sales letter benefits
10 April 2009It is important to convey the benefit of buying in the most clear, direct and appealing means possible in your sales letter. A benefit is something that affects the buyer personally.
It will appear in the sales letter headline and the benefit should be reinforced through copy, sub-heads, illustrations, incentives and the coupon.
Do not confuse a benefit with a feature. Your product, for example, may have more features than its competitors, but this is not necessarily a benefit to the buyer.
Each feature needs to be translated into a benefit to help persuade the reader to buy. You must list the benefits in your sales letter. If you look at the sample sales letters on this website, you will see most are constructed in a similar way.
Using our list of motivators, benefits could be described in this way:
There are three basic levels of benefit. These are best described as ‘The hierarchy of benefit.’
THE HIERARCHY OF BENEFIT
Putting benefits in your sales letter copy isn’t a simple process.
Your main benefit should come from what the product offers the reader — its unique proposition — and provide the theme that runs through your copy.
The marketing letter headline, offer, guarantee and even the incentive should also support this benefit.
There are three levels in the hierarchy of benefit which you can develop to create a benefit proposition:
Level 1 The idea — what the reader will gain
Level 2 Example case studies — how the product helps
Level 3 Implementation — how to successfully use the product
THE VALUE OF BENEFIT
Each level is worth more money. A buyer buys value. Whatever the price being asked, the reader will compare it to the benefit he or she is getting from the purchase as they read your sales letter.
The more value the benefit has, the higher the price the reader will pay for the product. It’s as simple as that.
The 6 sales letter motivators
4 April 2009First of all, the copywriter must take the reader’s point of view. The next part of the job is to decide what proposition will best motivate the reader to buy.
Motivating a reader to buy to a product is a specialist task.
You may have read books or articles on what it is that motivates people to buy. If you have ever been involved in selling, then this should have been part of your training. The standard works give the primary motivators as: peer approval, financial security, success, enjoyment, saving time or money, mastery of a subject, etc.
But knowing this is unlikely to help a copywriter come up with a really good concept for his email marketing message, sales letter or marketing letter, because these needs are just too elementary. Look at the sample sales letters on this site and you will see they go far deeper.
To sell large volumes you have to tailor the concept in your sales letter or marketing letter to your specific audience. Here are 6 really good reasons for a reader to buy:
1. A desire to gain an advantage from your product
2. The opportunity to acquire something at an unrealistically low price
3. To be let into ‘a deal’ that is only normally available to a privileged few
4. To become eligible for special treatment through membership of a closed group or club
5. To answer a current need that is not being particularly well served at the moment
6. To avoid losing something
Any one of these is enough to motivate a reader to buy, though many email promotions, sales and marketing letters carry more than one motivator. You should choose one primary motivator to lead the email promotion or marketing letter with and this will probably generate the headline.
Once you have decided on your prime motivator, you must explain early on in your sales letter how it benefits the reader.
Sales letters - making your first impression
2 April 2009More often than not, what’s first said to a stranger is either misunderstood or not understood at all. How many times have you had to repeat yourself when asked for directions? First impressions can often mislead.
That’s why most of us prefer to be with people we know, because they have learned to understand what we mean when we say something without lengthy explanation. This does not mean we are good communicators — it’s just that our colleagues have become familiar with our style.
It’s the same with selling and when creating a sales letter. If you look at most sample sales letters you will see a pattern – most sales letters are constructed with similar ingredients.
Your colleagues – and you – will be very familiar with your product because you know it so well. But it needs a fresh look from your buyer’s perspective to be able to communicate what your product is offering new buyers.
When you create your sales letter, try to stand back and see it as others do, before they buy. Are there any reasons why a prospect won’t buy what you are describing in your sales letter? There usually is, and your objective is to remove those objections.
If you can do that, you’ll have a pretty good sales letter!
Using fear in your sales letter
12 March 2009It is often necessary to explain what the reader will miss, lose out on or suffer from not buying when writing your sales or marketing letter.
Most sales letters require an element of fear to persuade the reader to buy. In the examples we illustrate the risks are either implicit or explicit.
The disadvantages of not buying do not always need to be emphasised particularly strongly. It depends on the promotion you are creating.
THE FIRST STEP — TUNING YOUR READERS IN
The people you will be writing to will need help in understanding the message in your sales letter. This is called acclimatisation. We do it all the time, especially when the person is not used to our voice.
When, for example, we make a telephone call, things go more smoothly if we first introduce ourselves in order to get the listener’s attention. This acclimatises the listener to the way we communicate.
Then we ask for confirmation that the listener is on our wavelength — often just a ‘how are things?’ to establish two-way communication. Next we explain the reason for our call to get their interest. Then, if it’s a business call, we explain how we may be able to help them in some way. Then we might ask for some kind of action.
Unless this procedure is followed in your sales letter or marketing letter, it will fail.
But remember — there’s a difference between a conversation and a sales letter. Your promotion is a one way communication and you haven’t the advantage of asking questions or assessing your reader’s reaction. That is why the sample sales letters on this site are often constructed in a similar way.
Copywriting strategy
6 March 2009The creative process is fun. But the job of a copywriter is not to write copy. It is to sell. The copy is merely the means used to sell the product.
You will only be able to build large numbers of sales if the promotion you create communicates your product’s benefits clearly and directly, with no diversions at all.
There are always a small number of people who will buy no matter what you write. This book will give you the ammunition to attract many more potential buyers than would normally be the case.
The first part of this book looks at how the great copywriters communicate. Then, using this information, we show how to create powerful and effective copy.
SUCCESSFUL COMMUNICATION
The first principle of communication is:
It’s not what you say, but what the listener hears that’s important.
