevant product updates, events, and resources — and it must be actionable today (no “coming soon” teasers). The results? Open rates held steady at ~50%, but engagement took off. Click-through rates more than doubled, and we’ve heard great feedback from both customers and AMs on how the newsletter has kept them informed and engaged.

Most brilliant ideas die not because they’re bad, but because they’re pitched wrong. And that collapse usually happens in the first 90 seconds. A 2023 McKinsey study found that senior leaders make decisions up to 5x faster when information is presented with clarity and relevance rather than sequence and storytelling. And neuroscience backs this up. Our prefrontal cortex, the part involved in complex decision-making, has limited working-memory capacity (about 3–4 chunks of information at a time). If your pitch starts with a long background story, you overwhelm the very system you’re trying to engage. You feel you have no influence? Let’s fix that. 𝟭. 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗪𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗗𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻, 𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 Executives process outcomes first, explanations second. Open with: “The decision I’m asking you to make today is…” This immediately reduces cognitive load and boosts listener retention by up to 30%, according to research. 𝟮. 𝗔𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗿 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗜𝗱𝗲𝗮 𝗶𝗻 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 Executives listen for impact drivers (P&L, risk, timing, strategic alignment, reputation…) If your idea doesn’t connect to their priorities, it becomes noise. 𝟯. 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗮 𝟯-𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝗡𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 Layer 1 The One Sentence Your idea in 12 words. If you can’t explain it simply, it’s not clear, and the brain can’t store it. Layer 2 The Value State the pain and the outcome. One slide. One paragraph. Keep it simple and straightforward. Layer 3 The Proof Pilot data, customer insight, small wins… you need facts that make the idea tangible. And remember... people trust a message more when it includes a concrete marker of progress. 𝟰. 𝗘𝗻𝗱 𝗪𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 Senior leaders don’t buy ideas. They buy safe momentum. Close with: “The smallest low-risk step we can take is…” Micro-commitments trigger the brain’s preference for loss avoidance. We’re more willing to start small because the perceived threat is low. And it goes without saying that you always need to prepare for objections. Executives consistently push on cost, risk, and timing. When you proactively address these, you signal confidence and reduce perceived uncertainty. Common mistakes that people make (that kill a pitch)? - Starting with a long narrative instead of the decision - Explaining the problem in painful detail - Using vague verbs such as “improve,” “optimize,” “enhance” - Not making an explicit ask - Pitching to be liked instead of aligned - Having no clue of the company’s priorities And a small trick before you enter the room to enhance your influence… Ask yourself: “What do I want them to feel?” Your intention shapes your tone and tone shapes the room. Ready? GO!

Here's my 36th column for Rolling Stone, “The Way We Communicate Is Holding Back the Way We Think, and How to Set It Free.” Shoutout to James Huerta for co-creating this model with me. We live in an age of extraordinary abundance with more data, more tools, more computing power than any civilization in history. Yet somehow, our imagination feels smaller. We’re drowning in information but starving for vision. We scroll endlessly, type endlessly, trying to express big dreams through little boxes. The irony is that in our pursuit of efficiency, we’ve built tools that have made our minds less free. We’ve compressed creativity into characters and lines, turning the act of dreaming into something that must fit between keystrokes. For decades, we’ve treated communication as a neutral vessel for thought, as if the words, tools, and technologies we use simply carry what’s already inside us. But that’s not how the mind works. The medium shapes the message. Typing invites precision, but it also invites hesitation. It trains us to edit as we go, to shrink the edges of our imagination so they fit neatly inside sentences. Voice, on the other hand, flows. When we speak, we share rhythm, emotion, breath, and belief. Speaking allows for the natural chaos of creativity to emerge before we tame it into order. A study from the University of Waterloo found that people generate 40% more novel ideas when brainstorming through voice instead of typing. That's efficiency, creativity, and imagination In this new column, I explore what I call the ladder from compression to expansion. It's a framework for reimagining the way we think. From bottom to top is: Letter Mode, where typing constrains us to linear precision. Word Mode, voice-to-text tools like Siri or Dictation. Flow Mode, where we speak in paragraphs and our minds follow a thread. Idea Mode, where voice notes become raw material for reflection. Synthesis Mode, where AI helps us find patterns. Vision Mode, the meeting point of human imagination and machine amplification, the space where futures are born. This isn’t about replacing human creativity; it’s about liberating it from outdated tools we're shackled to. Steve Jobs was known for his walking meetings, where ideas could breathe in motion. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. refined his speeches aloud, letting cadence and emotion guide meaning before words were ever written. Even AI models like Whisper are learning from voice first, because that’s where human thought is most alive, unfiltered, and real. If we want to expand our thinking, we must expand the containers we use to express it. We have to stop mistaking precision for depth. Stop thinking only in keystrokes. Start dreaming out loud. When you change how you communicate, you change how you think. And maybe, just maybe, that’s how we’ll start imagining at the level this moment demands. Model is in the comments below.

