Distinguishing Characteristics of a Good Sales Letter



A Good Sales Letter has an Attention-Grabbing Headline.

The headline is often the basis of most readers' first impression of a sales letter, and you know how first impressions last, don't you? If they don't like what your headline says – or worse, if they're absolutely uninterested in what your headline is broadcasting – then they'll not only dump your sales letter on the bin but they'll also indicate any forthcoming mail from you as SPAM.

An effective headline is short but direct to the point. It tells readers not only what they can expect from the rest of the sales letter but also how they can benefit it.

A Good Sales Letter is Always about the Reader.

A good sales letter always acknowledges the fact that the business owes everything to its customers. It doesn't ramble on about how great its profit margins are but humbly admits that it owes its success to its loyal customers.

And when selling something, a good sales letter always focus on what the reader would get from the product. If you're selling roses, for instance, you don't waste too much time waxing poetry about how beautiful roses are but you focus more on how customers would benefit with having flowers at home, rose baths, aromatherapy from roses and so forth.

A Good Sales Letter is Rarely More than One Page Long.

Everyone is living on borrowed time, and more and more people are becoming aware of this. If you've got a really great offer to make, that's good…but it wouldn't make people change their minds about what they deem appropriate or inappropriate to allocate their time for. And more often than not, sales letters are filed under the “not more than one page” category. Anything longer than that and readers might feel too lazy to continue reading.

And while we're on the subject of writing guidelines, make sure that your sales letter also consists of a number of short paragraphs instead of a few but long paragraphs. Unless you're writing something incredibly shocking or titillating, it's highly probable that only a few people would have the patience and interest to forge on.

A Good Sales Letter has an Attention-Grabbing Postscript.

No, it doesn't mean that you have to deliberately forget to include something in the body of your sales letter but a postscript can be used to reiterate or emphasize one of the main points of your sales letter.

Case studies have shown that people often read the headlines and postscripts of letters first then use it as basis for deciding whether or not to continue reading the rest of the letter. Take advantage of this by making sure you've got something interesting to say in your postscript. It can be a repeated invitation or a declaration about the promo period and the need to act NOW.

A Good Sales Letter Doesn't Take “No” for an Answer.

All sales letters end with a strong call for action, or simply put, strong words of encouragement to purchase the product or service on offer. But a good sales letter also considers the chance that the customer may be interested but not yet fully prepared to buy. In this case, he also includes a very persuasively worded invitation to call in order to know more about what's offer. He clinches the deal by offering an incentive if the customer simply asks for additional information.

A good sales letter doesn't take no for an answer but it does so nicely.

A Good Sales Letter is Also Visually Attractive.

A customer would feel more inclined to read a sales letter if it looks pretty to the eye – no matter if great style and graphics have nothing to do with content. Consider this: if you have two books talking about the same topic, which would you choose – the one with ugly or beautiful cover and text?

A Good Sales Letter is a Product of Extensive Tests.

When you've proofread your sales letter for the last time, don't press the SEND button just yet. Test it first with sample readers. If they like it, great! But if they don't then take careful note of what they're saying and revise.