Sparking imagination of a reader in a sales letter

A letter must be able to spark action from the intended recipient. If not, why is the letter even written? If the letter lacks professionalism and doesn’t add perceived value to the intended recipient, the letter is more likely to not get a positive response. You will also need to know your business, product, service, and customer well to write a sales letter (Kennedy, 2001). With this, let’s see four ways in which you can spark the imagination of a reader in a sales letter:

• Give attention to small details: Starting from the heading, give proper thoughts to it. The subject line in an email or the title in a written form must be able to grab the attention of the user. If not, the person is likely to not even read anything beyond that. In addition to that, addressing the person, doing the necessary research and making sure there are no blunders in the letter is vital.

• Keep it short and well formatted: Make sure the letter is of necessary length only. Don’t stretch it just for the sake of it. You also need to demonstrate that you value their time so short letter with proper formatting like the use of good fonts, short paragraphs and bullet points are important.

• Demonstrate value: Put yourself in the shoes of the customer and answer the question, what’s there for the customer to get from the deal. Also, show the urgency. It can be done by stating that this is the one item left or may be saying that our deal ends after a day so hurry up. That makes the customer feel like it’s a limited edition thing and the value they perceive of the product goes higher, making them want to buy it more. Another way around can be, also by stating that all the profits from the sale go to a charity, that way people who are not even interested in the product in the first place can be tilted towards buying/using it at least once.

• Include a call to action: People don’t want to figure out themselves of what they have to do further to purchase the product or service. So, a course of action like make a call at the following number or email us at this can be something that must be there. That way if the customer wants to make the contact, they can do so to know further about the service and to acquire it.

References

Kennedy, D. (2001). The ultimate sales letter (pp. 1-4). Holbrook, Mass.: Adams.

No matter how brilliant ideas your ideas are, you can’t even offer them to your prospect unless you’ve made him/her look in your destination. Let him/her know how wonderful you are, sell him/her something (idea). There is no single formula for the best way to attack the audience attention. Here I explained, how can we grape the attention of our customer. These are:

1. Your reader can’t pay attention to everything, focus on specific information.

Our brain has limited capacity to store the information. The brain has to focus on specific information so we always focus to give them specific and required content only. The human focus is limited, so they can’t pay attention to everyone. Our reader’s mind is very selective (Conran, OCT 13, 2014). We have to give them a reason to pay attention to our content instead of everything else out there they could be listening to.

2. Make It Personal

When you make your letter personal, you make it important for your target audience personally interesting or perceptually meaningful information can grab attention, bring clarity and help it slip right into your prospective client’s awareness.

You don’t have to do lot of explanation to tell someone his/her because it’s so personal to his/her. After this immediately get attention. In a business point of view, According to Marketing Profs, personalized promotional emails, and personalized online advertising techniques are among the top tactics for promoting consumers to purchases (Pozdnev, 2017). Look Coca-Cola, as an example, After 10 years of slumping sales, the company decided to take a new approach this summer with its "Share a Coke” camping by simply putting popular names and labels (e.g.: friends and family) on the bottles. Coke - Cola made its product jump out at consumers scanning the walls of teas, sodas, juices, and energy drinks. And the company increase sales by more than 2 percent in the process.

3. Use Emotion

Emotion is a great way to bring clarity to message while making them personal emotion also comes with the triple bonus of adding clarity, giving a reason to talk about you and your business, and triggering the circuits in the brain that active behavior and decisions.

4. KISS (Keep It Simple and Sweet)

You have a lot to say and using text to communicate your message is great. Our audience, don’t want don’t want to read or hear length, text-heavy ads (Glass, 1997). Use short, catchy phrases, be purposeful with words, and try bundling your content ideas.

References
Conran, J. (OCT 13, 2014). How to Grab Your Target’s Attention in 8 Seconds (or Less). Inc.

Glass, G. V. (1997). The Meta-Analysis of Research Education. Review of Research in Education, 5 , 351-354.

Pozdnev, M. (2017). How to Write Your First Blog Post. IWANNABEABLOGGER .