Lessons from running a newsletter for over a year (and a bit) 📰 Well, that was fast. A little over 13 months ago, I launched Video Games Industry Memo (VGIM) with a vague hope of getting...someone to read it. Fast-forward to the present day and it is fair to say that things have gone quite a bit better than expected. VGIM has gone from nothing to 3,500 subscribers in a year: spawning two spin-off events (including the birthday party pictured below), landing me coverage in places like The New York Times and The Rest is Entertainment and chucking in some very welcome revenue towards my business's bottom line. But what have I learned about running a newsletter in that time? I'd say there are six quick lessons that come to mind. 🗓️ Consistency is key: The easiest way to grow a newsletter is to deliver it consistently. Keep to a schedule to both engage your readers and hold yourself to maintaining it (including putting work in a drawer or finding guest writers for when you have tricky work travel weeks/holidays to contend with). 🗒️ Get your format right: Consistency is easier when you know what you're putting out each week. Designing a great, repeatable format from the outset is the best way to keep on top of your work. 😂 Be entertaining: A friend at Politico told me "news isn't just news; it's entertainment too." Trading the dull or dry for a respectful lightness of touch is a great way to make your newsletter the 'must read' that week. 🗣️ Get your voice heard: Whether it is your own work or written on behalf of a business, make sure your voice can be heard. If you read out your copy and can't hear the tone you're gunning for, that's your cue to edit. 💡 Put interesting ideas out there: Always advance your thoughts out into the world. When you're on the money, you bump your reputation. And when you're wrong? Well, that's great content for your next newsletter isn't it! ⏳ Take your time: Give your newsletter time to grow. Too many falter because it doesn't do "numbers" immediately. But if you really want to see returns, think about what one year of newslettering looks like. That'll keep you focused on popping pancakes on the stack rather than obsessing over metrics when the data isn't there yet. Of course, there's LOADS I'm still not getting right. I have questions about whether the Big Read is a little too big. I am wondering whether my breadth of interests in games is maybe a touch incoherent for the audience. And I know I need to do more to transform my readership into a community, something that'll be the focus of year two of the newsletter. But overall, I think the plan I've kept to has been pretty successful so far. And I think that if you follow the tips listed above when running your own newsletter, you can deliver a great service to your readers and put yourself on a handy growth trajectory 📈 P.S. If you are inspired by this post to read Video Games Industry Memo, you can sign up to it via my LinkedIn profile

Can you use your voice if you're not loud? Yes. If... "let's get loud!" "speak up!" and "make your voice heard" don't resonate (or make you want to vomit in your mouth a little), not all is lost. Voice too often is conflated with a bullhorn. With protesting in public forums. With shouting from the mountain tops. With what you say in a meeting or on a call. But voice is how we move through the world. So the point isn't to imitate what others are doing, saying, posting, or at what decibel level. It's to know you who are you, what matters to you, and how you are practically and tangibly living out your values. It may be - how you're spending your time, money, energy - who you're writing, texting, or calling - the time you spend in nourishment, rest, and rejuvination - the conditions you put in your contracts and agreements - how you run a hiring process It may happen without fanfare and off social media, but the impact is real. Don't think your voice is any less powerful or worthwhile because it looks different than someone else's.

Last week, a client of mine asked if we could "dial back the tone" in their posts. Because a potential investor had said their voice was “a little too raw for a CEO.” And my first instinct was to say sure. After all, I get it. We all know how to shrink ourselves when the room feels too polished. But it made me wonder, what exactly are we softening, and who are we doing it for? Because the moment your writing starts to feel like a performance, the people who would’ve connected with the real you, the ones who would’ve said yes to your values... will start tuning out. You don’t need everyone to like your voice. You need the right people to recognize it. That includes clients, partners, investors, even your future team. And if your tone is “too much” for someone, that just means your clarity is doing its job. Be clear anyway. Be honest anyway. The cost of dilution is far higher than the cost of discomfort. P.S. Ever been told your tone was too much?