Persuasive messages
include:
 Orders and requests
 Proposals and recommendations
 Sales and fund-raising letters
 Job application letters
 Reports, if they recommend action
 Efforts to change people, such as collection
letters, criticisms or performance appraisals,
public services ads, etc.

Primary Purpose
 To have the reader act
 To provide enough information so that the
reader knows exactly what to do.
 To overcome any objections that might
prevent or delay action

Secondary Purpose
 To build a good image of the writer
 To build a good image of the writer’s organization
 To cement a good relationship between the writer and
reader.
 To reduce or eliminate future correspondence on the
same subject so the message doesn’t create more
work for the writer.

What is the best subject line for a
persuasive message?
 For direct requests, use the request, the topic, or a
question
Subject: Request for Updated Software
Do We Need an Additional Training Session in
October?
 For problem-solving messages, use a directed subject
line or a reader benefit
Subject: A Proposal to Change the Formula for Calculating
Retiree’s Benefits
Arguments for Expanding the Marysville Plant

How should I organize persuasive
messages?
 In direct requests, start with the request.
 In a problem-solving message, start with
the problem you share.

Organizing a Direct Request
Request for Action
Details
Request for Action

When you expect quick agreement, save the
reader’s time by presenting the request directly.
1. Consider asking immediately for the
Information or service you want.
2. Give readers all the information and details
they will need to act on your request.
3. Ask for the action you want
Organizing a Direct Request

Writing Direct Request
Indirect request: Is there a new version of
the 2008 Accounting
Reference Manual?
Direct request: If there is a newer version
of the 2008 Accounting
Reference Manual, please
send it to me.

Organizing Problem-Solving
Messages
- use this pattern of organization when you
expect resistance from your reader but can
show that doing what you want will solve a
problem you and your reader share.

Organizing Problem-Solving
Messages
Shared Problem
Details
Solution
Negatives
Reader Benefits
Request for Action

Organizing Problem-Solving
Messages
1. Describe the problem you both share
(which your request will solve).
- Present the problem objectively and don’t
assign blame or mention personalities.
2. Give details of the problem.
- Be specific about the cost in money, time, lost
goodwill and so on.
- You have to convince readers that something
has to be done before you can convince them
that your solution is the best one.

Organizing Problem-Solving
Messages
3. Explain the solution to the problem.
If you know that the reader will favor another
solution, start with that solution and show
why it won’t work before you present your
solution.
Present your solution without using I or my.
4. Show that any negative elements
(cost, time, etc.) are outweighed by
the advantages.

Organizing Problem-Solving
Messages
5. Summarize any additional benefits
of the solution.
 Can be presented briefly since you described
the problem in detail.
6. Ask for the action you want.
 Often your reader will authorize or approve
something; other people will implement the
action.
 Give your reader a reason to act promptly

What other techniques can make my
messages more persuasive?
 Build credibility
 Build emotional appeal
 Use the right tone
 Offer a Reason for the Reader to Act
Promptly

1. Build Credibility
 Be factual
 Be Specific
 Be reliable

2. Build Emotional Appeal
 Stories and psychological description are
effective ways of building emotional
appeal.
 Recent research suggests that stories are
more persuasive because people
remember them.

3. Use the Right Tone
 Avoid messages that sound parental or
preachy.
Parental: Everyone is expected to comply
with these regulations. I’m sure you can
see that they are commonsense rules
needed for our business.
Better: Even on casual days, visitors
expect us to be professional. So leave the
gym clothes at home!

Arrogant: Based on this evidence, I expect you
to give me a new computer.
Better: If department funds permit, I would like a
new computer.
Stuffy: It is requested that you approve the
above-mentioned action.
Better: Please authorize us to create a new
subscription letter.
Passive verbs and jargons sound stuffy. Use
active imperatives --- perhaps with ‘Please” ---
to create a friendlier tone.

4. Offer a Reason for the Reader to Act
Promptly
 Show that time limit is real.
 Show that acting now will save time or
money.
 Show the cost of delaying action.

