Direct Marketing News

When your direct mail sales letter is longer than one
page, should you write Over, please . . . or Please
continue at the bottom of the page? Of course
not.

Phrases like that work against you. In every letter
you craft, youre trying to sound personal,
conversational, as though you are sitting opposite
your reader, having a personal conversation.
Writing Continued . . . or something just as inane
at the bottom of the page breaks that mood and
puts you in the position of huckster.

Richard Goldsmith disagrees. The author of a popular book on direct
mail says people tend to do what
you tell them to do, so he recommends that you
put Over, please . . . in the lower right corner of
your multi-page letters.

I say this is advice that belongs in another century,
if anywhere. Your reader knows to turn the page.
Your job is not to command your reader to continue
reading, but to compel her. You
do that by borrowing a trick from the soap operas,
not by employing a silly and worn-out piece of direct
mail advice.

Fans (or should I say addicts?) of Coronation Street,
The Young and the Restless and other popular soap
operas tune in each week because each episode
leaves them with a love unrequited, a slight
unrevenged, a dream unrealized or half a box of
Kleenex remaining. The viewer must tune in again
next week to see how the villain meets his timely end
or the heroine gets her man, or her woman, as the
case may be these days.

Your sales letters need to move your reader from
page to page in the same way. You cannot trust
them to turn your letter over and continue reading
simply because you said Please continue at the
lower right corner. You must compel them to
continue reading because they simply have to
discover how your story ends.

Writing Continued, over . . . makes you interrupt
yourself to remind the reader that you are selling
something, rather than having a mutually beneficial
conversation with the reader. It also insults his
intelligence. And makes your letter look formulaic
rather than original.

I suggest that you never end a page with a period or
a complete idea. Write instead as though you have a
stutter. Express half a thought at the bottom of the
page, and force your reader to turn the page over to
hear how you complete it. Whenever possible, make
the topic of this transition sentence as intriguing and
interesting as possible. Goldsmith calls it a cliffhanger.

If your prospects are concerned a great deal about
your price, then write about your price at the end of
the page, breaking your thought in half and
continuing it on the next page. If you have a
persuasive testimonial, begin it at the bottom of one
page and continue it on the next. Which reminds me,
what do you call a boomerang that doesnt come
back?

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