Emotional language is the single greatest driver of performance in most communications and people respond best to messaging they can connect with. The emotions that engage us now are different than they were pre-pandemic.

Indeed, the COVID-19 crisis is shining a spotlight on the critical role language plays in customer experience. Yet, while many leaders understand at a message level that brand communication has changed as a result of COVID-19 - Exhibit A is the "We're here for you" email - they may not fully understand how brand communication has changed at an empirical and data-driven level. Understanding these changes can help leaders make more strategic - and more predictably effective - communication decisions going forward.

To provide this insight, the Persado Content Intelligence team analyzed over 500 AI-powered client campaigns that encompassed over 32,000 message permutations, comparing December 2019 with April 2020 and then May 2020. The goal was to pinpoint the specific ways the effectiveness of language used in brand communications has changed as a result of COVID-19. The analysis highlighted specific changes in the emotional language that engaged customers during this timeframe, as well as the words and phrases that mattered to customers amid the pandemic.