Outline of a Winning Sales Letter - 16 Design Secrets - Part 1
Busy people often ’scan’ through a letter that has attracted their attention - they want to gather the essence of the content and offer so they can make an instant decision;
“Is it interesting enough to read through or shall I just dump it?”
Making your letter easy to read and attractive is crucial to getting your prospect to read. Follow these design secrets as you craft your winning sales letter (8 of 14)…
1) Keep your sentences short. Use easy to understand, simple words. Unless you are writing to people who speak the same technical language as you do, don’t use jargon. Think about how you would describe your offer if you were talking to your best friend. This is the language to use in your letter.
2) Inset the first line of your paragraphs. Although this is not the ‘modern’ style for letters it is actually better for your reader. Tabbed paragraphs make your page more aesthetically appealing and less daunting to read.
3) Use short paragraphs - 6 lines or less. Long paragraphs give a ’solid’ appearance, which does not encourage your reader to tackle it. It is perceived as hard work and creates a barrier for your prospect. Aim to cover just one point in each paragraph.
4) Use different length paragraphs to create space on your page. Having the same size paragraphs throughout gives your page a ‘blocky’ hard-to-read appearance.
5) Don’t finish a sentence or paragraph at the end of a page. You want your reader to continue onto the next page…a split sentence or hyphenated word entices them to turn over so they can finish the word or sentence. People rarely want to stop mid-sentence!
Plain is Best…
6) Don’t go overboard with fancy fonts or colours. If you are writing a letter to a friend or business colleague it’s unlikely you would add colours and different fonts to your message. This is no different. You are writing an informative marketing letter to your prospect or customer. Adding too much colour and large, fancy fonts throughout your letter screams ’sales letter’ at the reader.
7) Use bullet points and indented paragraphs to make your points stand out. Don’t be tempted to use fancy symbols for your bullets; just a simple • gives the best effect.
The same applies to numbered lists, use straight forward numbering.
Check out the other 8 design secrets in the article Outline of a Winning Sales Letter - 16 Design Secrets - Part 2
©2005 Original Work by Carol Bentley
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Carol is the author of ‘I Want to Buy Your Product… Have You Sent Me a Letter Yet? (How to create powerful sales letters, advertisements, flyers, brochures, web pages and newsletters that persuade hundreds, or even thousands, of additional customers and clients to buy from you!) by Carol A E Bentley (Rated 5-star on Amazon.co.uk) This book is available at a special offer at http://www.CarolBentley.com/offer
Carol is one of the highest paid direct response copywriters available. If you would like to talk to Carol’s office about having her work on your current or next sales project you can use the contact form on her website http://www.CarolBentley.com/contact.asp