These are very often two different things. You cannot assume the listener or reader is automatically tuned in to you and your message. The first principle of copywriting is very similar:
Success in a promotion is not what you put into it. It’s what the reader gets out of it.
THREE VITAL COMPONENTS
Three vital components you must include in your promotion are:
1. The benefit: the reader immediately wants to know “How does this concern me?” or “What’s in it for me?” You can see how important it is, therefore, to make your proposition as clear and as relevant as possible. The benefit needs to be instantly communicated, which is why it usually goes in the headline.
2. Risk reversal: the reader will then want to know “What’s the risk?” How you handle the reader’s caution about spending money or making a commitment will have a direct effect on response.
3. Handling objections and questions: the reader will have a number of objections to buying. Readers will have different objections to different sales. There will also be questions that need addressing. How you answer objections and questions will make the difference between a good and poor promotion.
You will see that these elements are looked at from the reader’s point of view. The better your reader is tuned in to the advantages of buying, and the better you minimise his risk in doing so, the greater the response to your promotion will be.
Four more sales letter tips
17 January 2009Here are four more tips for copwriting your sales letter. You can read the whole series here on the wizardwordz.com copywriters website
37. The rule of never omitting a sales letter from a mailing package is now being broken in the USA. One publisher mails a 100-page mini-paperback or 32-page booklet which are actually cleverly devised promotional pieces – no sales letter, no separate order (it is included in the booklet) and, surprisingly, they work.
38. Offering two gifts as a premium in your sales letter gets a better response than offering one.
39. Giving a logical explanation for a ‘special offer’ can increase response to your sales letter, eg a free gift to celebrate a 10th anniversary, or a calculator to work out the profits from the investment tips in a newsletter.
40. Memberships to a club renew up to 10% better than a plain subscription. For example, ‘Your membership to the Rose Growers Association is now due for renewal’, where the only benefit of membership is a subscription to The Rose Growers News, will always beat ‘Your subscription to The Rose Growers News is now due for renewal’.
Go here for more on subscription marketing
Go here for more on targeting a sales letter
Boost response to your sales letters
17 January 2009Here is more from our series of tips for creating and copywriting powerful sales letters
31. You can breathe extra life into a tired sales letter by using the same tried and tested copy, but changing the format to make it look and feel different. It is much cheaper than having new speculative copy written.
32. Eight-page sales letters beat four-page letters, even when exactly the same copy is used with wider spacing. You can use the same long copywriting when creating sales letters for online marketing
33. A well-crafted long headline in your sales letter works better than a short one.
34. A picture of a relevant person in the sales letter lifts response (eg the publisher or editor).
35. No matter what advertising agencies and space salespeople tell you, the second and subsequent direct response advertisements will not get as good a response as the first advertisement placed in a magazine or newspaper.
36. Offers of subscriptions containing an option to subscribe for two years will pull more money, but 10% fewer subscriptions.
Go here for more on subscription marketing
Go here for more on targeting sales letters
Sales letter tips
17 January 2009These insider tips will lift response and save money on your sales letters
24. Odd number prices (especially including the number 7) generally outpull round numbers. For example £14.77 is better than £14.
25. Wherever possible get subscribers to pay on standing order, direct debit or continuous authority credit card. Renewals can increase from 30% to 70%.
26. The extra cost of laser personalisation is rarely justified unless you can include further personal information in the sales letter, rather than just the name and address.
27. Printing the logo and letterhead at the end of a sales letter rather than the beginning increases response.
28. Always use a PS. It really does work.
29. If you print a direct mail sales letter in two colours, always use blue (so you can use it for the signature) and black. Never over-use the second colour.
30. If you want to use a third colour, try highlighter yellow to draw attention to the strong points of the letter.
Go here for more on subscriptions marketing
Go here for more on targeting a sales letter
Sales letter headlines
17 January 2009‘Five reasons why…’ in a sales letter headline rarely beats a well-explained PRIME reason why.
12. Quotation marks round a sales letter headline increase response.
13. Sweepstake offers giving exciting prizes can lift response by up to 30% and are particularly useful in breathing extra life into tired sales letters.
14. The right premium can lift response a further 25%.
15. For finance-related products a solar powered calculator has been the top-performing premium for more than ten years.
16. Free gift premiums are nearly always better than cash discounts.
17. ‘Bill me’ offers produce up to five times the response compared to cash-with-order offers. But you will need to convert more than 20% of those who respond to be better off than with a cash-with-order offer. However, the ‘bill me’ subscriptions to magazines and newsletters should also renew better.
Go here for more on subscriptions marketing
Go here for more on targeting a sales letter
Testing your sales letter
17 January 200940 WAYS TO BOOST RESPONSE TO YOUR SALES LETTER
Marketing with a sales letter is all about testing, so don’t be afraid to make mistakes. This section will help make your mistakes small ones and avoid some common errors with your sales letters.
What follows is a review of results of tests carried out over the years. Each of the actions listed lifted response to a sales letter significantly when tested against a control promotion, or measured against previous promotions not incorporating the change.
One word of warning though. What works for one product at one time may not work for another, so don’t be afraid to re-test these sales letter ideas.
When testing two different treatments within, say, a mailshot, there are various formula that you can apply to find the number of sales letters to mail out to make sure that the test is a valid one. If you get more than 50 replies from each cell you are testing and the difference between the two is more than 20%, you can be reasonably confident that the test result is valid.
Response to your sales letter
The three aspects of a mailing that have the most influence on response to your sales letter are:
1. Media: the list, newspaper, website, magazine etc
2. Proposition: the prime benefit, unique selling proposition, offer
3. Price
Changes to anything else will only marginally increase
or decrease the response to your sales letter.
Go here for more about creating your sales letters