Boron - Chapter 18

It should have the look of an exciting news flash.

Here's something else. You know, whenever I want to study ad
layouts, I often study editorial layouts instead.

How do we apply all this to direct mail? O.K., what would
that reporter do if he wanted one of his friends in Hawaii
to buy your book? The answer? Well, perhaps he would write
his friend a letter and tell him the same things he told his
newspaper readers.

And, perhaps he would even include a snapshot of the book so
his friend would know what to look for in case he wanted to
go to a bookstore to get the book. This would be one hell of
a sales pitch, wouldn't it? You bet it would and that's how
your DM letters should look.

Here is a true story. Once upon a time I wrote a letter to
sell a product I dreamed up which was a family name research
report. This little report would give you a short history of
your family name and it contained a black and white drawing
of the earliest known coat-of-arms (family crest) ever to be
associated with your name.

As you are aware, this became one of the most successful
sales letters in history. In fact, this simple one page
361-word letter generated more than seven million (actually
7,156,000) cash with order customers.

Not bad, eh? But listen to what happened next! Obviously, we
wanted to sell these research report buyers other products
and the logical course of action was to send them a catalog
showing a bunch of products they could get that would
display (in full heraldic colors!) their family crest.