Why are some sales letters harder to read than others?

Keeping your reader hooked right to the end of your letter is one of the hardest challenges in business-to-business direct mail lead generation. The secret is making your copy easy to read.

Entertain

Successful sales letters arouse your interest, make you laugh, intrigue you in some way or make you want to sit down with a coffee and see what the writer has to say. Without detracting from your main message and reason for writing, try to make your letters entertaining. If you want a good example of entertaining, informative writing, read the column that Herschell Gordon Lewis writes in Direct magazine. Here is a recent excerpt:

“Isn't it comforting? The entire marketing superstructure — retailing, media advertising and online promotion — is shot through with customer elimination management.

“In the pages of this publication, over a period of years, I've complained (well, make that ranted) about that strange and elusive goal, customer relationship management, which through its enforcement by overpaid enforcers invariably becomes just plain customer management. Relationship? That's up to us peons, if we can break through the “management” blockade.

“So the wobbly superstructure totters on terminology rather than relationship. Result: “relationship” disappears under the bulky mass of “management.” Voilà! Springing up in the detritus of “relationship” is reality: “elimination.”

“This was driven home to me when, responding as the yokel I am to the lure of television glamour, I ditched my trusty cell phone and replaced it with a sleek, expensive and not quite as efficient Razr V3, complete with that goofy-looking “Bluetooth” earpiece, whose name always reminds me of something that went wrong in the dentist's office.”

Match your tone

Think your prospect's age, job title, gender and personality type while you write. I just finished writing copy aimed at Fortune 50 bankers. The tone I employed was different from the one I use when writing to small business owners.

Avoid jargon 24/7

Unless you are certain that your reader knows what an AVM is for or why hydrodynamic lubrication starvation is a problem, leave out the jargon. In its place, use plain English that makes your point without patronizing the reader or making you sound like you are a novice to the prospect's industry.

Go short

Make your sentences short. Like this. Prefer the short word over the long. Vary your sentence length to avoid monotony, but aim to keep them all readable in one breath. Short sentences are easier to understand.

Say it with fewer

Say it. Stop. Sign your name.

Pitch to the right person

Aim your selling message at the intelligence level of one of your typical customers. Don't overestimate their intelligence, or underestimate it either.

Relax

Don't throw away your Strunk and White. But don't become its slave, either. Break the rules of grammar and Grandma's rules to avoid sounding stiff and institutional. But use standard punctuation. And the accepted conventions for capitalization. Otherwise you'll be perceived as a freak. Which you're not. Right?

© 2006 Sharpe Copy Inc.