Robert Collier - The Robert Collier Letter Book

Robert Collier

The Ultimate Guide for Copywriting

e-artnow, 2021

Contact: info@e-artnow.org

EAN: 4064066498870

Preface PREFACE Table of Contents This is not a textbook, calculated to show the beginner how to take his pen or typewriter in hand and indite a masterly epistle to some fancied customer. It is for the business man who already knows the theory of letter writing but is looking for more effective ways of putting it into practice. It covers all the necessary rules, of course, but it does this informally. Primarily, it is the log book of a long and varied experience. It shows successful ways of selling all manner of products, from coal and coke right on down to socks and dresses. But through all the differences in products and appeals, runs this one connecting thread—that while products and reasons for buying may vary, human nature remains much the same; that familiarity with the thing you are selling is an advantage, but the one essential without which success is impossible in selling, by mail or selling in person, is a thorough understanding of human reactions. Study your reader first—your product second. If you understand his reactions, and present those phases of your product that relate to his needs, then you cannot help but write a good letter. It may be said of this book that it does not give enough examples of unsuccessful letters. But most of us can find plenty of these in our own files. And isn’t it true that we are far less concerned with why a letter failed than in finding out what it is that makes a letter successful? The first book on business letter writing I ever read was the "Business Correspondence Library” published by System a good many years ago. To it, and to "Applied Business Correspondence” and other books by Herbert Watson, I owe most of my theoretical knowledge of letter writing. Those familiar with Watson’s writings will recognize many of his theories in the early chapters of this book. I gladly give acknowledgment to him as the one on whose writings the groundwork of my own education in direct mail was laid. To John Blair, President of the New Process Company of Warren, Pennsylvania, I am indebted for numberless opportunities to test my pet ideas in the only crucible that gives dependable results—actual letters sent to prospective buyers—and for the perfect records that enabled me to see which theories were workable, which better forgotten. For many of the short paragraphs used as examples of good starters, graphic descriptions, or proper closers, I am indebted to writers like Ad-Man Davison and Ben Sweetland and to such magazines as Printers' Ink and System. To all of these I give acknowledgment and express sincere appreciation. THE AUTHOR NEW YORK, N. Y. May, 1931.

Chapter 1. What is it that Makes Some Letters Pay?

Chapter 2. How to Arouse that Acquisitive Feeling

Chapter 3. Getting News Interest Into Your Letter

Chapter 4. Word Pictures that Make People Want Your Product

Chapter 5. Motives that Make People Buy

Chapter 6. The Proof of the Pudding

Chapter 7. Supplying that Impulse

Chapter 8. How to Put a Hook Into Your Letters

Chapter 9. The Six Essentials

Chapter 10. How It All Began

Chapter 11. The First Olive

Chapter 12. Selling $2,000,000 Worth of O. Henry Stories

Chapter 13. A War History that Sold

Chapter 14. Books that Many People Know

Chapter 15. How Wells’ "Outline" was Sold

Chapter 16. How the Bookbuyers Saved a Campaign

Chapter 17. A Giant of the Mails

Chapter 18. The Third Fifty Thousand

Chapter 19. Will You Accept This Little Gift?

Chapter 20. One Million Dollars’ Worth of Orders in the First Six Months

Chapter 21. How Closely Can You Follow Up Leads?

Chapter 22. We Help to Start a Store

Chapter 23. How to Reach the Leaders

Chapter 24. Collecting with a Smile

Chapter 25. The Ideal Sales Letter

Chapter 26. How to Raise Money by Mail

Table of Contents

This is not a textbook, calculated to show the beginner how to take his pen or typewriter in hand and indite a masterly epistle to some fancied customer.

It is for the business man who already knows the theory of letter writing but is looking for more effective ways of putting it into practice.

It covers all the necessary rules, of course, but it does this informally. Primarily, it is the log book of a long and varied experience.

It shows successful ways of selling all manner of products, from coal and coke right on down to socks and dresses. But through all the differences in products and appeals, runs this one connecting thread—that while products and reasons for buying may vary, human nature remains much the same; that familiarity with the thing you are selling is an advantage, but the one essential without which success is impossible in selling, by mail or selling in person, is a thorough understanding of human reactions.

Study your reader first—your product second. If you understand his reactions, and present those phases of your product that relate to his needs, then you cannot help but write a good letter.

It may be said of this book that it does not give enough examples of unsuccessful letters. But most of us can find plenty of these in our own files. And isn’t it true that we are far less concerned with why a letter failed than in finding out what it is that makes a letter successful?

The first book on business letter writing I ever read was the "Business Correspondence Library” published by System a good many years ago. To it, and to "Applied Business Correspondence” and other books by Herbert Watson, I owe most of my theoretical knowledge of letter writing. Those familiar with Watson’s writings will recognize many of his theories in the early chapters of this book. I gladly give acknowledgment to him as the one on whose writings the groundwork of my own education in direct mail was laid.

To John Blair, President of the New Process Company of Warren, Pennsylvania, I am indebted for numberless opportunities to test my pet ideas in the only crucible that gives dependable results—actual letters sent to prospective buyers—and for the perfect records that enabled me to see which theories were workable, which better forgotten.

For many of the short paragraphs used as examples of good starters, graphic descriptions, or proper closers, I am indebted to writers like Ad-Man Davison and Ben Sweetland and to such magazines as Printers' Ink and System.

To all of these I give acknowledgment and express sincere appreciation.

THE AUTHOR

NEW YORK, N. Y. May, 1931.

Table of Contents

What is there about some letters that makes them so much more effective than others?

A letter may have perfect diction, a finished style; it may bristle with attention-getters and interest-arousers; it may follow every known rule; yet when it reaches the Hall of Judgment where the reader sits and decides its fate, it may find itself cast into the hell of wastebasketdom, while some screed lacking any pretense of polish or the finer arts of correspondence, blandly picks up the bacon and walks home with it. Why?

Because getting the results you set out to accomplish with a letter is no more a matter of rule of thumb than is landing a fish with a rod and hook. You know how often you have seen some ragged urchin pull in fish after fish with the crudest of lines, when a "sportsman” near by, though armed with every piscatorial lure known to man, could not raise even a bite!

It’s a matter of bait, that’s all. The youngster knew what the fish would bite on, and he gave it to them. Result? A mess of fine fish for dinner. The "sportsman” offered them what he had been led to believe fish ought to have—and they turned up their fishy noses at it.