I'm tired.
Oh well, kids in Africa are starving so let's get started. I still am stuck to let's see. Hmn? Maybe it's time we talked about propositions. Propositions are very important. They are the "deal" you are offering. For example: One deal might be that if you buy one item you get another item free. Another example of a proposition is the one used by the record and book clubs. It goes like this: "You can have any 10 records you want right now for only 99¢ if you agree to buy an additional record every other month for the next two years." Another very common "deal" or proposition is: "If you buy right away you will get a big discount." And another is: "I'll give you a discount if you buy more than one." And, of course, the most
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common proposition of all is simply: "If you give me X dollars I will give you X product!"
Propositions are very important in DM and MO selling and a very important ingredient in making your propositions work is the "reason why". In other words when you say in effect, "Have I got a deal for you!" you need an explanation as to why you are offering this good deal.
You see, if you don't have an explanation, your "deal" won't be believable and you may not get the sale.
Here are some common explanations for good deals:
"I'm going out of business."
"I just had a fire and I'm having a fire sale."
"I'm crazy." (all used car dealers)
"I owe taxes and I've got to raise money fast to pay them."
"I've lost my lease and I've got to sell this merchandise right away before it gets thrown into the sheet."
"I've got to make space for some new merchandise that is arriving soon so I will sell you what I have on hand real cheap."
And so on. All of these explanations work and that's why they are used all the time. However, there is a far more compelling "excuse for a deal" and if you can find a way to use it you can dramatically increase your sales volume.
You know what? I just thought of something else you can do to make your copy more effective so I am going to take a detour here and tell you about it before I forget. Don't worry. We'll come back to propositions in a minute.
Anyway, a couple paragraphs back I wrote: "and if you can find a way to use it, you can dramatically increase your sales volume."
Now, compare that to this: "and if you can find a way to use it, you can make yourself a bushel of money!"
Isn’t that a lot more powerful? You bet! The words “dramatically increase your sales volume” do not even begin to conjure up the visual imagery of “a bushel of money.”
So, write like that. Bring your story down to earth and hit ‘em where they live. (In their hearts and their pocketbooks!)
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Well, Bondo, I just came up from my visit with you and Eric and it sure was good to see both of you. You know, a lot of people believe it would be better for all concerned if I never had a relationship with {name deleted} again. And, they may very well be right. But I can’t help it; I love her and I miss her like crazy.
And, as you probably know, Eric told me she’s seeing another guy now. I can’t blame her. We are broken up and I always told her anyway that I didn’t want her to wait around for me.
But boy it sure hurts.
And, once again, I’m writing about it because it releases me a little bit. You know, kiddo, you can’t always control what happens to you in life but you do have a lot of control over your responses.
So what do I do to deal with this hurt? I write. I do my road work. I do my chores. I don’t snivel. And mainly:
I Just Keep On
Keepin’ On
What else? I mean, unless you’re going to take the pipe there really is no other rational choice.
And so, we’ll talk about that extraordinarily effective excuse for a deal. Here it is:
I Am Offering You
This Deal Because You
(By Virtue Of Some Unique Circumstance)
Are So Special
This bears a little explanation. Listen to this: Once upon a time I wrote a letter to sell a family crest wall plaque. This letter contained a photograph of the wall plaque just like I have talked about doing and what that letter told my reader was something like this:
Dear Mr. So and So,
I thought you would like to see what the So and So family crest looks like in full color so I am sending you the enclosed wall plaque.
The reason we have the So & So wall plaque in stock is because we needed to take some pictures of our products for publicity purposes and So & So is one of the family crests we used when making our samples.
However, now that we are finished with our PR campaign we have this plaque in stock with your family crest.
And, since we can't sell this wall plaque to anybody unless they are named So & So we have a very limited (as you know, there aren't many So & So's) market for it.
And, therefore, since your name is So & So we'd like to offer it to you at a true and honest discount of X percent!
Did this approach work? Wow! Did it ever! Like...
40 Million In Sales!
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You know, I'm sad and it's hard right now to keep on keepin' on but that's what I'm going to do.
And so, as you can see, in that last example I found a way to show my customers that he was unique and valuable to me. Now, let's see if we can come up with some other ideas along this line: For example:
"I'm offering you this special deal because your trade in is a 1976 Gas Sucker and I have a customer who wants that car. Therefore, I'm willing to break even on the sale to you make my profit from the other guy."
