Hundred Point Sales Letters
A 44-page booklet published by the Dartnell Corporation in 1921 that reprints 16 sales, collection and trade letters by named writers (Edgar W. Jordan, C. A. MacFarlane, James Wallen, Louis V. Eytinge, J. J. Sherlock and others), each facing a one-page essay on why it pulled.
What it is
A 44-page booklet published by the Dartnell Corporation in 1921 that reprints 16 sales, collection and trade letters by named writers (Edgar W. Jordan, C. A. MacFarlane, James Wallen, Louis V. Eytinge, J. J. Sherlock and others), each facing a one-page essay on why it pulled. It opens with a 100-point scoring chart split between selling qualities (the start, self-interest, desire, confidence, a clear request for the order) and composition (readability, clarity, continuous action, personality, grammar). The essays then take one problem each: getting to the point, the overused "you", superlatives, registering quality against price, one point per letter in a series, illustrated letterheads, citing well-known customers, answering inquiries, collections and lapsed accounts. The evidence includes a test of five opening paragraphs on 5,000 manufacturers and a roach-powder letter to hospitals whose rewrite lifted replies from 3 to 17 percent.
Why read it now
The booklet is useful because it reports numbers, not just rules. Several findings match current direct response practice: put the reason for writing in the first line and the requested action in the last, because many readers see only the opening, a glance at the middle and the close; test openings on split lists; run a series with one point per letter; name well-known customers as proof, which Cialdini's later work on social proof supports; and prefer exact figures ("3 dissatisfied customers" over "not a single one"), which Schindler and Yalch found in 2006 make ad claims seem more accurate. The chapter on lapsed accounts, writing to each one to ask why it stopped buying, is a win-back program in plain form. What has dated: each test is one mailing with no check on chance, the claim that 7 readers in 10 skim is asserted without data, and the piano story is an anecdote, though Plassmann's 2008 wine-price study shows price does shape perceived quality. Use: score your next sales email against the chart before it goes out.
Passages worth keeping
Never send a letter out without clearly stating in the last paragraph just exactly what you want the reader to do.
الفقرة الأخيرة مكان الطلب الصريح: قل للقارئ بالضبط ماذا تريده أن يفعل، فهو لا يقرأ أفكارك.
A letter is a salesman on paper.
الرسالة بائع مكتوب، والدوافع التي تجعل الناس يشترون من بائع هي نفسها التي تجعلهم يشترون من رسالة.
One of his regular "stunts" is to take the last paragraph of a letter and put it first.
عادة سايروس كيرتس في تحرير الرسائل: نقل الفقرة الأخيرة إلى البداية، لأن الخلاصة تستحق أن تأتي أولًا.
It is a mistake to assume, however, that people want quality. They don't. They have to be made to want it first.
الناس لا يطلبون الجودة من تلقاء أنفسهم، بل يبحثون عن الأرخص؛ فابدأ بإقناعهم بقيمة الجودة قبل أن تعدد مزايا منتجك.
The first principle in planning collection letters is to assume that the man is honest.
في رسائل التحصيل افترض أن المدين أمين، فقد يكون مهملًا أو متعثرًا، والنبرة الودية تجلب المال أكثر من التهديد.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
What it teaches best
Read the original archive.org
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