When It’s Good to Be Spacey

We often help clients with email cadences. What they typically send us as a jumping off point is one or maybe two email messages they’ve written that cover every feature of their product, every benefit of working with them, and every reason they are better than their competitors. At this point we share some pointers.

1. Focus on the benefits and value to your client rather than the features.
2. Take out the extraneous stuff that they don’t care about. Nobody, and I mean nobody, cares that your product has four patents except for you. I mean, congrats, it’s a big deal, but not to your clients. Tell your mother. Mothers love that kind of thing.
3. Spread out this one gigantic email into eight short emails. Focus on one idea at a time. One way your service makes their lives easier. One value it provides. (And, no, none of these emails should be about the patents.)

Spreading out your message over time is helpful not just because it keeps your prospects from being overwhelmed and glazing over. It also fits with the way humans learn, retain information, and make memories. That’s right, everyone, it’s cognitive bias season! That lovely time of year when we share with you cognitive biases humans are saddled with that can have major impacts on your sales. This week’s topic? The S P A C I N G effect.

IF YOU KNOW THE ANSWER, PLEASE RAISE YOUR TENTACLES

The spacing effect describes how, when information is repeated in spaced repetitions, humans are better able to recall the information. I say humans, but everything from rodents to sea slugs is impacted by the spacing effect. Which leads us to the question, “How do you test the knowledge of a sea slug?” But that’s a different blog.

When information is presented over time (rather than the late-night cramming session many of us relied on in school), more of it is encoded into our long-term memory. Research has shown that spaced information actually improves the survival of new neurons in the brain.

There are several theories as to why the spacing effect happens. One idea is that, when you learn something at two different times, the contextual features (mood, environment, etc.) differ, and so you encode the information in different ways which aids in memory. It could also be that, when the information is presented again with time in between, your brain struggles more to recall the first exposure, and that spending more effort on that memory retrieval helps you remember it better. A third theory is that, when there is enough time between exposures, your brain can’t simply scan for the information but has to reconstruct it, resulting in better retention. Lucky for us, we don’t need to know the reason behind the spacing effect to use it to our advantage.

INFORMATION OUT

For any information you send out to people who don’t know you well yet but who you want to know you, spacing it out is more effective. Don’t send a single email—send an eight-email cadence. And, no, sending a single email  once a month does not equal a cadence. If you wait too long between exposures, the spacing effect doesn’t work because the first exposure has been lost and you’re essentially providing a series of first exposures.

Approach LinkedIn posts in a similar way. Consistent, spaced-out posting can help people become familiar with you and your company. Spaced out emails and LinkedIn posts also take advantage of the mere exposure effect, another cognitive bias that explains why we’re more likely to like something more when we’ve been exposed to it multiple times. It becomes familiar, even if it’s something we’re not yet engaging with.

You, of course, would prefer a response from an email cadence or drip campaign, but even if you don’t get one, it could still be working for you. Drip campaigns as well as consistent LinkedIn posts by company leaders get prospects familiar enough with your brand so that, when a salesperson from your organization does call a prospect, the prospect thinks, “Oh, yeah. I’ve heard of you.”

INFORMATION IN

The power of the spacing effect can also be harnessed for information you or your team are consuming. Think about most employee onboarding programs. Usually, it’s two weeks of your new hire getting loads of information all at once. That’s a lot like cramming for a test, which is not how we humans and sea slugs learn best. That’s why everboarding, or extending the onboarding process into something more continuous, has gained favor.

Are you looking to learn a new skill or expand an area of expertise? Look for educational programs that space out the information you’re consuming. Or, if it’s something self-paced, be sure to, well, pace yourself. It’s best to also look for programs that include quizzes along the way rather than only testing your knowledge at the very end. Research has shown that being quizzed on information along the way helps us learn the information better. Recall is more important to learning than recognition. Are you working on a presentation or speech? Test yourself instead of just reviewing the information over and over again.

I came across a great quote by language-fluency expert Gabriel Wyner that does a great job of explaining how our brains work (and don’t work).

“There is no such thing as memorizing. We can think, we can repeat, we can recall and we can imagine, but we aren’t built to memorize. Rather our brains are designed to think and automatically hold onto what’s important. While running away from our friendly neighborhood tiger, we don’t think “You need to remember this! Tigers are bad! Don’t forget! They’re bad!” We simply run away, and our brain remembers for us.”

I realize your email cadences can’t compete for attention with the friendly neighborhood tigers, but you can give them some teeth. Make them unexpected. Make them funny. Make them different than the thousands of other emails pouring into people’s inboxes. Be sure to space them out. And stop it with the patents already.

Looking for self-paced sales training that includes quizzes along the way? Click here for our training modules. Many are free!