John Carlton’s Best Ads: Hyper-Effective Cover Letter #3: Oh, My God…

This is the third in the series of hyper-effective cover letters…this is an introductory post that refers to all five of the letters. We are reprinting the same post for each of the letters.

One of the biggest mistakes marketers make… is to get tired of their own advertising before the ads are actually dead. Sometimes, they pull ads that are still cooking at peak efficiency. They see the ad every day, they get tired of it, bored with it, their spouse is grousing about how embarrassing or odd it is, the staff is sick of it, whatever. They see Ford and Pepsi and AT&T changing ads every week, and they think that’s how it’s done.

My clients know better.

If they don’t, I educate ’em fast.Many of the ads I write run at profit for years. Years. I have decade-old copy out there, still running in magazines, still mailing, still getting linked online. When you hit the passionate sweet spot of your audience with great copy, it becomes timeless. Sometimes, clients place one of these never-say-die ads only once or twice a year in the mags. Or mail it only when their lists get filled with new names. Other letters have been a key part of the profit “pipeline” without interruption tor ages.

It all depends on the results.

But you can resuscitate an ad that’s gone limp with a simple tactic that acts like a rejuvenation tonic. A simple cover letter (usually one page long) can re-orient the reader to the old ad in a new way.

Following are five ads that needed some help. And each one got a unique cover letter that boosted response immediately. In most cases, the lists had seen the letter multiple times… so getting it again would cause the “aw, I’ve seen that before” response.

To counter that, I wrote cover letters that act like brash, engaging extroverts at a party, introducing to someone you’ve briefly met before… but ”re-framing” them in a new, more exciting way. So you’re eager to re-meet them, so to speak.

This tactic requires just two elements:

1. Clever personality based on previous bonding … and…
2. A good reason why you should pay attention to the following letter.

Thus, I talk about a hole-in-one , which quickly introduces an old ad by way of “spreading the joy”. I apologize, because the reader may have missed the letter originally. I offer an early Christmas present. I insist (twice, for different companies) that the ad is something the reader would love, and should check out immediately. (And rely on the secretary to do the reminding.) And, I offer a better deal in a “‘bargain alert”.

These cover letters are all excellent examples of “bonding” language. They are disarming, and gently slide into the sales pitch without getting too urgent. All the cover letters are designed to do… is to get the reader to immediately go to the main piece. That’s it. I’m not trying to complete the sales pitch in the cover — I want to keep them short and super-pithy. The actual sales pitch has already been taken care of, in the main piece. It would be redundant to attempt to do the sales pitch in the cover… and it would botch the pitch, anyway. If l only needed two pages for the complete pitch, I would have only written two pages for the main piece. But a good sales pitch often requires long copy.

So pay attention. The job of the cover letter is to get the reader moving on to the main piece. That’s the ONLY job it has.

Think: Short, personal, with a damn good reason why.

Click here to see the “Oh, My God” cover letter.

Click here to see the “I Guarantee With My Own Money” letter.

(Each will open in a new window or tab, so you can toggle between the cover letter, the sales letter and Carlton’s commentary below.)

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