She handed the paper back to me and my heart sank as I saw dozens of red marks streaked across the page and a lot of sentences that looked like this.

My favorite college professor had just handed back my paper, and I couldn't decide if I was more crushed by the fact that I had let her down or that those marks definitely meant I was going to fail the class.

What she was pointing out?

A mistake that's now my favorite to intentionally make in my marketing writing.

(Spoiler: She actually only took a few points off! Just wanted to give me a heart attack I guess.)

In marketing, one of the most powerful tools at our disposal is intrigue. People's curiosity is STRONG.

And when utilized well, it can make people excited even to read marketing messages.

For example, right now, you're trying to skim quicker down the email to figure out what I did wrong on my paper. 👀

Or have you ever come across an ad that you watched all the way to the end because it actually felt like a TV show?

That's because they utilized intrigue and curiosity by hooking you in with a story that will eventually lead to a sales pitch.

So what was the mistake I'd made on my paper?

I started too many sentences with "This is."

For example, if I was writing about how the Oxford comma is the greatest punctuation of all time, I might have written:

"The Oxford comma is the greatest punctuation of all time. This is because the absence of it renders a sentence useless and sometimes ridiculous, and it's also used in the Bible, so if God uses it, it must be good enough for me. Therefore, this is the greatest punctuation of all time."

Aside from the flawless argument I make there, her point was that if you isolated just the sentence "This is because the absence..." nobody would know what "this" was.

In other words, it's too vague.

Now, why am I telling you this whole story about grammar rules and English papers?

Because for the most part, what you'd write in a paper for class should be COMPLETELY different than how you write for marketing.

And nothing rings truer than the use of "this" (or another of my favorites, "The thing/event/product/prayer, etc. that ______ (describe transformation)").

Look back at my subject line. Notice I told you I was going to tell you my favorite word to use in marketing, but I didn't actually tell you what it was in the subject line.

That was intentional. Because if I told you the word right there, you'd have no reason to open this email. I'd have told you everything you needed to know.

(And you would have missed my soliloquy about the Oxford comma, which would have been a tragedy, as your day would not have been complete without it.)

Now sometimes, directness is important.

If the school is going to be closed today because of weather, you can just put that right in the subject line of your announcement. No need for the slippery slope (pun intended) of intrigue there.

But if it's something you want people to read a little further, especially some sort of marketing or promotion, utilize a bit of vague, curiosity-invoking language to get them invested.

Want your audience to click on a link? Try mixing in some references where you talk about it more generally — i.e. "The prayer that turned me into a morning person" or "This is the group that I never miss" and hyperlink the text to where you want them to go.

Want them to read that boring policy? Tell them that they'll especially love line #X, and throw in an element of fun or a benefit in that line.

Have a long message you need them to read? Interrupt yourself. Maybe you have a product or service that requires a bit more explanation in a sales email. Start by telling a related story and then interrupt yourself at a cliffhanger moment with the details they need to see before tying it all back together with the story at the end (see my example above where I broke up my own story about the paper).

Have only a few seconds to grab their attention? Try something a bit less direct. (This is something to A/B test — some industries and audiences work better with direct, others with a more curiosity-based approach.) So for example, in a social media post, you could try swapping your head from, "Buy this product" to something with intrigue: i.e. "95% of people who use this say they are able to pay way more attention in Mass." We swap the curiosity about what your product or service will do (transformation) to stating the transformation up front and leaving the intrigue for the offering itself.

Does this strategy sound familiar? It's because we read about it almost every Sunday in Ordinary Time — parables!

Jesus literally used parables to teach people via story (and to avoid His hour coming quicker than it needed to by veiling His critiques of the religious leaders...but also the story piece).

That's because stories are 22 times more memorable than facts, according to Stanford.

Jesus would lead His disciples into His teaching by first evoking their curiosity about what would happen in the story and then bop them over the heads with the lesson.

And that's kind of what we have to do in our marketing for our businesses and ministries too, because your people are BOMBARDED with information all day every day.

So if we can grab their attention with vagueness that promotes curiosity, we can then use it deliver our message in a way that will actually get through and be far more memorable, so that they get the information they need to draw closer to Christ through the great things you offer.

And this is the best strategy to capture their attention. 😉

For His greater glory,

Emily

P.S. Now, as I'm writing this, I'm also having a debate in my head about the ethical use of curiosity in marketing, as some would probably consider curiosity a vice if indulged too much.

But I would also argue that curiosity can be a good thing if applied in the right way — ie. curiosity about God that leads to greater knowledge of Him.

So all that to say — as usual, moderation is key, and wield your abilities for curiosity for good!