The Boron Letters
Page 11
And, when I come back, the subject of my next teaching will be the importance of the fact that "YOU NEVER GET A SECOND CHANCE TO MAKE A FIRST IMPRESSION!"
STOP
11:14
I love you & Good Luck!
Dad
UPDATE:
The letter he is discussing is called The Coat of Arms Letter and my dad spent 18 months revising that simple letter until he achieved what seemed like perfection.
My brother and I broke this letter down and in my humble opinion it is the best ad breakdown in history bar none!
In that breakdown we explain hidden psychology nobody else knew and it is loaded with hidden psychological triggers and subtle details even professional copywriters missed.
I won’t do a sales pitch here but you really should check it out over at halbertizing.com
Just look for the Coat of Arms Breakdown
Okay, back to the letter...
He is absolutely right about reducing options which is different from packages and back end products.
Ideally you want to offer first-time buyers three price points.
The Cheapo Option Which Has What You Need
The Deluxe or Mid-Priced Option With Some Bells and Whistles
The Supreme Package With Prestige Service
The buyers then go to order and are offered an upsell AFTER they have put in their payment info.
Usually simple statements like “Others who bought this also enjoyed…IMAGE & LINK TO NEW PRODUCT.
After they have purchased you can then sell them more products so while my dad says, sell one thing at a time, you can make 3 different packages around the same key component, offer and upsell and sell many back-end products which he will discuss later in the letters.
more free letters at halbertising.com
The Boron Letters
Chapter 19
Saturday, 9:27 AM
June 30, 1984
Dear Bond,
Today, as I promised, our subject will be "You Never Get A Second Chance To Make A First Impression."
Listen to this: When a person goes for a job interview, the interviewer decides whether or not to hire that person in the first 40-seconds.
And this: In a jury trial, the members of the jury make up their minds as to whether the accused is guilty or innocent during the first half hour or so (during the opening argument) and they spend all the rest of the time the trial takes in finding ways to justify the decision they have already made.
And this: When a person falls in love it happens almost instantaneously. After that, minor things like the truth about the newly beloved are cast aside unless those "truths" happen to reinforce the wonderfulness of said love subject.
And this: You either hook a reader or lose him when he very first looks at your ad or DM piece. Not when he reads it, but when he first looks at it.
Now, of course, this rule is not 100% accurate. Sometimes a person will suddenly fall in love with a person he or she has known for years; sometimes a jury will change it's mind after the opening argument; sometimes an interviewer will decide to hire an applicant he had originally (in his mind) rejected. And, sometimes, a reader will read and order from your ad, even though he was turned off by it when he first saw it.
But don't count on this. Most of the time a person will never alter his original impression. Most of the time he will simply "edit" all new info that comes to him and "process" it in such a way as to validate his original opinion.
So; what does this mean when it comes to creating advertising? What it means is your ad or DM piece should give your prospect a life; should cause his pupils to dilate as soon as he sees it.
STOP 9:45
START AGAIN
6:10 PM
Did I ever tell you that good poker players often watch their opponent's eyes when they draw new cards? What they are looking for is to see the reaction of their opponent's eyes to the cards they draw. If their eyes widen, that is if their pupils dilate that means that they liked the new cards they received. If their pupils constrict it probably means that what happened is that they received cards of which they are not fond.
This is a totally involuntary reaction. Apparently, what happens is that when we see something we like our eyes open up so we can let in more light and see more of it. And, conversely, when we see something we don't like we do just the opposite; we try to cut down the flow of light so we don't have to see as much of it.
Well, I have a theory about all this and what I believe is that most (or many) of our decisions about how we like or dislike something are made not in 40 seconds or the first 4 or 40 minutes but rather in the first fraction of a second that we see something new.
And, I further believe that we unconsciously spend the rest of our so called decision making time not really making a decision after all but instead searching for justification for the decision we have already made.
And, that's why I'm so careful about the "look" of my DM pieces and MO ads. You see, I believe the "sale" or "no sale" decision is largely made the instant a prospect sees your ad and reads your headline.
I think that if your prospect gets an instant "lift" from just looking at your ad, then he will start reading it and looking for reasons to convince himself that the promise of your ad is true!
And, if you don't disappoint him then you have a really good chance of closing the sale.
Now, what kind of look will give the reader a lift? It's short of tricky, really. But I think one thing that helps is if your promotion has a "crisp" look about it. In other words, the layout should be clean, there should be a lot of contrast and it should look easy and inviting to read.
