Printers' Ink, July 11, 1918 (Vol. 104, No. 2)
A wartime issue of the New York advertising weekly.
What it is
A wartime issue of the New York advertising weekly. The filed piece is Homer J. Buckley's address to the San Francisco convention of the Associated Advertising Clubs, "Letters That Hold the Customer". Buckley tells firms to read the carbon copies in their claim department, then reports a retail specialty house that wrote to 300 lapsed customers out of 2,800: of 196 replies, 47 blamed indifferent salesmen and only one blamed the goods. He reprints the letter Francis T. Simmons & Company, Chicago glove jobbers, sent to 1,400 small-town dealers who had not ordered in a year. It asks frankly why, encloses a stamped envelope and puts the request for an order in a postscript. It drew 385 replies and $10,500 in orders for under $100. Also here: L. D. H. Weld on the economics of advertising, Certain-teed's change of name, and an editorial against "calamity selling".
Why read it now
The core finding holds. Customers mostly leave over how they are treated, not over the product, and a plain question from someone senior brings many of them back. Frederick Reichheld's retention work at Bain and modern win-back programmes point the same way: a lapsed buyer already knows you, so winning him back usually costs less than finding a new one. Buckley's rule to grant the allowance at the start, not after seven paragraphs of defence, is sound complaint handling. Treat the numbers with care. The reasons come only from people who chose to reply, the $10,500 is the speaker's own account, and wartime shortages made dealers keen to secure supply. The claim that a postscript proves the whole letter was read is an inference, and the split into emotions, intellect and will is old faculty psychology. Weld's case that advertising lowers selling costs has mixed modern support. Use: list every customer with no purchase in 12 months, send a short signed note asking why with an easy way to reply, code the answers, and put the reorder offer in the P.S.
Passages worth keeping
If you are going to make an allowance, for goodness sake, make it right off the bat, and have the customer feeling right at the start.
إذا كنت ستعوّض العميل في النهاية فابدأ بالتعويض، ولا تجعله يقرأ فقرات طويلة من التبرير قبل أن يصل إليه.
all the others discontinued as customers because of dissatisfaction with service in its broad sense.
من بين أسباب الانقطاع كلها سبب واحد فقط يتعلق بالبضاعة، والباقي كله استياء من الخدمة بمعناها الواسع.
The type of letters issued by these departments of business houses to-day, do more damage than the sales and advertising departments can repair in years.
رسائل أقسام الشكاوى والائتمان الجافة تهدم في يوم ما يحتاج قسما المبيعات والإعلان إلى سنوات لبنائه.
Just put yourself in my place for a minute or so. Turn this sheet over now, and answer this letter as you would like to have it answered if you had written it.
يطلب كاتب الرسالة من التاجر أن يتخيل نفسه مكانه وأن يرد فورًا على ظهر الورقة، فيجعل الرد سهلًا وشخصيًا.
Selling does it by means of vocal cords; advertising by means of the printed word or picture.
الإعلان والبائع يؤديان المهمة نفسها، وهي إيجاد الرغبة في السلعة، والفرق في الوسيلة فقط: الصوت عند البائع والكلمة المطبوعة والصورة عند الإعلان.
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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