Letter Writing

This another phase of adver­tis­ing which all of us have to con­sider. It enters, or should enter, into all cam­paigns. Every busi­ness man receives a large num­ber of cir­cu­lar let­ters. Most of them go direct to the waste bas­ket. But he acts on oth­ers, and oth­ers are filed for reference.

Ana­lyze those let­ters. The ones you act on or the ones you keep have a head­line which attracted your inter­est. At a glance they offer some­thing that you want, some­thing you may wish to know.

Remem­ber that point in all advertising.

A cer­tain buyer spends $50,000,000 per year. Every let­ter, every cir­cu­lar which comes to his desk gets its deserved atten­tion. He wants infor­ma­tion on the lines he buys.

But we have often watched him. In one minute a score of let­ters may drop into the waste bas­ket. Then one is laid aside. That is some­thing to con­sider at once. Another is filed under the head­ing “Var­nish.” And later when he buys var­nish that let­ter will turn up.

That buyer won sev­eral prizes by arti­cles on good buy­ing. His arti­cles were based on infor­ma­tion. Yet the great masses of mat­ter which came to him never got more than a glance.

The same prin­ci­ples apply to all adver­tis­ing. Let­ter writ­ers over­look them just as adver­tis­ers do. They fail to get the right atten­tion. They fail to tell what buy­ers wish to know.

One mag­a­zine sends out mil­lions of let­ters annu­ally. Some to get sub­scrip­tions, some to sell books. Before the pub­lisher sends out five mil­lion let­ters he puts a few thou­sands to test. He may try twenty-​​five let­ters, each with a thou­sand prospects. He learns what results will cost. Per­haps the plan is aban­doned because it appears unprof­itable. If not, the let­ter which pays best is the let­ter that he uses.

Just as men are doing now in all sci­en­tific adver­tis­ing.

Mail order adver­tis­ers do like­wise. They test their let­ters as they test their ads. A gen­eral let­ter is never used until it proves itself best among many actual returns.

Let­ter writ­ing has much to do with adver­tis­ing. Let­ters to inquir­ers, follow-​​up let­ters. Wher­ever pos­si­ble they should be tested. Where that is not pos­si­ble, they should be based on knowl­edge gained by tests.

We find the same dif­fer­ence in let­ters as in ads. Some get action, some do not. Some com­plete a sale, some for­feit the impres­sion gained. These are let­ters, going usu­ally to half-​​made con­verts, that are tremen­dously important.

Expe­ri­ence gen­er­ally shows that a two-​​cent let­ter gets no more atten­tion than a one-​​cent let­ter. Fine sta­tionery no more than poor sta­tionery. The whole appeal lies in the matter.

A let­ter which goes to an inquirer is like a sales­man going to an inter­ested prospect. You know what cre­ated that inter­est. Then fol­low it up along that line, not on some dif­fer­ent argu­ment. Com­plete the impres­sion already cre­ated. Don’t under­take another guess.

Do some­thing if pos­si­ble to get imme­di­ate action. Offer some induce­ment for it. Or tell what delay may cost. Note how many suc­cess­ful sell­ing let­ters place a limit on an offer. It expires on a cer­tain date. That is all done to get prompt deci­sion, to over­come the ten­dency to delay.

A mail order adver­tiser offered a cat­a­log. The inquirer might send for three or four sim­i­lar cat­a­logs. He had that com­pe­ti­tion in mak­ing a sale.

So he wrote a let­ter when he sent his cat­a­log, and enclosed a per­sonal card. He said, “You are a new cus­tomer, and we want to make you wel­come. So when you send your order please enclose this card. The writer wants to see that you get a gift with order — some­thing you can keep.”

With an old cus­tomer he gave some other rea­son for the gift. The offer aroused curios­ity. It gave pref­er­ence to his cat­a­log. With­out some com­pelling rea­son for order­ing else­where, the woman sent the order to him. The gift paid for itself sev­eral times over by bring­ing larger sales per catalog.

The ways for get­ting action are many. Rarely can one way be applied to two lines. But the prin­ci­ples are uni­ver­sal. Strike while the iron is hot. Get a deci­sion then. Have it fol­lowed by prompt action when you can.

You can afford to pay for prompt action rather than lose by delay. One adver­tiser induced hun­dreds of thou­sands of women to buy six pack­ages of his prod­uct and send him the trade­marks, to secure a pre­mium offer good only for one week.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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