Sales letters – how long should they be? In this age of multitasking and the Internet, isn’t it more sensible for marketers to send short ones to prospective customers?

That’s the question posed by Connie Prin, an ETR reader in Grand Rapids, MI who is working on completing the AWAI copywriting program.

"As a decently educated busy parent and community volunteer trying to build a new career, I cannot, do not, and would not invest the amount of time in reading sales letters that often come to resemble written ‘infomercials,’ whether via Internet or direct mail. Only for this copywriting program do I suffer through as many as I do. MORE and more people must share this same perspective in dealing with increasing competition for our attention in this era of the ‘information availability’ explosion.

"Even Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, whose writing you featured a while back in some issues of ETR, advocates nixing newspapers and uninvited e-mail completely in order to take control of productively scheduling your time.

"Wouldn’t a more effective style of copywriting concise the sales message to a page or two? Unless your intention is that more people base a letter’s credibility (and thus, their order) on the amount of content rather than actually having to read the whole thing.

"My gut tells me in order for people to read through them, effective letters will have to be shortened in the overall picture. You and your successful team know far more than I – but I can’t be that wrong about this… or can I?"

The answer, dear Connie, is yes, you are wrong. At least when it comes to want-to-know information products.

Let me explain.

There are two kinds of information products that can be sold by mail (posted mail or e-mail): need-to-know products and want-to-know products. The need-to-know products would include information about food, clothing, fertilizer (for gardeners), auto parts (for mechanics), labor law case analyses (for labor law lawyers), etc. The want-to-know products would include just about everything Early to Rise sells: how-to information on becoming healthier, wealthier, and wiser.

Do you see the difference?

Need-to-know products don’t need long copy because the customer needs them. In order to sell a need-to-know product, the copywriter has to do two things: establish the product’s USP and make the offer irresistible. You can do those two things relatively quickly – usually in two pages or less. That’s why need-to-know products are so often sold by catalog and by space ads – two direct-marketing methods that don’t give the copywriter much room.

To sell want-to-know products, you need more length. That’s because you have to do something you don’t have to do with need-to-know products: you have to stir up a desire for the product where none existed. People don’t actually need another book, newsletter, or CD collection on negotiating or investing. But when a good copywriter gets finished talking to them (via a long sales letter), they think they do.

It’s counterintuitive, but it’s true: When it comes to want-to-know products, longer letters usually work better than shorter ones. That has always been true and it’s still true today – even with e-mail sales letters.

The feeling you have is based on logic and your own experience as a consumer. You are very busy. You don’t have time to read long letters. You throw most of them in the trash or delete them. Like Tim Ferriss, you are annoyed by all this long copy. So if you hate long copy so much, doesn’t everybody?

Well, yes! Everybody hates long copy. At least that’s what everybody says. But the truth is that though we think we don’t like long copy, we respond to it. If you have bought any want-to-know products in the past, Connie, you probably responded to a long sales letter – even though you don’t like them.

I used to do focus groups with my clients’ customers. I would ask those people which they preferred: short sales letters or longer ones. They all said they preferred shorter sales letters. Yet they had all become our customers by responding to the longer ones my clients were sending out!

I have personally overseen at least a hundred long copy vs. shorter copy tests. When the leads were the same, the long copy always did better.

I had Jason Holland, my research assistant, contact three of the top copywriters working today and ask them "How long was your best-selling sales letter?"

John Forde said: "My most successful promo this year, measured in subscriptions sold, clocked in at 32 pages. And this, by the way, is a promo I actually wrote seven years ago and have been revising and updating ever since. It’s added thousands of readers to a resource-investing newsletter, and it’s made me a pile of cash. I have a 24-pager that’s done about $1.3 million since the start of 2008. This one, I probably could have written shorter, but not by much." 

Mike Palmer said: "The best package I wrote in the past year was a 52-page bookalog, which translates to at least a 25-page letter. You know, I hear this all the time from new copywriters – ‘Why can’t we write shorter copy?’ One important reason, I tell them, is because good copy must ’startle’ your reader with an idea he’s never heard before. That’s the only way to have a breakthrough promotion. And an idea that truly startles your reader takes a lot of explaining… proof… answering objections. You simply need a lot of space to get your point across."

Paul Hollingshead said: "My best mailing recently was a financial package that ran about 22 pages. In fact, when I look back at most of the financial packages I’ve written, they typically fall within the 20- to 24-page range. The main reason, I think, is because that’s how long it takes to get in all the needed elements of a strong financial sales letter – your promise, your credibility, the track record, the offer, bonuses, and whatnot. Also, I tend to write i n a more conversational ‘chatty’ tone, which can lengthen a letter. And I make an effort to keep paragraphs very short so there’s a lot of ‘white space’ in my copy for easier reading. "

You see, Connie, direct-response marketing is not about fitting your sales pitch into the small amount of space most people will read. It’s about finding the one person in a hundred who will give you the time you need to sell him.

Have you ever walked down a city street and seen people canvassing for some charitable, political, or religious cause? What do they do? They say something – a short, catchy sentence – to get you to stop and listen to their pitch. In most cases – perhaps 99 out of a hundred – passersby won’t give them the time they need to make the sale. They listen for a few seconds and then shake their heads and go on. But those canvassers are pros. They don’t worry about the people who don’t have time for them. They focus on the ones who do stop and listen, because those are their prime prospects.

Imagine if, instead, they tried to fit their entire sales pitch into the 10 or 15 seconds they could get by following a prospect partway down the block. What chance would that strategy have?