OR
"Since you are one of the world's leading gynecologists we feel you are in a unique position to appreciate this picture book of unusual______"
OR
"Since you have proven yourself to be an astute judge of art, we are willing to send you these paintings at half price but only if you will give us your opinion in writing."
OR
"A mutual friend of ours, Tom Smith, said I should write you because, he says, you are the best judge of value of a book like this that he knows."
Onward. Onward. Onward.
I'm hurting and the radio is playing "Amazing Grace" by, I think, Linda Ronstat. Damn! Life gets tough sometimes!
Here's more. How about this opening:
Dear Mr. So & So,
I have attached a dollar bill to the top of this letter for two reasons.
First, I needed some way to get your attention because, secondly, I have a very important message for you and every other real estate agent in L.A. County.
OR
Dear Mr. So & So,
Did you know there are only 117 So & So families in the entire U.S.?
Yes, it's true. And, because you are one of them, blah, blah, etc., etc.
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I LOVE YOU AND
GOOD LUCK
Dad
UPDATE:
Surprisingly, seeing my father miss a woman never worried me because he always found someone he liked more.
Getting back to the grind…
Offering special deals based on where your promos are listed works well too.
You can offer facebook specials and deals just for subscribers of a certain website or maybe readers of The Miami Herald.
You should also create a list of types of offers to consider and look them over when masterminding your next offer.
more free letters at halbertising.com
The Boron Letters
Chapter 22
Tuesday, 10:35 AM
July 3, 1984
Dear Bond,
O.K. Buddy, here we go again. That section on propositions and an "excuse for a deal" was quite interesting, wasn't it?
You know, I
think my letters are getting a little bit random but that's O.K. I sort of think it's good to write about what pops into my mind, at least for right now, and then maybe we can review all these letters later and make something out of them that's more cohesive.
So anyway, today I'm going to start by telling you about a little trick that will improve your copywriting. And that little trick is to read your copy out loud. What happens when you read your copy out loud is that you will verbally stumble over all the places that are not smooth. Then, of course, what you do, is rewrite the rough spots and read the copy out loud again. And, what you do, is you keep repeating this process till your copy is completely smooth and you can read it without stumbling at all.
You see, advertising writing needs to be the best writing of all. It needs to flow from start to finish without a bump or a bubble.
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Now, do you remember how I told you to write out in your own handwriting good ads and DM pieces written by other people? You do remember? Good. Well, what I want to tell you here is that you should also read those same ads and DM pieces out loud. You see, by doing this writing and reading aloud of good material you will find that the process of writing good ads will be internally
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imprinted on your nerves, muscle fibers, brain cells and every fiber of your being.
So, the message is clear: Get yourself a collection of good ads and DM pieces and read them aloud and copy them in your own handwriting.
So, now what? Here I am stuck again. But not for long. What happened during my last break is I put together a deal and I think maybe it would be a good idea at this point to talk a little about the business of mail order. Here's how some of my deals work:
What I am doing is going through the SRDS list book and looking for mailing lists that I think will yield a good profit if exploited properly.
O.K., after I have identified the list I want to go after I then start thinking about a product to sell to that list. By the way, I am especially interested in selling paper and ink and, specifically, written reports that solve a problem for the people on the mailing list. Here are some tentative titles of reports that will give you an idea of what I mean:
"How To Raise Your Child's I.Q. Before It Is Even Born!"
(for expectant mothers)
"How To Fix Your Car To Get 50% More Miles Per Gallon!"
(for owners of gas guzzlers)
"How To Collect From Social Security At Any Age!"
(I already did this one and made $800,000.00 from it.)
And so on. Well, after I have identified the list and come up with the idea for the product, I then discuss this project with one of my bankers. If he likes the project (and they nearly always do) what they do is they put up roughly about $5,000.00 to get everything going. This five thousand is used to develop the report I want to sell, to rent the test names, to pay all costs of the test, etc.
Then what happens is I create the DM promotion and have B. put it into the mail. Now then, one of three things will happen.
1. It will be a decided loser.
2. It will be a decided winner.
3. It will be marginal.
If it is a decided loser my "banker" will have lost his $5,000.00. If it is a decided winner my banker will then put up perhaps another $50,000 and we will mail approximately 100,000 pieces to get the ball rolling. Then, after that, we will finance the rest of the mailing from our cash flow and my banker and I will split the profit.