Developing Marketing and Sales
Messages
1. Assessing Audience needs
2. Analyzing your competition
3. Determining Key Selling Points and
Benefits
4. Anticipating Purchase Objections
5. Creating a Persuasive Appeal

Creating a Persuasive Appeal
Getting Attention – use a wide range of techniques to attract
audience’s attention:
 A strong product feature or benefit
 A piece of genuine news
 A personal appeal to the reader’s emotions and values
 The promise of insider information
 The promise of savings
 A sample of demonstration of the product
 A solution to a problem.
A I D A model

Building Interest
- expand on and support the promises in
your attention-getting opening

Increasing Desire
 Add details and audience benefits to
increase desire for the product or
service.
 Use strong, colorful language without
overdoing it to keep readers interested.

Motivating Action
 Persuade the reader to take the
preferred action
 Put a deadline on the offer, or simply
remind members that the sooner they
order the sooner they’ll be able to enjoy
the product’s benefits.
 Make the task of responding as simple
as possible.

Credibility
• credible (adj.): believable, trustworthy
• credibility (n.): integrity, reliability
• incredulous (adj.): unbelievable, unreliable
A business proposal must have multiple
credible sources as your opposition will
attempt to destroy your credibility and
prove your statements incredulous.

Review:
 When do write persuasive messages?
 What is the primary purpose of it?
 What techniques do we use?

Are you credible?

Are you credible?
 Do you appear trustworthy?
 Do you appear dynamic and excited about
your proposal?
 Do you have expertise and knowledge?
 Will your audience identify with your
message?

Evaluating Internet Sources
Top level domains that provide useful clues about a
site’s focus and function:
.com - A commercial site. The primary function is to
make money.
.edu - A site affiliated with an educational institution.
.gov - A government site. It presents trustworthy
information (statistics, facts, reports), but the
interpretive materials may be less useful.
.mil - A military site. The technical information on these
sites is consistently useful, but interpretive material
tends to justify a single, pro-military position.

Evaluating Internet Sources
.museum - can be either nonprofit or for-
profit institutions, consider the
purpose that the particular museum
serves.
.org - An organization site. Because
organizations seek to advance
political, social, financial,
educational, and other specific
agendas, review these
materials with care.

APA (American Psychological
Association) Style
 All citations should come in the form of an “APA
citation sandwich”:
Signal phrase + + citation
For example:
According to Robbins (2010), President of Travel Trends,
Inc., a market research company specializing in the
tourism industry, in some popular resort towns the hotel
vacancy rate for the week of Christmas 2009 was 35%
higher than in 2008. Robbins claims that “doing well” in
the recession often just means staying afloat in whatever
way possible. (para. 3).
research
(quote or paraphrase)

 A direct quotation from a source
 A summary of the source or a particular
section of the source
 Your comments on, or reactions to, the
source

Quoting and Paraphrasing
 All research papers contain information
from other sources. When you use
information that has been previously
published by someone else, it is
important that you avoid plagiarism –
presenting someone else's ideas as your
own. (Plagiarism is not just cheating; it is
also stealing.)

direct quotes
When you use a direct quote, you copy and reference the
exact word/s of the author into your writing. A direct quote
may be:
 One word
 A phrase or part of a sentence
 A sentence
 A group of sentences

Exercise 1: Identifying direct quotes
Read this paragraph and note the direct
quotes:

For ALL quotes:
 Use the exact words of the author
 Make sure your quotation blends with
the sentence
 Use strong or weak author to
acknowledge the source
 Use reporting words or phrases to
integrate the quote into your writing
 Reference your source of information

Acceptable/unacceptable
quotes
One student read Graddol's article and
wanted to use Graddol's ideas in her
assignment. The extract on the right is what
she wrote.
The student's writing is unacceptable. She has
copied the last part of the sentence word for word.

Her second attempt
The student's writing is still
unacceptable. This time she
has used quotation
marks but she has not
quoted accurately.
Her third attempt
This time the student has quoted correctly, because she
• used quotation marks
• copied the exact words
• gave reference details.

Short Quotations (Less Than 40
Words):
A large portion of the internet cannot be
accessed through Google. In fact, no
search engine “comes even close to
indexing all the pages on the web” (Lucas,
2001, p. 28).

Long Quotations (40 Words or
More):
Morrison (1998) uses specific details to draw the reader into
the scene:
Three cars, say, a ’53 Bel Air, green with cream-
colored interior, license number 085 B, six
cylinders,double molding on rear fender pontoon,
Powerglide two- speed automatic transmission; and say
a ’49 Dodge Wayfarer, black, cracked rear window, fender
skirts, fluid drive, checkerboard grille; and a ’53
Oldsmobile with Arkansas plates. The drivers slow
down, put their heads out the windows and holler. Their
eyes crinkled in mischief the drove around the girls,
making U-turns and K’s, churning up grass seed in front
of the houses, flushing cats in front of Ace’s Grocery
Store. Circling. (p. 12-13)
While the details of this passage are rich and accurate, they
are not clichéd.