If you use pictures they should be, as a general rule, of an upbeat nature. Do you remember that ad with the before and after pictures of Christi Dean? You know, almost everybody liked the look of that ad because the "after" picture of Christi Dean was so uplifting.
By the way, before I forget one little-known fact that is kind of interesting is that women like to see pictures of women in ads and men like to see pictures of men.
I forget why. I just remember that surveys show this to be true.
Oh, here's something else. That writer that I told you about who wrote for Printer's Ink? Anyway, his pen name was Old Aesop Glimm.
Incidentally, when it comes to direct mail, there are a number of things you can do to make your package more likely to give the reader a lift. First of all, you should use good crisp white paper, both for the pages of the letters and the envelopes you are mailing.
If you are using label addressing (and later we will discuss when you should or not) you should use a tight white label on a matching envelope.
If you are using stamps (and if you follow my advice, you almost always will) you should, whenever practical, use large colorful commemoratives.
Your letterhead should be dignified and non-distracting. Your type face should be a serif face and you should make sure your original letter (the one you are going to use for camera ready art) should be typed with a carbon ribbon.
If you are going to use a second color in your letters to underline words or something you should use RED. If you enclose a photograph or a simulated photograph you should make sure it does NOT look cheap, limp and soggy. Instead, it should look crisp, clean, glossy and clear.
All those rules also apply to your enclosures.
STOP 6:53
I LOVE YOU AND
GOOD LUCK!
Dad
UPDATE:
The only thing I’d add to this is slightly higher production value than the competition applies to VSLs (video sales letters).
Everyone now uses decent sound equipment and nice cameras so it’s the multi-camera and finely edited videos which stand out as professional.
Websites now have a home-made look if without using gradient color backgrounds and custom 3d buttons.
The point is going that little extra mile to add professionalism goes a long way in every aspect of marketing
and the line keeps moving. Just stay one- step a head.
more free letters at halbertising.com
The Boron Letters
Chapter 20
Sunday, 12:56 PM
July 1, 1984
Dear Bond,
A long, long time ago Dennis Haslinger told me that most of the most serious mistakes I would make in life would be bad ego decisions.
I have found that to be true. I have made quite a few bad ego decisions with women, many, many bad ones with money and quite a few that put me in some sort of physical danger.
I am trying to avoid such a mistake right now and I am hoping that maybe writing to you about it will help. What happened is that yesterday I was playing my radio through my headphones and I was playing it so loud that all that KMET rock and roll was irritating my roommates. In all truth, I was wrong in doing this and I have done it once before and one of my roommates (the first time) had to politely ask me to turn it down.
This time I was laying there completely lost in all this rock and roll I became aware of someone screaming my name and when I cut the radio off I could hear one of my other roommates screaming at me and telling me to show some consideration for everybody else and not to give him any "back" talk or he would break the damn thing (my radio).
Well, how about that? It got very quiet in the room and he turned away from me and I remained silent.
It shook me up some. Not an enormous amount but some. All kinds of things ran through my head. I wanted to explain to him that I was sorry and didn't realize I was disturbing everybody and, also I wanted to run a "macho trip" on him and tell him if he kept running his mouth I was going to rip off his head.
And, I also thought of simply explaining to him that a better way to handle a situation like this would have been to simply tell me the volume was too loud and then I would have voluntarily turned it down.
But I didn't do any of those things. What I did instead, as I said, is I remained silent eating a little humble pie.
Well, Bondy, I think I made a good decision. But I'll tell you, it's hard for me to live with. Unfortunately, however, that sort of thing sometimes is a part of being in prison and, in this case, the matter was a little complicated by the fact that the guy who did the yelling usually conducts himself in a way as to have very little friction with other people. He does his time quietly doing a lot of exercising and studying an accounting course.
But that - "and don't give me any back talk" really got to me and I feel a little bit cowardly for not calling him on that. And that may have been satisfying for my ego and my pride but it would have been really dumb.
By the way, I want to maybe surprise you a little at this point by telling you that everything in this letter has a lot to do with creating better ads and DM pieces! And don't even try to guess why at this point because I'll explain it before I am finished.
Meanwhile, back to my story: As I was saying, there was a lot of things I didn't do and I'd like to talk about why I didn't.