Sales letter helps to make a professional impression on the readers. Business without sales is nothing thus, a wisely written sales letter can help to convince the clients to part their hardly earned cash on your business. The sales letter is the most personal, one-to-one form of advertising there is (Nicastro, 1999).

As mentioned in the book “Managerial Communication” by (Arthur H. Bell, 2014), “The introductory sentence in the sales letter should get the reader’s attention and then guide it meaningfully to consider a worthwhile product or service.”

Here are the four ways that can spark the imagination of a reader in a sales letter:

Start with the sentence that grabs the reader’s attention

In the first sentence of a letter, the company can highlight the benefits that the reader will get from dealings with your company. We all as a customer or client search uniqueness in the product that we buy. A reader will never want to read or buy the same thing repeatedly. In the first sentence, when the writer mentions that their product is different and unique from others, this helps to arouse curiosity among the reader, which force them read the letter further to find out the uniqueness.

For example, how would you like to make more space in your kitchen? Well, the solution is enclosed to that is enclosed with this letter.

Drop an impressive name, if appropriate, and then associate the reader with that name.

The use of the ‘name’ of big personalities will make the reader think that his/her thoughts matches with them. This will create a sense of confidence in the reader. Let us take an example:

Steve Jobs, like you, believes in innovating new technology and making life easier.

In this sentence, by using the name of Steve Jobs (the founder of Apple), the writer is trying the catch the eyeballs of the reader to read the sentence and connecting the reader with the person’s thoughts will make the reader desire to read more.

Mention local people, places, and events, if possible

The use of local people, places and events will help to connect the reader with the sales letter. This will help to make a good impression on the reader.

Empathize- feel with your reader

One cannot command people to buy their products. The company need to empathize with them. They need to politely inform that they can fulfill their requirements by first understanding their actual problem and necessities. In sales letter, the writer needs to sound concerned and encouraging at the same time. The readers from the letter must feel that by using their product will solve all their problems. Explain to your reader how things can be turned for the better and how he or she can use your services to increase his or her business (Hallan, 2008).

Therefore, the sales letter must be clear and concise which can help to grab the attention of the reader soon.

References
Arthur H. Bell, D. M. (2014). Management Communication, 3rd edition. Delhi: John Wiley & Sons.

Hallan, A. (2008, September 24). Creating an engaging sales letter . Retrieved from Show empathy and converse with your readers: credible-content.com/blog/creating... 22

Nicastro, E. (1999). Effective sales letter is a personal communication. The Business Journals .

Sales letter should be catered to the reader. Focusing on the product rather than the reader is a common misconception when writing a sales letter. "The work of creating an effective letter begins in your head not on a paper. First decide to concentrate on you (the reader) rather than I (the writer). (Bell & Smith, 2006)

The sales letter is a passive way of sales marketing as there is no human emotions involved but rather just words and sentences. Thus it is even more important to give special attention while writing a sales letter to capture the imagination of a reader. Four ways to spark the imagination of a reader has been mentioned below.

1. Hook the reader
One way to hook the reader into following up on the letter till the end is to not disclose what the letter is about right at the beginning but instead telling the reading that you have an exotic and unique thing to offer. People will be hooked to at least know what that thing is. For example, we have something new and exciting that will make your life happier.

2. Principle of authority
This is a principle used as a persuasion for raising confidence on the product to be sold. Sales letter should include impressive name that have authority in them. The name should then be connected to the reader. For example, toothpaste advertisement these days use actors as doctors to say it has been approved by the doctors. This gives the product authority for trust. An example in a sales letter could be, Actor Rajesh Hamal, like you, knows the importance of using Nepatop PPR pipes in your building.

3. Mention local people, places, and events
Figuratively speaking, the words in the letter should jump out of the letter and into the readers mind creating pictures. Mentioning local people, places and events to connect with the reader and create a picture that is familiar which automatically sparks the imagination of the reader. For example, we started our counselling support through music right after the earthquake of 2015 to the affected children in various schools in Lalitpur.

