Genesis

“If you only have time for one clue this year, this is the one to get: We are not seats or eye­balls or end-​​users or con­sumers. We are human beings — and our reach exceeds your grasp. Deal with it.”
— From “The Clue­train Man­i­festo,” Harper Collins, April, 1999.

“One of the best kept secrets in Amer­ica is that peo­ple are aching to make a com­mit­ment, if they only had the free­dom and envi­ron­ment in which to do so.”
— John Nais­bitt, author of “Mega­trends” and “High-​​Tech, High-​​Touch”

My ini­tial intent wasn’t to write this report. It’s the result of a post I was envi­sion­ing for my blog at MichelFortin​.com. The prob­lem is, the blog post be-​​came so long that I felt a need to do either one of two things.

I had to either: edit my post and shrink it down to a bare min­i­mum (prefer­ably around 500 words), or break the arti­cle down into sev­eral installments.

The for­mer was not pos­si­ble because there’s so much infor­ma­tion I wanted to share, along with so much mis­in­for­ma­tion I wanted to clear up, that writ­ing a sin­gle blog post wouldn’t have done this topic justice.

Some of the changes I’ve seen, per­son­ally expe­ri­enced and sci­en­tif­i­cally tested are so sig­nif­i­cant, that I was quite eager to share this infor­ma­tion with you.

How­ever, my pas­sion and enthu­si­asm for the topic got the best of me: although post­ing the arti­cle in sev­eral install­ments was a more viable solu­tion, try­ing to pick what part do I post first was more of a chal­lenge than choos­ing what to cut out if I were to post it all into a sin­gle yet highly edited article.

I believe this infor­ma­tion is impor­tant and timely, par­tic­u­larly with the New Year and the plethora of online pre­dic­tions of late, along with recent events such as the whole Web 2.0 buzz that’s cre­at­ing quite a frenzy online.

Thus, I wanted to deliver my report as expe­di­ently as pos­si­ble. (Post­ing this arti­cle in sev­eral install­ments would have delayed it even more.)

So I decided to go with nei­ther of these.

Instead, I’ve decided to post the entire report as is. But know­ing that some peo­ple may find this cum­ber­some, as it is longer than most blog posts, I’ve decided to con­vert it into a portable doc­u­ment. The result became this spe­cial report.

But there’s another rea­son: since I get so many emails ask­ing me what I think about this whole Web 2.0 thing, why peo­ple are start­ing to see low response lev­els with their saleslet­ters, what are my pre­dic­tions for 2007, and what do I think of the many reports of late (such as “the death of this” and “the death of that”), I’ve decided to answer them all in one fell swoop.

More­over, I’m also giv­ing you the per­mis­sion to pass this report around. Pro­vided that you leave this doc­u­ment untouched, you can offer it to your list, give it away as a down­load, add it as a bonus to your cur­rent offer­ings, or post it on your own blog. Feel free to dis­trib­ute it.

I want as many peo­ple, copy­writ­ers, mar­keters and buy­ers alike, to get this infor­ma­tion, because, as a copy­writer for many of the web’s top mar­keters, I’m see­ing a sig­nif­i­cant trans­for­ma­tion occur­ring that sim­ply can­not be ignored.

(And it’s not what you might think.)

I also want to make sure you under­stand that I didn’t write this report as a way to make sales, build a list or cre­ate traf­fic for myself. While it may hap­pen as a byprod­uct of this report, it’s the least of my intentions.

I sim­ply want to share some of my views on the lat­est trends affect­ing online busi­nesses, specif­i­cally as they relate to saleslet­ters, and to give back to a com­mu­nity that has been so gen­er­ous to me.

If you think that I’ve writ­ten this report because there’s some­thing “brew­ing” in the back­ground, don’t worry. I’m nei­ther going to pitch you some­thing in this report, nor do I want your con­tact infor­ma­tion to pro­mote some­thing in the future. There’s noth­ing going on, other than my sin­cere will­ing­ness to share.

So let me to be clear: I’m not going to ask you to buy some­thing, or ask you for your email address or con­tact infor­ma­tion, at any point, in this report.

In fact, I’m not even going to ask you to click on any of my links inside this report. Do so if you wish, but you don’t have to. Most of the links are pro­vided as ref­er­ences only, and not as part of a pitch of any kind.

