There’s been a trend online for the last 20 years to write sales letters that are shorter and have more and more graphics and fancy images.
But just because everyone is doing it, does that make it the most effective form of selling?
Maybe not.
Do you remember direct mail selling?
You get a fat white envelope in the mail, and inside is a long form sales letter. No fancy graphics, just plenty of great copy.
Here’s the thing: Anybody and everybody can throw up a sales letter online. And they do.
But when it comes to direct mail, these companies are hiring the best of the best copywriters to write their letters.
How do I know? Because no company in their right mind is going to spend the money to mail thousands (hundreds of thousands, even millions) of these letters unless they know for a FACT that they’re going to convert.
And how do they know? Because they test them. They pit one version against another to determine which one is more effective, and that becomes the control.
Then they write another version and test that against the previous winner, and they keep this up until they are making serious money.
Then they mail out these letters by the tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands, and the money rolls in.
These are the best of the best in sales letters, and they’re not to be confused with online sales letters in quality.
After all, it costs nothing to slap a letter up on the internet and see if anything sticks.
But mailing out thousands of letters the old fashioned way is a serious investment – which is also why these companies are willing to pay the very best writers 5 figures plus royalties to write these letters.
So, get on as many mailing lists as possible and when these letters start coming in, read and re-read them.
Dissect why they work, and then use them as templates for your own letters.
I have a friend who is experimenting with this very technique, and his first try out of the gate more than DOUBLED his sales compared to the sales letter he was using.
He simply took a sales letter that he’s received in the mail twice (a sure sign it’s converting) and he used it as a template for his online letter for his own product.
He didn’t use any graphics at all. No flash and no sparkle – just a plain old sales letter full of words that convinced his online buyers to… BUY.
Try it. You never know – maybe you’ll double your sales, too.
