Introductory Letter for Conference

I work for a Business Intelligence software company named Information Builders. In preparing for Summit, our annual user conference, we created a letter from our CEO to the attendees. I think the process by which we shaped it provides a pretty good example of how cutting matters even for relatively small tasks.

Our writer was playing off the Las Vegas venue and our "no barriers" theme, while trying to generate excitement about the learning opportunities at Summit.

Here's the original, 283 words:

Welcome to Summit 2007 and Caesars Palace in Las Vegas! I am excited to share with you five action-packed days of experience, collaboration, and innovation.

This year’s conference will focus on showing you how Information Builders’ solutions can eliminate the barriers to your organization’s success. Featuring over 160 sessions, including new presentations and perennial favorites, there will be unlimited opportunities for intense discussions, networking, and information gathering. This is the prefect learning opportunity for those who have just started using Information Builders’ products as well as those who have relied on our technologies for more than 30 years.

Responding to our customers’ requests has always been a primary focus for Information Builders. This philosophy is evident in the agenda that we have assembled for Summit 2007. One of this year’s new features is a full day dedicated to exploring topics specific to major industries. By focusing on how our technologies can be applied to resolve your unique issues, you are sure to bring added value to your organization.

We are also excited to introduce our improved education track – aptly named Basic Training. Our most requested educational, expert, and technical courses have been compiled here for a win-win conference experience. While we’ve changed some things to meet the demands of our customers – many of the favorites are back, including tracks that highlight each of our product lines and give you a glimpse at of what lies ahead, lots of labs showing you the nitty-gritty product features and techniques, and plenty of opportunities for you to meet with experts in a one on one.

Summit 2007 will be the only place in the city known for risk where you are guaranteed to hit the jackpot.

That's not bad, and I wouldn't have been upset if it went out exactly as written. That said, it could be better.

First, consider the form. This has the form of a personal letter, which lets us use a colloquial tone. (Also, our CEO isn't stuffy, so I wouldn't want his letter to seem too formal.) It's also likely to be skipped if we don't do something fast, relevant, and punchy; we needed a relatively small and impactful page.

Next, consider what we could do to improve it: eliminate the passive voice (and even non-passive forms of "to be"), use fewer words to say the same thing to make it read more quickly.

Here's what we came up with, 223 words (a 21% cut):

Welcome to Summit 2007 and Caesars Palace in Las Vegas!

Get ready for five action-packed days of experience, collaboration, and innovation, showing you how Information Builders' solutions eliminate the barriers to your organization's success. Over 160 sessions, including new presentations and perennial favorites, will provide unlimited opportunities for intense discussions, networking, and information gathering -- the perfect learning opportunity for new users as well as those who have relied on Information Builders technologies for more than 30 years.

Our primary focus -- responding to our customers' requests -- shines through in the Summit 2007 agenda. For example, we have dedicated a full day to exploring topics specific to major industries. You'll learn how to add value to your organization by applying our technologies to your [industry's?] unique issues.

We are also excited to introduce our improved education track - aptly named Basic Training. We've compiled our most requested educational, expert, and technical courses for a win-win conference experience. While we've changed some things to meet customer demand, many favorites are back -- including tracks that highlight each of our product lines and give you a glimpse of what lies ahead, lots of labs showing you nitty-gritty product features and techniques, and plenty of opportunities to meet with experts one-on-one.

In the city known for risk, Summit 2007 guarantees that you'll hit the jackpot.

It's tough to make education exciting, but I think this comes off pretty well.

I still wasn't sure what "win-win conference experience" was, so the writer changed it to "winning conference experience". (She made a few other good smallish changes, too, but those weren't my work so I won't post them here.)

There may be a little more that could be excised. But the cuts so far have achieved something more important than just a 21% reduction: they gave every action an actor. It's not just that "there will be" unlimited opportunities, it's that we've planned 160 sessions to provide them to you. It's not just that Summit will be a place where you are guaranteed a jackpot, Summit itself guarantees you the jackpot. In other words, we're actively doing all of this for you, dear Mr. / Ms. Customer, and you should be thrilled with how well we're going to pull it off.

That's the beauty of eliminating the passive voice. It's more efficient and it makes everything clearer and more expressive, even more emotional. It helps you connect with the person for whom you're writing. Good stuff.

Summit is taking place right now, by the way -- which is why I'm willing to publish this post -- and it has been a great experience so far. If you're a customer of ours and you're not here, you should really check it out next year.

Good writing!

Press Release Boilerplate

This is my first marketing-oriented post, but I think it's a pretty good example of how important cutting principles can be in my day-to-day work.

Press release text is notoriously dull. Cutting excess or redundant verbiage can help.

Here's a boilerplate -- the stuff about the company that ends every press release -- suggested for my company's releases. It's 218 words.

Information Builders, an innovator for more than 30 years, provides a unique combination of software solutions for business intelligence and enterprise integration. WebFOCUS, the world's most widely deployed and utilized business intelligence platform, provides organizations with a comprehensive and fully integrated platform whose architecture, integration, and simplicity permeate every level of the global organization -- executive, analytical, and operational. WebFOCUS is the most scalable, secure, and flexible solution in the market and helps organizations build applications that have no barriers, meeting all the reporting needs of the extended enterprise, ranging from a dozen users to millions of users. iWay Software is the company's multi-purpose integration software, comprised of the industry's leading adapters and state-of-the-art engines for integrating and managing all enterprise information assets. iWay Software addresses all SOA, application, data, and information management integration requirements and has been adopted by the leading software platform providers. Together, these products give Information Builders' customers the ability to access information from any data source and uniquely solve complex problems for today’s real-time business.

