# Message formatting

How to lay out emails and LinkedIn messages in a Victoria AI sequence so they're easy to read on a phone.

Prospects scan outreach on phones and in notification previews. Short lines and white space say "this will be quick"; a wall of text gets skipped.

## Format messages with short paragraphs

Give each idea its own short paragraph, with a blank line between them. Write the line breaks into the step itself; they're kept when it sends.

```text
Hi {first_name},

Saw that {company} is hiring its first SDRs.

I help sales leaders at that stage book more first meetings by [a few words on how].

Mind if I send over [a short sample]?
```

The same message as one block reads like a template, and the ask gets lost.

## Email formatting

- Plain text. No images, banners or buttons.
- No bold and no bullet points in the body; they read as marketing copy.
- One or two sentences per paragraph.
- The ask gets its own line, at the end.
- No links and no attachments. A link goes out only in an Appointment Setter reply, when the prospect asks for it.

## LinkedIn message formatting

- LinkedIn keeps your line breaks, so use them: a greeting, the reason, the point and the ask, each as its own short paragraph.
- No bullets or bold.
- No links and no attachments.
- If it looks long on a phone screen, cut it.

## Subject line formatting

One short line, a few words, no sub-clauses. "quick question, `{first_name}`" works; a subject that summarises the whole email doesn't.

## The read-aloud test

Read the message out loud. Every pause for breath is a line break. If you run out of breath before the end of a sentence, the sentence is too long.