Principles of the Mail Order Business (Sixth Edition)
The sixth edition of a mail-order handbook by Arthur E. Swett, a Chicago advertising agent who says he wrote and placed every ad it shows.
What it is
The sixth edition of a mail-order handbook by Arthur E. Swett, a Chicago advertising agent who says he wrote and placed every ad it shows. It argues that a man with small capital can reach nearly 100,000,000 people in the United States and Canada by advertising for inquiries and closing by letter. Twenty chapters cover choosing a line and a plan, such as the 1900 Washer Co.'s thirty days' free trial; how Sears, Roebuck and Montgomery Ward turn one cheap article into a lasting catalogue customer; follow-up letters; selling through agents; mail-order medicines; giving satisfaction; the trust scheme of premiums for selling goods sent on credit; mediums, postal rules and financial advertising; and talks with Chicago mail-order men. Real ads, from Vulcan roof paint to a 39-cent child's fur set, are reproduced with a note on the job each did. The back pages sell Swett's agency and his $3 course.
Why read it now
Swett's central idea, that the ad's job is to get an inquiry and the follow-up's job is to close, is the two-step lead model most high-ticket and B2B sellers use today. Two of his points hold up well. Keep the curiosity seekers instead of filtering them out, since cheap leads can still convert or pass the word on. And treat a first buyer as an asset to protect, which is the logic behind customer lifetime value and retention marketing; complaint-handling studies since the TARP work of the 1970s found that customers whose problems are fixed quickly are more likely to buy again. His account of fraud bringing in the Post Office, after which honest offers outsold schemes, is a fair history of how the trade was cleaned up. What has dated: the medicine chapters sell remedies for kidney disease, consumption and rheumatism by mail, the trust scheme depends on goods sent on credit and collection letters that grow harsher, and the papers and rates are gone. Use: write each ad to earn one inquiry, and plan the follow-up letters before the ad runs.
Passages worth keeping
The advertisement of Vulcan Chemical Co. is designed merely to get inquiries from those who need the goods. No attempt is made in the ad. further than that.
للإعلان مهمة واحدة هي جلب استفسار ممن يحتاج السلعة، أما البيع فتتولاه الكتالوجات ورسائل المتابعة.
a customer once induced to buy is carefully taken care of, and, by the mail order concern, is regarded as a tangible asset to be retained at all hazards
بيوت الكتالوج الكبرى تعامل من اشترى مرة واحدة كأصل ثمين يجب الحفاظ عليه مهما كلّف الأمر، لأن أرباحها في الطلبات التالية.
Trying to cut out curiosity seekers is one of those efforts indulged in largely by novices in advertising whose ignorance is considerably larger than their knowledge
استبعاد الفضوليين من قائمة المستفسرين خطأ المبتدئين، فبعضهم يشتري بعد المتابعة وبعضهم يدل غيره.
The secret of success in the mail order business (or, in fact, of any business) is in giving your customer satisfaction so he will deal with you again.
سر النجاح أن يرضى العميل فيعود، فالبيع الأول وحده لا يبني تجارة.
It was found that essentially the same methods which were so successful for these schemes were even more successful when the proposition was an honest one
الأساليب التي نجحت بها الحيل نجحت أكثر حين استُخدمت لعرض صادق، فالصدق لا يعني التخلي عن مهارة البيع.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
What it teaches best
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