Active vs Passive Digital Messaging

With so much of our industry's sales and marketing efforts taking place online, or in digital format, it's a good time to explore how to make those messages more effective and more likely to be acted upon.

Active versus Passive Messaging

The key is understanding what the intent of your message is. An active message requests or expects the recipient to take some action. A passive message simply provides a piece of information that the recipient might access at some point...now, or later....no immediate action is expected or implied.

Why It's Important To Know The Difference

I spoke with an executive in the home care industry last week. He relayed that he is now receiving up to 200 emails per day from anyone and everyone he's ever done business with. You might be experiencing the same thing. With so much information coming at you, it's virtually impossible to discern the important info from the rest, so even important messaging can wind up in the trash bin without ever having been seen. Your job now (and really, forever) is to make sure your messaging is seen and can be used. If you understand the intent of your message you can more effectively get it to the person who needs to see it, and have them make use of it.

Active Messaging - Active messages...those that expect the recipient to take some action....need to be short and sharp. People won't waste time reading thru paragraphs of text to figure out what your message is. These need to get right to the point. Also, you want to make taking the intended action easy. Put the hyperlink right where it's easy to see, make the photo clickable to your website, put a "mailto:" link so they can open a new email addressed to you instantly. In short, make it easy and quick to do business with you. If not, they'll move on to the next 199 emails or messages. Active messaging takes place via text, email, phone call, or messaging app. It's a one stop experience where the recipient doesn't have to go somewhere else, and then start over again. An active message asks for a response, some information, or some action to take place. Get to the point, and you have a better chance of getting what you asked for.

Passive Messaging - Are messages that don't ask for a reply right now. They generally having more information that is not as timely as an active message. A passive message might be a post on a recent success story, or a capability your agency has, a video, or a simple thank you to the community. These types of messages are "parked" somewhere....your website, social media pages, etc. You provide the passive link and you leave the information there for a contact to view when they have time, and when they might need it. You can include more volume in a passive message, since you're not asking anyone to read through it "right now". Passive messages should be easy to find and always include key contact info in the event someone wants to take action on it.

Understand the key differences in these messages, and you'll get a better response to your marketing efforts. While current restrictions are expected to ease over the next month, this new type of marketing will have a permanent place in the future of home care sales & marketing. Right now we have the time to get great at it....so get great!

Our next 10 Week Home Care Marketing Accelerator webinar program begins on April 29th. We'll be training on this, as well as an effective sales strategy for now, and for the future. Things have changed forever and you need your sales team to be on the cutting edge in order to thrive. Learn more and register today for the next program beginning on April 29th, 2020

Good Selling (and messaging!)

Michael Giudicissi