Sales letters that sizzle: all the hooks, lines, and sinkers you'll ever need to close sales

435 Pages·1999·13.97 MB·English

by  Herschell Gordon Lewis

Sales Letters That Sizzle : All the Hooks,
title: Lines, and Sinkers You'll Ever Need to
Close Sales
author: Lewis, Herschell Gordon.
publisher: NTC Contemporary
isbn10 | asin: 0844223484
print isbn13: 9780844223483
ebook isbn13: 9780071394505
language: English
subject Sales letters, Direct marketing.
publication date: 1999
lcc: HF5730.L48 1999eb
ddc: 658.8/1
subject: Sales letters, Direct marketing.
Page iii
Sales Letters That Sizzle
Second Edition
All the Hooks, Lines, and Sinkers You'll Ever Need to
Close Sales
Herschell Gordon Lewis
NTC Business Books
NTC/Contemporary Publishing Group
Page iv
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lewis, Herschell Gordon, 1926
Sales letters that sizzle : all the hooks, lines, and sinkers you'll
ever need to close sales bHerschell Gordon Lewis. 2nd ed.,
new and rev. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-8442-2348-4
1. Sales letters. 2. Direct marketing. I. Title.
HF5730.L48 1999
658.8' 1dc21 98-55946
CIP
Cover design by Scott Rattray Cover and interior illustration copyright ©
Barton Stabler/Artville, LLC. Interior design by City Desktop
Productions, Inc.
Published by NTC Business Books A division of NTC/Contemporary
Publishing Group, Inc. 4255 West Touhy Avenue, Lincolnwood
(Chicago), Illinois 60646-1975 U.S.A. Copyright © 1999 by
NTC/Contemporary Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of
this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of
NTC/Contemporary Publishing Group, Inc. Printed in the United States of
America International Standard Book Number: 0-8442-2348-4
99 00 01 02 03 04 05 HP 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Page v
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Part I 1
Rules and Tools: Tricks of the Trade
1 3
Everybody Writes Letters!
Three Reasons Some Letters Succeed While Others Fail 7
Who Are We? 12
2 27
Ten Easy Pieces
3 47
What's on Top? And What's in the Middle?
The First Law of Overlines 47
When Should You? When Shouldn't You? 48
Rules and Techniques of Overline Writing 52
Printed Legends and Pictures 56
Johnson Boxes 56
What Else Is "In"? 58
What About Highlighting? 68

Page vi
Handwriting Within the Letter 68
Conclusion 74
4 75
What's at the End?
The Rule for P.S. Writing 75
Public-Domain Postscripts 76
Experiments, Good and Bad 76
One P.S. per Customer, Please 77
Two Postscripts? No Postscripts? 77
5 87
Envelopes: Crucial and Too Often Overlooked
The First Rule of Envelope Copy 87
How About Direct Mail? 88
Envelope Sizes 90
The Second Rule of Envelope Copy 90
Obfuscation + Complication = Negation 93
New Developments in Envelopes 93
Speaking of Free . . . 94
The Third and Fourth Rules of Envelope Copy 98
The Fifth Rule of Envelope Copy 99
How a Database Can Enhance Envelope Copy 103
Challenging the Recipient 104
Speed Formats 105
Do the Enclosures Back Up the Promise on the 105
Envelope?
The Seventh and Eighth Rules of Envelope Copy 106
Does Humor Work on Envelopes? 109
The Ninth Rule of Envelope Copy 109
Conclusion 110
6 111
The Newest Medium: E-Mail
Four Major E-Mail Selling Techniques 111
Don't Forget the Lead-In Line. 118
The Value of Timeliness 118
Basic Tips, Squared 119
Page vii
Part II 123
100 Letter Openings That Will Work Every Time
7 125
The Importance of the Opening
The Three-Way Matchup: Message . . . Target . . . 126
Motivator
In Favor of Provocative Openings 126
When Does a Letter Actually Begin? 127
Are There Really a Hundred Effective Ways to Begin a 127
Sales Letter?
Do These Openings Apply to E-Mail? 128
Why Limit Yourself to One Hundred? 128
Subtle Differences Can Be BIG Differences. 129
The Benefit of Multiple Options 129
8 131
The First 25 Ways to Start a Letter
9 175
25 More Ways to Start a Letter-Openings 26 to 50
10 215
25 More Ways to Start a Letter-Openings 51 to 75
11 245
25 More Ways to Start a Letter-Openings 76 to 100
12 269
A Concluding Thought

Page ix
PREFACE
This is the second edition of this book.
Has the method of creating sales letters changed enough to warrant a
second edition? Wellll . . .
If you've saved some of the letters you've received over the years,
because you felt they were either effective or ineffective, you'll
probably agree that an evolutionary process exists, even with standard
communications.
Handwriting, marginal notes, big display type above the greeting,
subheads, multiple colorsthese are additions and power-enhancers
designed to lift a letter above the clutter . . . to swing an apathetic or
even hostile reader into a positive orbit . . . and to create excitement
and the ultimate symbol of success: the desire to lift the phone or a
pen because of a "Yes!" reaction.
What sometimes happens is that form overcomes substance. Or the
writer cares more about impressing associates in the office than about
generating the buying impulse. Or the writer just doesn't know how to
grab the rhetorical triggerand fire!
Another circumstance warranting a second edition: The first edition of
Sales Letters That Sizzle was published early in the last decade of the
twentieth century. It made no mention of the World Wide Web and its
amazing child, e-mail. How could it? The World Wide Web wasn't
even a gleam in anyone's electronic eye.
The twenty-first century is a new, faster-paced, more brutally
competitive ball game. We have to throw strikes or our team loses.
And this new edition, with new examples and a new awareness of
what works and what doesn't work, can be your pitching coach.