My inbox is stuffed with sales letters, an outcome of 20 years of researching and engaging in a wide range of areas of interest to me, and those I work with, in an effort to distil the lessons to be passed on.
Some are very good, they move the hand towards the credit card, almost involuntarily, and some are just plain awful. Most are somewhere in the middle, OK, but generally no cigar.
A sales letter has only two functions: to state why somebody should give you their business, and then to lead them to the next stage in the process, which is not always a transaction. Most often with a letter, it is simply to move you to the next point in the sales ‘funnel’
It should always be in the language of the receiver, and as personalised as possible, without any spelling, grammatical, or any other type of error.
In other words, accuracy and clarity.
The flow of a sales letter is critical to success, and is a fairly well understood series of steps:
Headline.
The headline is the most important part of a sales letter. It is what someone sees first, and unless it engages in some way, they will move on. David Ogilvy, the original Madman stated that the headline was 80% of any ad, and a sales letter is nothing but a form of advertising, a cheaper form of a sales person.
After the headline, which distils the reason why a reader should continue to read, there is a logical process which normally looks like the following:
Pain points.
Describe the problem in words that the potential customer will relate to and understand, personalising the pain, and demonstrating that you understand it. Do this well and they will start to empathise.
Amplification and Aspiration.
Amplify the consequences of not solving the problem, and offer a vision of what the feeling will be like when it has been solved.
Story.
Sales letters are really a story, and you have to tell the story of your solution, and how their problem can be solved, the means by which your solution will deliver them the outcomes to which they now aspire. People are not buying your product, they are buying the outcome from buying your product. It is the old ‘drill and hole’ story. When you go to the hardware to buy a drill, it is not the drill you want, but the hole it will deliver you. Testimonials are powerful ways to demonstrate the outcome from purchase.
Offer.
A sales letter has to make an offer, it has to offer a conclusion to the story told, the problem solved. You have to be absolutely clear about what it is you want them to do, how and by when. Many sales letters I see shy away from being direct, but if you have not lost them at the beginning, and they are still reading, there is a fair chance they are interested, so enable the interest by telling them what to do next.
You do not have to be a professional copywriter to produce a good sales letter, but you have to be very clear, concise, and empathetic. Not an easy task, but one which generally comes at the end of a process of understanding the value of your offer to a specific group of potential customers, or better still, a specific person.
