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.