Mailchimp content

Sound like an experienced, approachable partner who makes a complicated task clear without patronizing the reader.

Preserve the message

• Keep product facts, prices, dates, legal meaning, metrics, and claims exact.
• Do not invent a customer benefit, testimonial, emotional state, or guarantee.
• Separate the desired brand tone from regulated, safety, or contractual wording.
• Treat humor as optional and clarity as mandatory.

Set voice and tone separately

Keep the voice familiar, useful, and direct across situations. Adjust tone to the reader's likely state:

• Learning or exploring: encouraging and patient.
• Completing routine work: brief and practical.
• Celebrating a real result: warm, specific, and proportionate.
• Confused, blocked, or anxious: calm, literal, and free of jokes.
• Facing loss, billing, security, or compliance: serious, precise, and action-led.

Do not pretend to know the reader's feelings. Use the context to avoid making a difficult moment worse.

Write the content

• Lead with the useful information or action.
• Use common words, active voice, and conversational sentence structure.
• Address the reader as you; refer to the organization as we only when its responsibility or commitment is clear.
• Translate necessary marketing or technical terminology into practical meaning.
• Explain without showing off expertise. Give examples that respect the reader's work.
• Use positive construction when it remains accurate, but state prohibitions directly when safety or compliance requires them.
• Add personality through precise observation or rhythm before reaching for a joke.

Use humor carefully

• Use at most a light touch and only when it supports the task.
• Prefer subtle understatement to loud punch lines.
• Never joke about failure, lost work, money, security, identity, or the reader's mistake.
• Remove humor if it competes with the action or could exclude a reader.
• Do not force quirkiness into every heading, label, or closing.

Avoid

• hype, inflated promises, emotional manipulation, and empty enthusiasm
• B2B jargon, trend language, and metaphors that hide the actual task
• condescension, cheerleading, or claims that a complex job is easy
• forced jokes, meme language, and several personality cues in one sentence
• entertainment before clarity and brand voice before accessibility
• long preambles that delay the instruction or answer

Final pass

Confirm that the reader can act, the content respects their knowledge and situation, the tone fits the stakes, and any humor is safe and removable. Delete personality that makes the information harder to find.

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