Very clean. Very neat. Very straight.
What if it's marginal? Well, in that case we will discuss the project again and make a judgment as to whether or not it makes sense to risk another $5,000 for another test.
Whatever. That's the way it works and it's a nice simple way of doing business. Well, Bondy, I'm going to stop for now. I am having a pretty sad day. Don't worry though, I'm O.K., just a little heartsick.
Such is life.
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Here I am at the top of the hill in the library and once again I'm stuck for a subject. I think a lot of it is because I have {word deleted} on my mind.
Right now, it seems to me that I feel like outlining the steps to direct mail success so that's what I'm going to do.
Step 1 - Find a hot market (mailing list)
Step 2 - Find or create a product (preferably paper and ink) to sell to that market.
Step 3 - Create a direct mail promotion that describes the product (or service) and the benefits of owning the same.
Step 4 - Make a test mailing (1,000 to 5,000 pieces)
Step 5 - Analyze results
Step 6 - If results are good, mail 20,000 to 100,000 more letters
Step 7 - If results are still good, start rolling out and taking care of business
You know, it's really a simple procedure.
If you use good common sense, your chances of success are excellent. Where people go wrong is by making it too complicated. Actually, this is only one of the ways people go wrong and it occurs to me that it would be helpful to enumerate the most common reasons for MO & DM failure.
And, toward this end I'm going to tell you about a little discussion I had just a couple hours ago. What happened is I was settling down writing an earlier portion of this letter when a friend of mine told me he wanted to chat with me in private. (Chat! Isn't that nifty word to describe a prison conversation?)
Anyway, what he wanted to talk about was that a friend of his had invented a gizmo that lets you make stuff out of wood the same way a key-making machine lets you make keys out of blank metal. (Actually, I don't fully understand what this thing does, but no matter.)
In any case, he wants me to take a look at the papers on this thing and see if I think it is worth promoting because the guy who invented this thing isn't following through with it because he can make so much more money smuggling dope.
Of all things! Oh my! Well, what I told him is I would be glad to help. However, I also told him that he was making the single most common mistake made by people who want to break into the MO business.
What is that mistake? The mistake is finding or developing a product FIRST and then looking for a market to sell it to. This is backasswards.
You Must Always
Find A Market First...
And Then Concentrate On A Product!
Products are a dime a dozen. They are important but much less crucial to success than finding a hot market. I'll tell you this: A guy with a new product cannot always find a hot market for that product but a guy who has uncovered a HOT MARKET can always find a product to fill the needs of that market.
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I LOVE YOU AND
GOOD LUCK!
Dad
more free letters at halbertising.com
The Boron Letters
Chapter 23
Wednesday, 4:24 PM
July 4, 1984
Dear Bond,
Well, here I am in my room trying to avoid the heat. I heard it is 114 degrees outside right here and 120 in Palm Springs.
Whatever. We must press on. I am fasting today and I did a little bit of roadwork (just walking) a bit earlier when it wasn't so hot. I also finished doing some changes in an ad for L. and I am working on a DM letter for him. In addition, I wrote and mailed a letter to Joanie and I am writing this letter to you.
There is a reason for telling you all this and the reason is I want to give you some guilt.
I'm serious. I was a little disappointed during our last visit when you told me you haven't been doing your roadwork. Now, of course, if you have been sick that's one thing but, if you are goofing off just because you "feel bad" that's quite another.
Listen up, Bondy: These letters are a labor of love for me and I am trying to reach you all the important stuff I know. And, o
ne of the most important things I can teach you is to just do it! KEEP ON KEEPING ON! Everybody else here has been eating steaks and "celebrating" the 4th. That's OK but, right now, I've got more important things to do and those are: (1) get my body in shape (2) educate my youngest son (3) make a lot of money and (4) keep up my important relationships on the outside.
And I'm doing it all. I am heartsick for my woman, I am living in 114 degree heat I have jerks for roommates, and, above all I AM IN PRISON!
And, I'm still doing it. So, you do it too. You are made out of the same stuff I am and I am so proud of you, you wouldn't believe it.
But get this. It doesn't matter how much you learn if you don't use what you learn. So when I tell you to do your roadwork and exercise with weights and study and read ads aloud and write them out in your own handwriting, I mean for you to do it and do it now!
The Boron Letters Page 12