The Death of The Salesletter

Back in late 2006, what started out as a New Year’s series of pre­dic­tions of sorts osten­si­bly became one of the most down­loaded, most con­tro­ver­sial, and most talked about doc­u­ments in the his­tory of my career.

It was in keep­ing with that annual Jan­u­ary tra­di­tion, where a plethora of blog­gers flood the Inter­net with their pre­dic­tions about online trends, emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies, Inter­net flops, grow­ing indus­tries, rumored takeovers, ad nauseum.

But I’m no futur­ist by any stretch. I’m a copy­writer by trade.

But I’ve seen some tremen­dous changes, mostly “behind the scenes,” and I wanted to join in the tra­di­tion. Par­tic­u­larly, I wanted to share not only some­thing I was pas­sion­ate about, but also some­thing I knew was going to affect online copy in sig­nif­i­cant ways.

Now that sev­eral years have passed, I’m astounded by how true my pre­dic­tions were…

At the time, I saw where online saleslet­ters were head­ing. I’ve wit­nessed some dra­matic shifts and upcom­ing trends, which I pre­dicted would change the way we sell online.

It was some­thing I truly believed in and still do, and some­thing I had a lot to say about. But what started out as a blog post turned into a 50-​​page doc­u­ment! (Well, 52, to be exact.) It became more like a man­i­festo, which I enti­tled: “The Death of The Salesletter.”

I knew it would be con­tro­ver­sial, due to the fact that I’m a copy­writer and my career depends on saleslet­ters. That’s why I said at the time, “It’s going to blow some minds, turn some heads, cause some yawns, pro­voke some fits, or waste some bandwidth.”

Up until now, you could eas­ily down­load my man­i­festo. But now, and for the first time ever, I’ve also decided to repub­lish the doc­u­ment, in its entirety, on this blog, with­out the need to down­load any­thing. The linked table of con­tents is listed below.

I encour­age you to pass this report around. Down­load it and give it away, or just point peo­ple to this blog post. Either way, it doesn’t mat­ter. And there’s noth­ing “covert,” here, too. There are no sales pitches or hid­den agen­das. I just wanted to get this off my chest.

If you’ve read it before, go back and read it again. See how many of my pre­dic­tions came true or are about to. Rants or raves? Post them below. I’d love to hear from you.

About the Author

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