Dan Kennedy - The Ultimate Sales Letter

T H E U L T I M A T E SALES LElTE R

6. Sweepstakes and Contests

Who hasn't received an envelope with Ed McMahon's smiling face on the outside? ("You may be our next millionaire winner!") Sweepstakes and contests have entry deadlines, so they spark immediateresponse. They are used not onlyby subscription agencies like American Family and Publishers Clearing House, but also by car companies, industrial manufacturers, service businesses, and others. They are admittedlyexpensive but seem to repay their investmentsmany times over in increased response.

7. Ease of Responding

Essentially, the easier it is for the person to respond, the better. Offering a toll-free number always boosts response tremendously, and depending on the nature of your business, letter recipients, and economics,having that number manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week and/or enclosingpreaddressed response cards or envelopes may prove beneficial.

Surprisingly, including postage-paid response devices rarely enhances response enough to justify the added expense. If you are going to do this, you should test it both ways-you may discover that the cost is unwarranted.

You should also consider inviting response by fax, with a form included for that purpose; via yourWeb site, entering information there and/or downloading information; even via e-mail.

Step

THE CREATIVE P.S.

Every sales letter needs a PS.-do not consider your efforts complete until you have composed one. The PS. can make or break your letter!

USE THE P.S. TO STIMULATE READERSHIP

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Yes, many people skip to the end of the letter first. Some want to look at the signature, to try to identify who is writing to them. Others are just perverse-they also read the end of a mystery novel before buying it, and they eat their dessert first. Their perversity is your opportunity! By properly summarizing the offer1 promise in your PS., you can inspire the recipient to dig in and read the entire letter, or simply add an extra incentive to respond.

PS.: Even if your reader has read the text in the "proper" sequence, the PS. serves as a high-impact "second headline" you can ill afford to ignore!

Step

CHECK THE CHECKLISTS

You have now written several drafts, and you've made heaven only knows how many changes and corrections in the surviving draft. If you wind up working the way I do, your draft will look like the homework you used to claim your dog ate.

I travel quite a bit, some years well over 150,000air miles, and I for one am glad that pilots operate with checklists. After all,how many times have you simply forgotten to do somethingyou know you should do? (Yesterday,I got out of my car without putting it into "Park"or turning off the engine; the car lurched against the parking block and sat there groaning, grumbling under its breath about its idiot owner. Obviously, I'm a big believer in checklists.) This step is the way to be certain you incorporateas many successfulstrategies, formulas, and techniques as possible in your sales letter. It is sort of a midcourse correction. You are about halfway through the entire system, the process of writing your sales letter, and this is a good time to make a number of little adjustments.

USE GRAPHIC

ENHANCEMENT

Now it's time to do a draft of your letter on your PC and start to jazz it up with graphic devices.

GIVE YOUR LElTER A N EASY-TO-READ

APPEARANCE

The sales-letter writer should collaborate closely with the typesetter or typist, layout artist, and printer to use as many "graphic devices" as possible to make the long copy look (perhaps deceptively) easy to read.

The truth of the matter is that today's consumer is lazier than ever. Consider the TV remote control, the microwave, the cellular telephone, passive exercise machines. Look around: we don't do things, we have things done for us.We don't want it fast-we want it now!

USE GRAPHIC ENHANCEMENT

copy-and the copywriter is best qualified to choose what to emphasize and how to emphasize it.

You'll find value in building up an "idea file" from the sales letter and mail you receive, so you can show other project participants exactly what you want.

Step

REWRITE FOR

PASSION! EDIT FOR

CLARITY!

Here is yet another chance to rewrite your piece; this time the accent is on the unpredictable, passionate side of your offer.

HOW TO PUT PASSION INTO

YOUR SALES LElTER

Sales-letterwriting is no place for pure, cold, hard logic, even if you are selling a logical proposition to presumably logical people. I don't care what business you're in or who your prospects or customers are, they buy by emotion and then justify their choice with logic. My speaking colleague, the famous sales trainer and motivational speaker Zig Ziglar calls that "emotional logic."