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Direct mail (DM) letters are one of the earlier forms of direct marketing and there are a lot of conflicting opinions out there about what works best.
Bear in mind that whatever you write, testing is the cornerstone of any marketing so you should always send out a few variants to guage response if time allows for this. You also need to test other media, especially email.
Conventional wisdom, reinforced by experience from organisations such as DM pioneers Readers Digest, is that long letters work best. This is counterintuitive, because we all like to think that we have minds like steel traps and so prefer simple, direct communication. The stats seem to show, sadly, that most of us have minds more like a box of sparrows.
The trick is to use structure so that a 'long' letter is really lots of short and prominent messages. That helps with the 'grazing' behaviour that most peopole use when reading DM.
For my money, a good DM letter is one full page of A4 in length and has to have the following elements:
- a 'P.S.' - essential because the evidence is that people read a P.S. first. This means that it has to contain the USP
- a main heading below the name in bold, giving the USP in different words
- a short introductory para explaining how the service or product will benefit the reader (ie an extended version of the USP)
- three or four follow-up paras with their own bold subheadings, explaining the secondary propositions
- a clear call to action at the bottom. For example, 'I would very much like to show you how XXXX can cut your costs so please call me on XXXX.'
A structure of this kind means that a reader can look at the P.S., jump to the main heading, and perhaps quickly absorb the bold paragraph subheadings. If they are still interested, they may read more. In any case, your P.S. and your main heading have to do the lion's share of the work, so make them good and avoid 'clever' titles.
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