Information Builders' award-winning technology has successfully provided quality software and superior services to more than 12,000 customers, including most of the Fortune 100 and U.S. federal government agencies. Headquartered in New York City with 90 offices worldwide, the company employs 1,600 people and has more than 350 business partners.

There are several things to notice here.

Redundant words. We used "platform" twice here: "WebFOCUS, the world's most widely deployed and utilized business intelligence platform, provides organizations with a comprehensive and fully integrated platform..." And "ranging from a dozen users to millions of users" is a little clunky; there's no reason we can't say "dozens to millions of users." "iWay Software is the company's multi-purpose integration software," also sounds a little off, since "iWay Software" is actually the name of a subsidiary company (although it's sometimes, confusingly, used to refer to the software itself).

Too many adjectives. There's little benefit to saying that WebFOCUS is the world's most widely deployed and most widely utilized BI platform. Now, unlike some forms of writing, in marketing conciseness isn't everything. You really do want to say a lot of those positive words, even though they're somewhat redundant, because the text looks bald without them. But where there are opportunities to pull things out, you should.

Cramming. There are a lot of things we want to convey quickly here, but unfortunately the sentence structure can become too convoluted to handle the semantic load. "Scalable, secure, flexible," "executive, analytical, and operational", and a few specific highlights for our company: "simple" and "no barriers" are ideas in this boilerplate. I tried to make the sentence structure cleaner, even though it meant breaking up the sentences somewhat.

Notice the structure of the boilerplate:

• We're an innovator of software solutions that involve BI and integration.
  
• WebFOCUS is the BI product, with the following characteristics.
  
• iWay Software is the integration product, with the following characteristics.
  
• We have lots of customers and credibility.
  

It's a decent structure, so I kept it and reshaped the text inside it. Note, however, is that the first and fourth bullets are about the company rather than the products; it's reasonable to move text between those two to emphasize key points.

Here are some of the ways I changed the text.

• I wanted the reader to see "award-winning", the number of customers we have, and our longevity early on. My company is privately held and doesn't do a lot of awareness marketing (e.g., advertising), so people might not know who we are. These three facts prove that we're no fly-by-night.
  
• I thought that calling us an "innovator" wasn't strong enough: an innovator of what? I wanted to say what we do first (BI and integration software), and then differentiate us from all the other people who do the same thing. Well, the combination of world-class BI and world-class integration is unique in this market, and we're well-known for both, so I highlighted the combination.
  
• We've been pushing how innovative we are, so I wanted to keep the word in the boilerplate. "Innovative solutions" isn't much stronger than "innovator", to be honest, but it has the merit of pointing out that we provide customized solutions rather than just shrink-wrapped software. I acknowledge that we're bordering on the subliminal, but I guarantee you that, if nothing else, the phrase will help get the darned thing approved.
  
• I cut a few things. (Remember cutting? It's a blog about cutting.) The "global organizations" we refer to are also the "extended enterprises" we support, so I refer once to "global extended enterprises". I omitted the word "architecture" because the architecture is what provides the security, scalability, and flexibility that our users need; in other words, I followed the conventional marketing wisdom that the benefit is more important than the feature that gives it. (If there's one cut that our Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) will want to put back in, though, it's probably "architecture". Our architecture really is superior, and we compete based on it all the time.) I cut the "for integrating and managing all enterprise information assets" from the iWay Software description because that's encompassed by "addresses all SOA, application, data, and information management integration requirements".
  
• The last paragraph is a little messy. It has "successfully provided quality software" is either redundant or pedantic. The subject of the first sentence is "technology", and it has apparently "provided quality software and superior services" -- but really it's the company that provides software and services. (Plus the parallel structure of "quality software and superior services" got to be a little much for me.) Restructuring and cutting helps.
  
• Instead of paraphrasing our "No Barriers" slogan, I stated it, taking it on as a rallying cry or an elliptical mission statement -- and in the process added to it, as my CMO and I have been discussing for a little while. It's "Your business, no barriers" now.
  

Here's the final version, which clocks in at 154 words, a 29% cut.

Information Builders' award-winning combination of business intelligence and enterprise integration software has been providing innovative solutions for more than 12,000 customers for the past 30 years.

WebFOCUS is the world's most widely utilized business intelligence platform. It provides the security, scalability, and flexibility needed at every level of global extended enterprises. Its simplicity helps create executive, analytical, and operational applications that reach dozens to millions of users.

Information Builders subsidiary iWay Software provides state-of-the-art, multi-purpose integration engines that address all SOA, application, data, and information management requirements. Its integration adapters have been adopted by the leading software platform providers.

Together, these products give Information Builders' customers the ability to live up to the company motto: "Your Business, No Barriers."

Information Builders' customers include most of the Fortune 100 and U.S. federal government agencies. Headquartered in New York City with 90 offices worldwide, the company employs 1,600 people and has more than 350 business partners.

There are other temptations, too. For example, the "has been providing" in the first sentence screams for a re-write: it could be "Information Builders' award-winning combination of business intelligence and enterprise integration software has delivered innovative solutions to more than 12,000 customers for the past 30 years." I honestly like that better except that it feels over, like this track record has been completed. "Has been providing" is less definite, and thus -- unusually -- better. But I think this is good enough.

Happy writing!