Making Your Sales Letter Sell
Copyright 2003 by Kevin Bidwell
All-In-One-Business.com

Your goal is to make a sale.  Maybe a BUNCH of sales.  So
you begin to craft your sales letter.

But you may be getting ahead of yourself.

Before you can ever make the sale, you have to first answer
three important questions for the recipient:

*Why should the recipient open this email?
*Why should the recipient read this email?
*Why should the recipient visit the link in the email?

If you can give enough answers to each one of these
questions, you will have a good return on your email
solicitations.

Let's think about how you can answer these questions...

1.  Why Should I Open This Email?

According to a recent study by DoubleClick.com, the most
important feature in determining whether or not an email
will be opened is the FROM line. Is this from someone I know
and want to hear from?  Use a FROM line that will increase
the number of people who will open the email.

According to that same DoubleClick study, the second highest
ranked feature the average email recipient uses to determine
whether or not he will open an email is the subject line.
Canned or "spam like" subject lines caused a lower open rate,
while personalized and interesting subject lines work much
better.

My guess is you can spot "spam-like" subject lines in your
inbox immediatley. Couple that with a sender unknown to the
recipient, and your email is going to the trash bucket!

Another issue to consider is filters set up to catch spam or
other unimportant email. To maximize your chances of passing
through the filters, first test your email and make any
changes necessary to reduce its "spam" score. Here is a spam
filter Ken Evoy has set up for you to use free:

Send your email to: spamchecka-i-o-b@sitesell.net

Make sure the subject line begins with the word "TEST".

It will send you back a report on the spam score plus ways
to reduce your score.

2.  Why should I read this email?

Once you overcome the first hurdle, you have a second. You
have to give the recipient a reason to actually READ the
email you sent them.

Start out giving the recipient a benefit just for reading
the email: "In this email you will discover...", "You are
just five minutes away from $50..." or one I did recently
"Derek blew it..."

These each appeal to different reasons why a recipient
would take the two minutes to read the email.

If your email is long, you need to keep providing reasons
to read throughout the email. The first line or two needs
to contain a solid reason why they should read, and every
7-8 lines should contain another.

Now, for the third question...

3.  Why should they visit the link?

In order to get someone to visit the link, you need to give
them a reason. Consider all of the negative thoughts going
through your recipient's mind and attempt to overcome those
in the email.

The more of these thoughts you can overcome, the more people
you will get to the site. Remember--your goal is to get the
reader to the site with an open mind. You are not trying to
sell him before he gets there--your job is to get him to the
site and let the site do the selling.

Once you have crafted your email, use this special trick to
get even more visitors to the site--summarize the best benefit
for  visiting into one or two sentences, and place it as a PS
in the email, listing the URL as the LAST thing in the email.

Even if someone doesn't read the whole email, they will
often scan the PS and catch the benefit and the link.

If you consistently answer these three questions in every
email you send out, you will see a good return from your
sales letter efforts.

============================================
Kevin Bidwell is owner of http://www.all-in-one-business.com

Kevin is offering a FREE BUSINESS START-UP KIT to everyone
who visits his site.  If you liked this article, you will
want to subscribe to his newsletter.  Send a blank email to:
nwslttr@quicktell.net


 

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