How Long Should a Sales Letter Be?
Issue #2317
- WEALTHY: Say goodbye to life’s luxuries - at least in your portfolio (Andrew Gordon)
- HEALTHY: All those hours at the gym could make you eat more (Craig Ballantyne)
- WISE: Richard Armstrong on marketing copy
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- Do your customers need to know … or do they want to know? (Michael Masterson)
- A "Tip of the Week" from Gary North
- It’s Good to Know… how to give great answers in business meetings
- Add "coign" to your vocabulary
Confidential Report: Disillusioned Trader Opens "Money-Floodgates" to YOU…
Rob Banks Legally… With an Inside Job!
Are You Ready for a "Smash and Grab" on the World’s "Hidden" Money-Mountain?
Great! The getaway car’s leaving…
Spendthrifts Unite!
This quarter, according to a new number from TrimTabs Investment Research, we’re poorer than we were a year ago. What makes this number significant is that, unlike other statistics used to gauge the health of the economy, it measures people’s ability to spend by including oft-overlooked sources of cash - like capital gains from stocks. And what makes it so useful is that it takes into account the cash people get from selling property or by extracting equity from their homes.
This stat may be the hammer that bangs the final nail into the recession coffin.
With consumers having less cash to spend, sales of things people don’t really need will be affected the most. Splurging on jewelry, cameras and electronics, nice cars and clothes, and dinner at pricey restaurants will be done only by the very wealthy, reckless, or clueless. On the other hand, retailers of inexpensive cars, food, and clothes should be affected the least.
Invest accordingly.
[Ed. Note: ETR’s Investment Director, Andrew Gordon, is the editor of INCOME, a monthly financial advisory service that uncovers income-generating stocks that promise safety (first and foremost), along with much-higher-than-average profit potential.]
"The Internet is training customers to respond to short copy??? Balderdash! The great thing about the Internet is that it allows us to write even MORE copy."
Richard Armstrong (from a response to a post in Bob Bly’s blog)
How Long Should a Sales Letter Be?
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.]
Mr. "X" Finally Revealed…
Introducing the man who broke the code on Google AdWords… who has an uncanny ability to take complete beginners and in almost no time have them generating mega-profits… and who until now was only available for a $3,000 per day consulting fee.
He’s all YOURS this April, sharing his secrets for turning clicks into cha-ching. His name is Howie Jacobson. And if you’re able to snag a seat (reservations are going fast) at Early to Rise’s Profits in Paradise wealth building summit, you’ll hear Howie reveal how you could make a fortune too by harnessing the power of AdWords.
Simple, easy and delivered in "plain English," Howie’s entertaining and wildly profitable presentation could have you laughing all the way to the bank.
And that’s just ONE of the dozens of under-the-radar profit opportunities you will learn about at our Profits in Paradise conference this April. For more details, click here.
Why Cardio Doesn’t Work
Cardio exercise is perplexing. In theory, it should work the same for everyone. But it doesn’t. Some people do cardio six hours, nine hours, or more per week, and still have belly fat to burn. It works just fine for others.
To get some insight into the reason for this, British researchers studied 35 overweight men and women who weren’t previously exercising. Subjects did cardio five times per week for 12 weeks. On average, they lost a respectable 8.2 pounds. However, the variance between individuals was huge. One of the 35 subjects lost a staggering 32.3 pounds, while one actually gained 3.74 pounds.
The scientists think they know why.
They classified the subjects into two groups: those who lost the least amount of weight (the "Compensators") and those who lost the most (the "Non-Compensators"). Turns out the cardio exercise made the Compensators hungry. As a result, they wound up consuming more than 250 extra calories per day… all but wiping out their weight-loss efforts. The Non-Compensators, though, did not experience an increase in their appetites.
If your cardio program is not working for you, check your post-exercise appetite level and calorie intake to see if you are a "Compensator." If you are, you might be better off with a program of high-intensity resistance and interval training.
[Ed. Note: Fitness expert Craig Ballantyne is the creator of the Turbulence Training for Fat Loss system. For a free online source of information, motivation, and social support to help you improve your health, lose weight, and get fit, sign up for ETR’s free natural health e-letter.]
Worth Quoting: Gary North on Career Insulation
"One of the marks of an insecure employee is that he tries to build layers of busy-work insulation around his job. He tries to make it appear as though it would be a lot of trouble to replace him.
"The problem is, this keeps him from getting promoted. He locks in his job for a while, but that means he locks himself out of a promotion.
"Then a change in technology that makes his tasks easy to reassign to a low-paid worker leads to the termination of his career. In a high-tech world, this is the wave of the future. ‘I can get it done cheaper in India’ is the slogan of this brave new world.
"To survive these days, a worker should make himself easily replaceable. He should go out of his way to recruit and train a potential replacement - maybe two. He should let his superiors know this. That way, if a job higher up the chain of command opens up, the company can award the job to him. It’s less hassle to promote him.
"It is not possible to hide for long behind a wall of make-work insulation. Technology will not allow it. It is best to plan for the future and spend your time preparing for the promotion rather than hiding behind unnecessary make-work. You can’t climb up the ladder if you’re locked to the lower rung."
(Source: Gary North’s "Tip of the Week")
It’s Good to Know: How to Give Great Answers in Business Meetings
The next time you are in a meeting, performance review, or job interview, try this "stalling" technique if you are asked a tough question: Take a sip or two of water or coffee. Then use those few seconds to formulate your answer. You will, of course, have prepared for the meeting, but the short pause will allow you to collect your thoughts and phrase them well.
(Source: Web Worker Daily )
The Only Three Ways to Grow a Business
Did you know that there are only three ways to grow a business?
- Increase the number of customers.
- Increase the average transaction value.
- Increase the frequency of repurchase.
Find a way to maximize each one, and your business will experience an astonishing rate of growth.
In his "9 Pillars of Business Growth" program, acclaimed consultant Jay Abraham outlines hundreds of proven, frequently unrecognized, and almost totally underutilized ways to grow these three key areas of your business. If you own a business (or would like to), be sure to take a look at Jay’s program.
- Patrick Coffey
Word to the Wise: Coign
A "coign" (COIN or KWOIN) is, architecturally speaking, a projecting corner used for observation.
Example (as Shakespeare used it in Macbeth): "Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, / Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird / Hath made his pendant bed and procreant cradle: / Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed, / The air is delicate."
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker … build your self-confidence and intellect … increase your attractiveness to others … just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR’s new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2008