Also, you may be won­der­ing why I, a saleslet­ter copy­writer whose liveli­hood depends on writ­ing saleslet­ter copy, would ever dare write a report enti­tled “The Death of the Saleslet­ter” that could poten­tially jeop­ar­dize my career and my busi­ness, along with those of my colleagues.

(That’s far from being the case, and you’ll soon under­stand why.)

There are sev­eral things to note, here. First off, saleslet­ters are not dead. They never will be. They are here to stay. How­ever, what I am refer­ring to are not saleslet­ters as a sales process, but specif­i­cally long-​​copy, long scrolling web pages, par­tic­u­larly in their cur­rent state.

You know the kind, right? I’m talk­ing about the big, bold, red head­line; the mul­ti­tude of mul­ti­col­ored John­son boxes through­out; the bul­lets that seem to never end; the tons of hack­neyed tes­ti­mo­ni­als, often by the usual sus­pects; the count­less PS’s at the end; and the poorly designed head­ers, incon­sis­tent fonts, lack­lus­ter typog­ra­phy and stock graph­ics plas­tered throughout.

That said, those are some of the things that exist because they work and have worked for a long time. I’m just as guilty of this. And the fact is, they will con­tinue to work but mostly in new, untouched niches that have likely never seen a saleslet­ter before, although even that pos­si­bil­ity is becom­ing increas­ingly remote.

I’m a copy­writer. If you know me, then you know that I’ve writ­ten top-​​producing saleslet­ters for a lot of the most suc­cess­ful mar­keters online, from John Reese, Frank Kern and Kirt Chris­tensen, to Armand Morin, Shawn Casey and Stephen Pierce (and many others).

How­ever, I’m not only a copy­writer by trade. I’m also a busi­ness per­son and mar­keter like many of my clients, own­ing sev­eral web­sites that sell goods and ser­vices on the Inter­net. I write my own copy, and my wife Sylvie Fortin and I have been blessed to have reached a con­sid­er­able level of suc­cess, too.

But what you may not know is that I’m also a fanat­i­cal tester. Not only am I priv­i­leged to have writ­ten for top mar­keters and am privy to the many split-​​tests con­ducted by them, but also I per­son­ally test constantly.

As a result, I’m see­ing some inter­est­ing test results that are show­ing trends hap­pen­ing right now — results that I want to share with you in this report.

Some of it might be ho-​​hum to you. Some of it might not. Either way, it is my hope that this report will offer some tid­bits, insights and a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive that can help you and your busi­ness reach higher lev­els of suc­cess, par­tic­u­larly given the cur­rent trends we’re experiencing.

How­ever, there is a caveat: this is not some omi­nous, pes­simistic out­look on both the nature and future of online copy. In fact, it’s quite the con­trary. It’s a pos­i­tive look at some of the changes we’re fac­ing, and how we can take advan­tage of the many oppor­tu­ni­ties that such changes are pre­sent­ing to us.

Don’t stop learn­ing copy­writ­ing. Don’t stop using saleslet­ters. And by all means, don’t stop apply­ing good copy­writ­ing to all your web­sites. Stop­ping any­thing is not what I’m say­ing. (In fact, once you read this report you’ll soon real­ize how copy­writ­ing is going to be even more impor­tant over time.)

But what I am say­ing is, you can apply just a few tiny changes, and chan­nel some of those copy­writ­ing skills, tools and knowl­edge you have gained, into these lat­est trends and oppor­tu­ni­ties as a way to max­i­mize your online sales potential.

Finally, I hope this report pro­vides you with some ideas on how to increase your sales effec­tive­ness (or inspires you to cre­ate some of your own). You may agree with it or not. And you may take what I say with a grain of salt. But for now, all I ask is that you read the fol­low­ing with an open mind.

(I wel­come and appre­ci­ate your feed­back. So please feel free to post your com­ments on my blog at MichelFortin​.com. Search for “Death of the Saleslet­ter,” the blog post where I offer this free report, and use the short form at the bottom.)

OK, are you ready? Seat­belts please…

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

• How to Capture and Captivate Attention
• The Real Problem With The Flaw of Attraction
• Two Shining Stars in an Age of Darkness
• Changes, Relaunches, and Extreme Makeovers
• Superior Value Equals Superior Sales

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