Paraphrasing
One student wanted to use John Lennon's ideas in his assignment.
The extract on the right is what he wrote.
The student's writing is unacceptable. He has quoted John Lennon word for word
without quotation marks. It is insufficient to simply provide a reference without
also indicating that words are a quotation.

His lecturer told him he should paraphrase
Lennon (change Lennon's words), so this is
what he wrote.
The student's writing is still unacceptable. He has changed som
words, but the structure of the sentences is the same.

He tried again.
When you paraphrase someone else's information or ideas, you
should
• keep the meaning
• change the word order
• change most of the words
• give reference details.

Practice

Summarising
 The extract on the left is about the traditional Aboriginal
owners of the Sydney region. It is from the City of
Sydney website.
 One student wanted to summarise this information for
his assignment. The extract on the right is what he
wrote.
This student's summary is unacceptable. It does not acknowledge the City of Sydne
as the source of the information.

He tried again.
Now the student's writing is acceptable. He has acknowledged
the City of Sydney is the source of this information.

When you summarise someone
else's information or ideas, you
should
 keep the author's main ideas
 avoid simply copying the author's words
 make it clear which ideas are the
author's and which are your own
 give reference details.

Practice

Referencing
 The extract on the left was written by Manktelow and
published in The Sydney Morning Herald in 2006.
 One student read Manktelow's article and wanted to use
some of his information in his UTS assignment. The
extract on the right is what he wrote.
The student's writing is unacceptable. He has summarised what Manktelow w
but he has not acknowledged the source of the ideas.

He tried again.
Now the student's writing is acceptable. He has provided all
the information that is necessary in the body of his assignment.
He will write the full details for the reference in a list at the end
of the assignment along with all the other references he has
used.

When you are referring to someone
else's ideas in your writing, you should
 make it clear which ideas are the
author's and which are your own
 give the author's surname
 give the year of publication
 give the page number (unless you are
referring to ideas presented in the
publication as a whole).

In-Text Citation
Paraphrase
Maracana, located in Rio de Janeiro, is
the largest soccer stadium in the world
(Luxner, 2005).
Quote from a Source with Page Numbers
At least one study has shown that “the
genetic architecture of basal female mating
discrimination is different from that of
reinforced mating discrimination” (Ortiz-
Barrientos, Counterman, & Noor, 2004,
p. 2261).

Quote from a Source with No Page
Numbers
As Gibbs & Soares have stated, “an
influenza pandemic, by definition, occurs
only when the influenza virus mutates into
something dangerously unfamiliar to our
immune systems and yet is able to jump
from person to person through a sneeze,
cough or touch” (2005).

Quote from a Source with No Page Numbers &
No Author Listed
The logging of forest biomes has resulted in
“hundreds of species of plants and animals
disappearing from the planet on a daily basis”
(Forest biomes, 2002).

Source with an Organization as Author
“Traumatic brain injury (TBI) … occurs when a
sudden trauma causes damage to the brain”
(National Institute of Neurological Disorders
and Stroke [NINDS], 2005). Such an injury
could result from an automobile collision, a fall,
or a sports accident. Any person who has
suffered a blow to the head and is showing
symptoms of more than mild TBI should be
rushed to the hospital. While there are few
cures for TBI, immediate medical attention can
prevent further injuries (NINDS, 2005).

Personal Communication
Dr. J. R. Thompson of the University of
Tennessee confirmed by email that
superconductors have tremendous
potential for saving energy by improving
the efficiency of electrical systems
(personal communication, September 3,
2005)

References Page

Print Sources

Online Database Sources

Internet / Web Page Sources

Internet / Web Page
Sources

Homework : Problem-solution
 Research a common issue in your home
country business industries. Specify the
industry and the problem it’s facing. (e.g.
human resource, work ethics, fraud, poor
marketing and sales, etc. )
 Post your researched facts in the
discussion board.

Test 2:
 Choose one of the industries/companies
you have researched.
 Write a persuasive letter to the CEO of
that company describing the issue and
propose a solution.
 Organize it by following the guidelines
discussed last meeting.