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Succinct And Profitable: Good Sales Letters
by Mario Churchill
More Business Skills articles
Published on this site: February 21st, 2009 - See
more articles from this month
In this age of the Internet, fast web searching, and even
faster email, good letters can be difficult to come by. With the
convenience brought about by instant messages, as well as
letters that can be sent halfway around the globe before you can
breathe another word, the art of prose and proper letter-writing
can get lost in the hubbub. In this age of swift questions and
curt replies, good sales letters will certainly be hard to come
by.
In the olden days of typewriters and the printed word, sales
letters had to appeal to the recipient quickly. He or she had to
catch the gist of the letter, and then drop it by the last
paragraph so that he or she could buy the product or purchase
the service that the sales letter offered. The high cost of
paper and printing made it all the more imperative for sales
letter writers to make an art out of selling.
Today, sales letters can often be reduced to a few words sent
through email, perhaps to the tenor of subtle pleading for a
customer to get something online. To make a sale, many online
marketing mavens preach, you have to be succinct and quick with
your words. Can such exhortations mean the demise of truly good
sales letters?
Happily, good sales letters can still be had in this day and
age. All you need to know is how to format the sales letter, and
what to put in it so that your voice can easily be heard and
listened to. In this world of get-rich-quick schemes and
sometimes overblown but empty promises, a good sales letter can
be a breath of fresh air for the recipient.
Good sales letters follow a print format, whether they are
printed onto real paper or shown to you through your computer
monitor. Mind you, such formats are not simply formalities: they
give the reader a chance to get straight to the meat of the
letter, simply because the reader will already know where the
meat is if the letter is well-organized.
As in any letter, good sales letters begin with the name and
address of the sender, then the name and address of the
recipient. Placing a sender's name before the entire letter can
tell the recipient immediately what the letter may be about and
what the sender is selling. Placing the recipient's name
immediately after can show a sense of personal touch, so that
the recipient knows that he or she is not simply receiving a
shotgun marketing letter that many sales offices can blindly
make.
The main letter then begins with an address, followed by the
body of the letter. Good sales letters will often be only three
to four paragraphs long. In the first paragraph, good sales
letters greet the recipient and make the sender's identity
known. In the second paragraph, good sales letters identify
needs that the recipient may have, and may perhaps ask questions
related to such needs. For instance, some sales letters may ask:
are you satisfied with how your house looks like right now? Or
they may ask: Do you sometimes get tired of listening to your
high quality music CD's on low quality speakers?
Once a need is identified, the recipient's curiosity is piqued.
The third paragraph can then go on to describe what the sender
is selling, and at what price. Sometimes, a fourth paragraph can
give the recipient incentives if he or she buys the product or
service immediately. The final paragraph will then give
instructions on how the product or service can be purchased, and
from whom. Often, good sales letters give the recipients
reassurance that they are purchasing the best product or
service, that they can get their money back if they are not
satisfied, and that they will do themselves a disservice if they
do not buy the product or service.
Writing down all this is easier said than done: in fact, sales
letters have to contain all these and be very brief and terse.
Within the first fifteen to twenty words, good sales letters
grab the reader; in the next hundred, good sales letters should
convince the reader to buy the product or service. Good sales
letters are also no more than a page long, or a page and a half
if the product or service has to be described in detail.
If you want to write good sales letters, practice selling
simple things to your friends. Read sales letters that you might
have received in the past, and pick the ones that grabbed you
and made you want to buy the product or service. In this day and
age of digital communication, good sales letters can still exist
if the senders have good consumer and marketing sense.
Mario Churchill: Is a freelance author and has
written over 200 articles on various subjects. For more
information checkout http://www.websiteconversionexpert.com and
http://www.killercopywritingblog.com.
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