It all boils down to this fact: the Internet has changed the world, but it has not changed human psychology. If you are going to convince someone that he needs something that he really doesn’t need… you need time to do it.

So, Connie, don’t resist this part of the copywriting program. Go with it. Later, after you’ve proven yourself as a master of long copy, you can try shorter copy and see if it works.

By the way, you should know that copywriters who can write long copy (i.e., want-to-know copywriters) make about twice or three times the money that need-to-know copywriters make. Keep that in mind as you go through the AWAI program.

[Ed. Note: Discover how to master one of the most profitable skills you can develop with ETR's Direct Marketing Masters Edition program.

And learn hundreds of copywriting techniques from master copywriters in AWAI's Accelerated Program for Six-Figure Copywriting.]

When I was 17, I wanted to buy a car.

Not just any car. But a cherry-red 1968 GTO convertible.

Lucky for me, the very one I wanted happened to be parked in a nearby lot. And it was marked for sale.

It needed paint.

And there was a tear in the canvas top.

But under the hood, it was lovingly restored. A custom "four-on-the-floor" Hurst transmission. The Quadrajet carburetor. Extra-wide tires. And, of course, a 400 cu. inch Hemi engine under the hood, packed with a rumbling, growling, thundering 360 horsepower.

Today, I call it "the fastest car I never drove."

It was the horsepower that was the hurdle.

For me, it was plenty. For my wise mother, who insisted on coming with me to look at the car, it was way too much.

The mechanic selling the car underscored the point: "Last guy who test drove this beauty got a ticket just taking it around the block!"

Instinctively, Mom knew that that kind of horsepower and a teenage boy with car keys was not a good mix.

How did she, who has zero interest in muscle cars, have any idea what "horsepower" meant?

I know. Seems like a silly question. Because today we all know what horsepower is. Or at least we have an immediate sense that a lot of it means a lot of power.

If you buy a motorcycle, you ask about it. If you buy a tractor or a lawnmower, you note the horsepower too.

In Germany, Japan, Italy, and France – all car-making countries – they have their own version of "horsepower." And in each of their languages, it directly translates to the same image: power measured in "horse" units.

What’s a "horse" unit?

Sure, it has a number behind it. This is supposed to be a scientific term, after all. But could 360 horses really pull a Pontiac from 0 to 60 mph in 5.2 seconds? I think not. Though I’d love to see them try.

And which horses? Clydesdales can pull more. But race horses can run faster. And plow horses? Ah, not so much. You get my point.

Here’s the funny thing… "Horsepower" isn’t really so much of a scientific term after all, even though it plays one on TV. Rather, it started out as marketing. That’s right.

See, the word "horsepower" itself was cooked up by engineer James Watt in 1782. He wanted a metaphor to help him sell people on the newfound power packed into his revolutionary invention, the steam engine.

Watt had, of course, scientifically measured what the machine could do. But he quickly realized that talking about "pounds-per-square-foot" just wouldn’t light his buyer’s fire. So Watt redefined the unknown and complicated… as something most people could immediately understand and accept: the pulling power of a horse.

He got the idea while watching a mine pony lift a pulley-suspended bed of coal out of a coalmine. The pony could lift 22,000 foot-pounds per minute.

So why not "pony power?" Watt must have realized that only pre-teen girls would have been interested. So he doubled the values of his data and called it "horsepower" instead.

The gambit worked. Watt sold lots of his steam engines and other inventions, lived extremely well, and died filthy rich.

The How and Why of the "Horsepower" Secret

I bring this up because lately I’m seeing a lot of the same logic work its way into today’s marketing copy. And often with huge success.

The trick works like this…

Let’s say a concept near the core of your sales message is a little dense and unwieldy…

Or maybe it carries some emotional baggage…

Or maybe you’re just selling something so familiar, you worry people won’t hear you out long enough to see what’s different about your pitch.

That’s where the "horsepower" technique comes in handy. What it does is let you reframe the concept into something new.

It’s familiar in one way, mysterious in another. So the prospective customer can embrace it instantly. But they’re also intrigued to hear more.

A friend did this recently in a promo for an investment newsletter, where the editor’s latest favorite hot topic was geothermal energy. Knowing that term would bore the socks off prospects before he could lay down his case, the copywriter re-dubbed it "slow volcano power." And it worked. That one promo is bearing down on $2 million in sales, if it hasn’t passed that mark already.

Another info publisher I know of uses this same technique as a starting point for almost all their new pitches – with huge success. They did $60 million in sales last year.

The same technique can add new drama to common problems that your product can solve. You might even consider a term that adds more mystery rather than clarifies.

For instance, asking your reader if they’re "Tired of suffering the embarrassment of ‘halitosis’"… is just asking them if they want to get rid of their bad breath.

But transforming "bad breath" into the lesser-known "halitosis" – the clinical term for bad breath – both ups the stakes and raises curiosity.

If this is an old technique, why talk about it now? Because prospects are hit so hard, so often with pitches that say much of the same thing for similar products, re-inventing terminology gives you a time-tested way to breeze past all that new resistance.

Call it "brain grease," if you like. Just so long as you know that it works. And that it’s worth testing as soon as you get the chance.

[Ed Note: John Forde, a published writer and a direct-mail copywriter since 1992, is a featured expert in The Magic Button, ETR's step-by-step guide to starting a profitable Internet business. Applying John's proven techniques for writing promotional copy will make every customer contact an opportunity for a sale, whether it's your company's homepage, sales letters, emails, ads, and even editorial content.

Sign up for John's free weekly e-zine, The Copywriter's Roundtable.]