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                 Direct marketing copy that works

The sales letter may well be the most demanding test of communication there is. For in its purest form, words alone must do the job. Without the help of color, illustrations or other frills, the writer must take the reader down the path to a sale.

The goal? To get someone you've never seen to write that check, drop it into the mail, and actually feel good about it. That's communication! If you get to know the simple skills—the 10 secrets—of the successful sales letter, then your selling, both on paper and in person, will click more often.

Good writing, as such, has little to do with the successful sales letter—one that jolts readers out of their indifference. You may fashion the fancy phrase but people may still turn from you with a yawn. Without selling ideas, your letter will not work. It may impress. It may even entertain. But it will not sell.

Nothing could be more obvious. Nothing is more often forgotten. So pack your letter with powerful sales arguments. Grammar, style, vocabulary take a back seat. The reader wants reasons to buy.

One helpful way to get a handle on these reasons is to draw a line down the middle of a page. Head one side Benefits and the other, Objections. In this way, you separate on paper and in your mind the reasons people will buy, and the reasons they will not.

If your newly developed marine product is waxed nylon line rather than raw rope, what does that mean to those using it? It means—we'll assume—that your line will not burn their hands as raw rope will when they tie up at the dock. It will not mar finely finished wood surfaces. It won't scratch painstakingly polished brass. It costs less per foot.

Spell out those benefits in terms your readers understand. In terms of what they actually do, feel, want, dislike. Make sure you have authentic appeals. And lots of them. However well you handle words, you can't write a sales letter unless you select selling ideas.

Use a you-oriented approach. But don't just stuff the word you into your letter. This recalls a joke: "Well, that's enough about me. How did you like my last book?" Using you won't do it. Your letter should be built around the needs, fears, desires, profit, and happiness of readers. It should proceed from their side of the fence. And that's where you should be when you write it. What do you think of this?

Does this writer have an edifice complex? No, he was sitting on his side of the fence when he should have looked at the factory from his customer's backyard. If he had, he would have asked, "What does the new factory mean to the customer? It means better delivery. She'll like that. She'll get her order faster."

Almost anything can be turned around and expressed from the viewpoint of the reader:

Slant the language and the thought toward your readers. They are interested in themselves, their problems, their opportunities, their comfort. They are not interested primarily in you and your product. The only reason customers buy anything is to help themselves. Be on their side. Hop the fence.

This doesn't mean terse, clipped, stingy writing without the transitions that give grace and style. But use your blue pencil on sentences filled with fat and bloated with bombast:

There is a saying among writers: "Cut it `till it bleeds." Keep removing the flab until the substance of the thought is in danger. Why should you strive for lean writing? Not just because it is muscular and attractive. But because lean writing moves people to action. Don't waste words.

If your new screwdriver works faster, tell the folks at the other end of the mail route how much faster. Tell them the number of additional screws they can drive. What will they save in dollars and cents? Or time? If you use flabby, fuzzy claims such as "very fast" and "improved performance," a snicker of skepticism will cross the reader's mind. Don't shirk the essential drudgery. If time and motion studies are needed, make them. Get the facts. And get them to the reader:

Be specific.

It is not enough for your sales story to be true. It must sound true, too. What do you do when there is an embarrassment of riches—when the plain facts seem exaggerated? Here's what the author did for GAF.

Each sales letter in the series featured a photo of a skeptical executive at the top of the page. His expression conveyed extreme challenge and suspicion. In one letter, the headline had him saying: "These figures phony?" The letter itself answered:

If the letter had blandly stated that the reader could reduce his costs 75%, there would have been a lot of raised eyebrows out there.

There are many ways to do it. Use

testimonials that ring true. Develop solid facts and figures that build your case point by point. Be believable.

Most sales letters are improved by deleting the first sentence. We call this sentence a windup because it lets the writer "get into" his subject. But if you don't immediately arrest the reader's interest, she will not get into the subject, and into the wastebasket go you and your message. That is why your very first word—your "opening"—must be compelling.

Powerful openings grab the reader in an iron grip. Here are two of my own favorites:

These letters don't pussyfoot around. They sell—from the opening bell. Watch your windups.

It's a common misconception that "real" writers do it all effortlessly, without fumbling.

Writing is tentative—a little here, a little there, rather than a masterstroke, complete in an instant. More like sculpting than taking a snapshot. Your first attempts will never be more than an approximation of what you want. They must be incomplete and clumsy to some degree. It isn't easy to accept that. But try.

How does writing "happen" anyway? Those who have studied the creative process seem to agree that it is broken into three distinct phases. In the first phase, you round up facts, absorb ideas, explore approaches. This is a period of taking in. In the second phase, you put down ideas, make notes, outlines, doodles. You try to get things out. The direction of the first phase is opposite that of the second phase. But both are characterized by extreme openness. Many observers have compared these phases to play. The are random, unstructured—anything goes.

But there is a third phase: the editorial, critical phase. Here you kill inappropriate words and ideas. Just as the first two phases were marked by openness, this phase is highly discriminating and selective. Here you filter, prohibit, weigh and balance subtleties.

When the writer tries to be open to new ideas and at the same time exercise her critical judgment and filter ideas, she gets into trouble. You cannot do both at the same time.

But if you keep these phases more or less separated you will produce better ideas much faster than you ever thought possible. Yes, some of your brainchildren will prove unusable—even just plain dumb. And you'll use a lot of paper. So what? It's the ideas you get that count, not the ideas you throw away. Write in three phases.

You'd never guess from most sales letters—indeed most business writing—that there are people on this planet:

Is anybody living and breathing out there? Or hoping, fearing, planning? You'd never think so from a peek at the files. But they are. So the vigorous writer brings people—himself and the reader—into the action. Let's put some life into the examples above:

When you introduce people into your writing, you help create a word picture of someone doing something. And a word picture is a lot easier to grasp than an abstract concept, which the reader must translate into specifics. Put in people.

Good filmmakers keep their cameras moving. If we are watching a cowboy ride across the prairie, the camera might start with a long shot, zoom in slowly, circle the man, shoot up from ground level, with the sun silhouetting the lonely rider, then rise and shoot down from a boom or helicopter. Just a man and his horse plodding across an open plain. But the agile camera works its alchemy—and light, shadow, angles, and accents cast their spell.

There's a lesson here for the writer: If you vary the pace, tempo, shading, and beat of your prose, the reader will find it far more interesting. An example will help:

This cleaner is guaranteed to please you and no matter why you are dissatisfied you can return it and your money will be refunded cheerfully without delay of any kind or argument about the merit of your complaint.

What is wrong here? For one thing—to use film language—this sentence is shot in one focus, from one angle, in one mood. It is too static. Suppose we do what the camera does and add sparkle and movement:

This version moves. Statements are made into questions. A boring cadence is broken into uneven accents. Quite apart from the substance of the paragraph, the form contains surprise. This works on film—and on the printed page, as well. Mimic the movies.

Perhaps you've noticed a certain overlapping: If you select selling ideas, you are inclined to be specific. Something specific is likely to be from the reader's side of the fence, hence believable. And so it goes: one rule helps another. And if you cast your ideas in active rather than passive form, your sentences tend to be shorter. They tend to move:

Keep it active.

There they are: 10 simple secrets—just waiting to be used. By men and women who want to sell themselves and their ideas more vigorously and have the courage to do so.

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