July 20

John Carlton’s Best Ads: The Penny Letter

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Sometimes we all like to pretend we’re not motivated by money.

That’s fine to believe if you want…but you cannot afford such delusions if you are a marketer. People respond to money at a visceral level They almost never receive money for free, and especially not in the mail. Certainly not from a mysterious letter­ writer who only wants your brief attention in return. A chance to tell his story.

Note: This commentary applies to 3 letters…the dollar bill letter, the penny letter, and the 50 bucks letter. It is being reprinted in the post for each letter.

Here are three letters that use the lure of actual cash as a “grabber”:

(I) The dollar bill letter. The bill replaces the need for any headline. A crisp new buck was hand-stapled onto every letter that went out. The product is a high­ ticket item (selling for $377), so the extra cost was justified. Think about the «pull” of a real dollar bill. You might not bother to pick up a penny on the street… but no one steps over a stray dollar bill and keeps walking. You have the reader’s full and undivided attention: Why, he is asking himself, did someone send me a letter with a dollar bill attached?

The letter is also a great example of “parlaying” a seminar by taping it, and then selling the tapes for a fraction of the cost of attending the actual event. There will always be a segment of your core audience who craves the personal experience of attending the actual event. And a larger segment who considers flying somewhere, renting a hotel room, and attending a seminar too much trouble and too much money… but who will jump at the chance to see the tapes. It’s the lure of a genuine bargain, and the lure of seeing privileged information that other people shelled out a small fortune to experience.

(2) The penny letter. The client freaked out when I delivered this letter to him tor mailing. We insisted he mail First Class… and his list was several million names deep. They tried to talk us out of using a real penny– both because of the extra cent needed for each piece (an extra ten grand per million) … and because the weight of the coin tipped the package over an ounce, which meant more postage was necessary. And that extra postage ran into huge money.

Not our problem, we said. (I was working with Gary Halbert during this time, learning master’s-level methods of forcing clients to toe the line.) They reluctantly mailed the letter… and the staggering results convinced them to find a way to make it work. It pulled enormous profit even with the extra postage … but someone in the Ruff organization became obsessed with getting the package down to under an ounce. He did it by finding the thinnest paper made that could still handle being printed on both sides… then trimming it to within a hair of the copy on every margin. So instead of an 8xl0 letter, it became a 7-13/32 x 9-3/8.

The kicker was the glue used to hold the penny on the page — he found some substance that weighed a fraction less than the standard glue. This piece mailed for a long, long time, and rejuvenated the client’s business.

(3) The fifty-bucks letter. 1bis was not an actual $50 bill, but a startling reproduction. (It looked so good, the client insisted on stamping it with “not legal tender”, afraid he would be accused of counterfeiting.)

The concept is very clever. Their standard guarantee included an extra $10 on top of your refund if you were unhappy for any reason. This worked extremely well… with the strong appeal of “putting our money where our mouth is”. But the promotions were starting to look redundant. Thus, I changed the guarantee so a crisp new $50 bill was mailed back if the customer asked for a refund. The fifty bucks covered the refund and the extra $10. It just came across as more powerful combined as a new fifty dollar bill. (The Treasury was changing the look of fifty dollar bills at the time, which added extra news value to the pitch.)

Notice in each of the three letters that I mention the money only in the opening paragraphs, and then do not mention it again. Cash is a powerful lure to bring the reader into your letter, but it’s value is gone once you’ve introduced yourself. It’s a one-shot tool.

Money can be used instead of a headline, or (as in the fifty dollar bill letter) in connection with a headline. I would never use money and not explain why it’s there. Use it as a lead-in to your pitch.


Click here to see “The Penny Letter” ad.
(It will open in a new window or tab, so you can toggle between the ad and Carlton’s commentary.)


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