In Chapter 19 of the copywriting classic “Scientific Advertising”, Claude Hopkins turns his attention to the subject of “Letter Writing”.
By “Letter Writing”, Hopkins of course means classic direct mail. Here are his initial comments…
“Every business man receives a large number of circular letters. Most of them go direct to the waste basket. But he acts on others, and others are filed for reference.”
“Analyze those letters. The ones you act on or the ones you keep have a headline which attracted your interest. At a glance they offer something that you want, something you may wish to know.”
He goes on to mention the case of an industrial buyer who he observed and from whose behaviour he determined what kind of letters got a response and which ones did not.
Hopkins does not provide a template for writing good letters in this chapter. Rather, he mentions lessons learned from various cases that were presumably clients that he worked with.
He makes these points…
1. The same errors come up with letters as with ads. They fail to get the right attention. They fail to tell what buyers wish to know
2. Testing is vital for success
3. Higher priced mail (a “two-cent” letter) didn’t pull any better than low priced mail (a “one-cent” letter). NOTE: Today that has probably changed as people have become adept at screening out obvious advertising
4. High quality stationery did not produce a higher response (what matters is the content)
5. Letters following up an enquiry should follow the same theme as the original ad. NOTE: This seems an obvious point but clearly many businesses must have failed to follow this principle
6. In a letter as in ads, the most important thing is to get immediate action. Prevent procrastination because “…a postponed action is too often forgotten”.
This last point forms the theme of the last section of the chapter and Hopkins provides a number of ideas for getting people to take action…
“Do something if possible to get immediate action. Offer some inducement for it. Or tell what delay may cost. Note how many successful selling letters place a limit on an offer.”
And he describes some successful promotions that illustrate ways to put this marketing idea into practice.
This idea of the importance of getting people to take action immediately is a key element in modern day direct response marketing (although a surprising number of marketers seem to forget this point).
But, as with so many key ideas, it was first highlighted by Hopkins back in the early years of the last century.
Final point. Although this chapter discusses conventional mail, the same principles apply to email and other electronic communication. So, this is as relevant today in the 21st century as when it was first written.