The first reason I didn't get tough with this guy is I was a little scared. Not much, because I am in very good shape and I am a very physical person now. But I was a little scared and with good reasons and here are some of them. First of all, this guy might have hurt me. He's pretty physical too and he has been working out in prison for years. Secondly, I might have hurt him because, as I said, I'm not exactly a guy who routinely gets sand kicked in his face. And thirdly, (and this is the big one!) if he and I had gotten in a fight we would have both been put in chains and immediately transferred to a higher security prison PLUS we may easily have lost our "good time" and, I myself, would perhaps have had to do six months longer before I got out.
So, I think you'll agree I did the right thing but, I'll tell you, my ol' ego is having a hard time of it.
And, let's talk briefly about why I didn't explain to him a more mature way he could have handled the situation. One of the big reasons is:
I Am In Prison!
And, here doing time with me, are a lot of people who would not be here if they were capable of handling an emotionally charged situation with any kind of maturity.
So, what does all this have to do with writing sales letters and ads? It has, as I promised you, quite a lot and here is the gist of it: Now that I've told you what I didn't do when this situation arose, I want to tell you what I did do. What I did do was stay in the room and I worked on yesterday's letter to you. And, if you will look at that letter you will see that my handwriting was somewhat shaky because of all the adrenaline working in my system.
But I did write the letter to you and then I took a walk and I went to my "thinking spot" and I plotted out my schedule for the month of July.
And this morning what I did is I did 8 long miles of roadwork on the hill. That's 10 laps. In the beginning I walked two to warm up; in the end I walked two to cool down and in the middle I jogged 6.
And what else did I do? Well, I have sat down and written this letter to you all about the event.
So, anyway, I still haven't gotten to what this has to do with writing a good sales promotion or, a "good anything" for that matter so, here it is: What I am doing, Bond, by all this writing and road work is that I am "clearing the deck" and getting (in so far as possible) this garbage out of my system so that my strategic decisions and my future letters and ideas will be clear!
Please remember this word: HALT. HALT stands for hungry, angry, lonely and tired and you should never make a decision when you are any of those things.
What should you do? What I did. Write, run, walk, talk, jog, etc.
But be careful who you talk with and write to. You see, it should be someone who realizes that all this must be considered as "time out babble".
You see, Bond it really doesn't matter much what the "content" of this letter is. What matters is that I am going through the "process" of writing it. And it is the process or physical act of the writing and the road work that does the therapy. Remember this:
You Don't Have To Get It Right...
You Just Have To Get It MOVING!
And now, in closing, let me tell you another true prison story. It is about another encounter I had that was very different than this one. You see, in the event I just described my roommate wasn't trying to "bulldog" me or shove me around. He just lost his temper in a childish way and doesn't have the "emotional tools" to respond to such a situation with maturity.
But this other one was different. You see, we have this black guy here at Boron (never mind his name) who is very strong and very loud. He lifts weights all the time and he is forever yelling (more prison talk - unprintable).
Well, as it happens, one evening I was playing pool and there weren't enough pool cues to go around. So what happens is this black guy comes into the pool room (where everybody but me is black) and starts running his mouth and while I'm racking the balls he snatches my pool cue and informs me that that is the way it was going to be.
I walked over to him and it got real quiet in that pool room. It got even quieter when I put my hands on his shoulders and my face right in front of his and said to him eyeball to eyeball:
"Look my friend, here's how it is. This
is my stick and you ain't taking it."
And then I took the stick away from him and resumed playing pool.
God I Hate This!
I love you and
Good Luck,
Dad
STOP 2:06
UPDATE:
When it comes to balancing ego or pride against safety… I find it best to apply one simple test which is….
What Would I Want My Son To Do?
For the most part I would like to be the ideal person my son could emulate forever.
I’d want my son to walk away from all fights he can and recognize which ones he can’t which is what I do now.
I never picked on anyone but I would get so mad I’d put a hurt on people who I fully expected to give me an ass whopping.
So I don’t let fear
stop me but as I evolved… I truly began envy people who have never been in a fight.
Anyway here’s another important lesson…
My father taught me was to wait 72 hours after being emotional to make any important decisions.
It is hard to stay emotional for 3 days and if you still want to sue someone, leave your wife or quit your job start the process.
This little rule has saved me a ton of grief.
more free letters at halbertising.com
The Boron Letters
Chapter 21
Monday, 11:24 AM
July 2, 1984
Dear Bond,
Here I am again sitting down to write and not knowing what I am going to write about. Yesterday was the hardest day I've had here so far. Nothing special happened, it's just that I started really longing for my freedom. Today my road work was so hard that I had to divide it up into three sections and run both in the morning and again between 10:30 and 11:30 in order to be able to finish it.