The Power of the (Zoom) Interview: Why It’s One of Your Most Valuable Copywriting Tools
If you’re a copywriter, you’re probably used to writing in someone else’s voice.
It’s one of the strangest things about the job. Your name’s never on the bottom of the letter or email, but your fingerprints are all over it.
And if you do your job well, no one ever knew you were there.
That’s the goal. Your copy doesn’t sound like a marketer. It sounds like the person your reader knows and trusts.
The founder. The pastor. The leader in the field. The real human on the other side of the work.
Because in fundraising, voice is connection.
If the copy feels personal, it builds trust. If it feels too polished or generic, it gets ignored.
So how do you make your copy sound like someone else, and still make it sing?
You don’t guess, you don’t wing it, and you don’t find it in a bullet-pointed creative brief.
You talk to the person you’re writing for—on Zoom or in person.
You record your conversation, get it transcribed, and then use that to help you write like they talk.
You’re not the voice. You’re the bridge.
Writing in someone else’s voice isn’t about pretending. It’s about paying attention.
It’s about listening closely enough that you start to think like they do, speak like they do, and emphasize what they would.
You’re not just looking for information, you’re looking for rhythm, phrasing, and emotional weight.
When you do this right, the person you’re writing for will say, “That sounds just like me.”
And even more importantly, the donor will feel it.
Because when a message actually sounds like the person who lived it, people believe it, and they’re far more likely to respond.
That kind of voice doesn’t come from cleverness.
It comes from time. Time spent listening, asking, digging, absorbing—not to just what the person you’re writing for says, but how they say it.
Behavioral psychology calls this “emotional mirroring.” When we listen closely, our brains start to sync with the speaker—echoing tone, pacing, even word choice.
Writers do this almost without thinking. It’s part instinct, part empathy. And it’s one of the most powerful tools we have.
A conversation beats a creative brief every time
Creative briefs are helpful, but they don’t capture tone. They don’t reveal the pause before someone talks about something sacred. They don’t show you where the energy rises or where the heartache lives.
That only happens in conversation.
So before you write, get the person you’re writing for on a call. Send questions, personal and strategic, ahead of time so they can reflect and prepare.
But get the call, even if it’s just 20 minutes.
That’s where you get the gold. The turns you didn’t expect. The stories they didn’t mean to tell. The insight you couldn’t have pulled from a doc.
Pro tip: Here’s one of my go-to questions:
“Imagine a world where [Organization Name] didn’t exist. How would that make you feel?”
This question surfaces emotion fast, and it often get to the heart of your message.
And it for sure has gotten me better content than I’d ever have been able to come up with—even on my most creative day.
Record. Transcribe. Reread. Rewrite.
You don’t need a fancy setup. Zoom, Otter, a voice memo app—it all works.
So record the conversation, then drop it into a transcription tool like Otter. Zoom can do this if the host enables it and the meeting is recorded to the cloud.
You do this, not so you can quote the person you’re writing for line-for-line, but so you can hear them again, and get their words back in your head before you write.
Neuroscience backs this up. When we hear someone speak, our brains activate more deeply than when we read their words—especially in areas tied to memory, empathy, and trust.
We don’t just process what they say, we connect to it.
That’s why voice-based writing works. It mimics how the brain wants to listen.
Write like they talk
Now, take everything you’ve gathered, and don’t over-sanitize it.
Keep the quirks. Let their transitions lead. Use their go-to phrases. Don’t polish so much that the voice disappears.
The best fundraising copy doesn’t sound like a copywriter. It sounds like the person who lived the story—the one the donor trusts and has a relationship with.
When it’s right, everyone feels it
As stated before, you know you’ve gotten it right when the person you’re writing for reads your copy and says, “That sounds just like me.”
And your audience? They’ll feel like they’re reading something honest. Something personal. Something familiar. The kind of message that makes them want to lean in—and give!
So if you’re writing fundraising copy, don’t try to be impressive. Be invisible.
And let the person you’re writing for do the talking.
Sources:
Goleman, Daniel. Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships — emotional mirroring and interpersonal syncing.
Hasson, U., et al. (2012). Brain-to-brain coupling: A mechanism for creating and sharing a social world. Trends in Cognitive Sciences — how voice activates neural empathy networks.
