This is marketing malpractice

Yo! Welcome back to The Reeder Newsletter — your weekly dose of content strategy and growth advice. First time reading? Subscribe here.

I thought we had a content problem. But it was something much worse.

At a previous job, I was driving tons of leads and engagement from our campaigns for months… but almost zero sales opportunities to show for it.

So I "looked under the hood" of our CRM data. And what I found was heartbreaking.

They weren’t being followed up on at all. Even some hand-raisers never got a single touch point.

Not late. Not poorly. Literally not at all.

Most companies don’t have a demand problem. They have an execution problem.

And that’s exactly what ZoomInfo solves.

They’ve evolved from a contact database into a GTM Intelligence Platform that turns signals into outreach — automatically.

The result? No more hot leads going cold. No more missed hand-raisers. Just pipeline.

Learn more about ZoomInfo and start your free trial.

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It was the afternoon break at Drive, Dave Gerhart’s marketing conference in Vermont.

I was standing with a small group in the coffee line. A conversation about a must-watch show was in-flight. I'm not sure which.

"You have to give it a couple of episodes. It really picks up in season 2."

Oh, REALLY?

I just have to spend 10 hours before it gets good? — In what world??

I get that it's another way of saying "it's worth the wait."

I’m not saying a great show, novel, or movie can’t have a build-up. It should.

But you and I don't have such a luxury.

And even if we did, requiring a significant time and focus from an audience before making it “worthwhile” is criminal. A misdemeanor, at least.

And the simple truth is, most people will not wait.

Why should we?

There are more movies, books, blogs, posts, videos, and shows than we could ever watch in a lifetime.

(And if you believe “if you build it, they will come” you’ve been misguided.)

If you truly care about the work and really want to help your audience, instead of making them wait hours —or even a minute — you will sweat over the first sentence.

Not stress. *Sweat.*

You are earning their attention for the next sentences, so writing the first shouldn’t be easy.
(The lust for Easy is laziness, and that’s a marketing misdemeanor too.)

The first sentence is the most important sentence.

Today, we call it your “hook.”

LinkedIn posts and subject lines get the most attention here.

That’s because they offer clear and immediate closure for the writer.

Wanna know if your hook worked? Look at the post views.
Wanna know if your subject line worked? Look at the open rates.

Hooks on LinkedIn and openings in books look different — but the principle is the same: they decide if your work gets read.

It’s tempting to breeze past. After all, no one will “measure it.”

But the opening line is a contract with your audience. It promises a tone, a world, or an energy.

Here are a couple of my favorite examples that have stuck with me years later:

"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold." — Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

“As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster." — Scorcese, Goodfellas.

There are more, but you get the idea.

A first sentence isn’t filler. It’s the price of entry.

Speaking of sentences that pull their weight... Jess Cook's first job outta college was writing billboards and signage copy for McDonald's.

She told me about her copywriting technique for writing interesting headlines in 7 words on Reed Between The Lines. It's how her words ended up on 13,000+ signs across the country.

To hear how she reshapes market perception — especially damaging misperceptions — jump to 14:35.

Because whether it’s a book, a post, or a billboard, one line can change everything.

Holler at you later,
Devin

Pen by Devin Reed
Founder, The Reeder

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