4. Empathize with the reader
If you can relate to what the reader is feeling and write the sales letter based on it, your sales letter will be very effective. For example, we want nothing but the best for our children. These sentiments touch the readers’ emotion and can help guide the reader to the next point we are making.

With all of these it is important to note that the sentences should be short and precise and act as an attractive opening for the body to follow.

Reference
Bell, A. H., & Smith, D. M. (2006). The Sales and Promotion Letter. In A. H. Bell, & D. M. Smith, Communication Management (pp. 237-240). Delhi: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Zhu & Hildebrandt (2013), sales letters are important part of any company that is trying to sell products and services. They are letters sent to prospective customers to solicit their responses. Writing a sales letter can be the best way to draw the attention of the people’s towards the business. A good sales letter accomplishes a lot in a short amount of time. One of the key objectives of a sales letter is to spark the imagination and curiosity of the reader. Sparking the imagination of readers means connecting them and making them aware about the product and services so that they can easily make a decision and the main aim of sales letter is to help in decision making by providing the clear information about the product and services. It is said that putting in the shoe of customers or readers is the best way to spark the imagination of readers.

Sales letter is a practical and effective method to attract people’s attention to our business in a short period of time. According to Bell & Smith (2006), there are four ways to spark the imagination of readers through sales letter, and they are - proposing unique positioning, providing an impressive name, mentioning local people, places, and events with empathizing the reader.

1. Unique positioning for the reader

The starting sentences of the sales letter should imply that the marketer can do something or offer something that is unique. Presenting the unique way will grab the attention of the readers. We must connect with the value level of the readers so that they feel connected. For instance; DTH-Direct to Home service provider in Nepal can start a sales letter for new service by writing "DTH with true HDTV brining natural and live”.

2. Impressive name

The marketer can use impressive name in the sales letter and then relate the reader to that name. Bajaj Avenger’s new ‘Feel Like God’ not only purposes an impressive name but also associates the feeling of god with the customers.

3. Mentioning local places, name or events

If the sales letter contains people, places or events that have something common with the client, they feel a sense of familiarity and attachment with the sales letter which keeps them interested in the sales letter.

For instance; GoldStar, Nepali brand shoes make the feelings toward every Nepalese. It was a brand which was made in Nepal and it has reputation for lasting long.

4. Empathizing

Empathizing with the reader in the sales letters makes the reader feel that the marketers understand what they are going through. We can take the example of Insurance Company. When we see slogans like "We insure your Life. Because you never know.” then we feel empathy on it so that we insure.

Therefore, to spark the imagination of the readers we should not only focus on product selling but also building a trust that will connect with the emotions of the customers.

References

Bell, A. H., & Smith, D. (2006). Management Communication . John Wiley and Sons Inc.

Zhu, Y., & Hildebrandt, H. W. (2013). Effective Persuasion of International Business Sales Letters. Management International Review, 53 (3), 391-418.

Sales letter is a form of persuasive letter that intends to sell a product or service. The sales letter is effective only when the readers are persuaded or motivated to buy a particular product or service after reading the letter. Sales letter should focus on "you - the readers” not "I - the writer” and emphasize on feelings rather than features to appeal the potential customers. Before writing the sales letter, we need to know the readers and include content that may arouse their needs (Bell & Smith, 2006). The sales letter should spark the imagination and curiosity of the readers that can be done in following four ways:

1. Suggest in the first sentence that you can do something unique for the reader: Readers may get multiple sales letter each day. In order to make them invest their time in reading our sales letter, we need to grab their attention from the very first sentence by making it unique, exciting and interesting. The words that stimulate curiosity and create enthusiasm should be used in the beginning so that they would read further. For example: Health at home offers you new dimensions of health care service.

2. Drop an impressive name, if appropriate, and associate the reader with that name: Everybody wants to be praised and admired. This is the human nature and we can use this to our benefit in sales letter. For this, we need to know the readers and associate them with the name of a person they admire. This will make the reader feel connected and important, and they will continue reading the sales letter. For example: Politician, Gagan Thapa, like you understands the importance of innovation in health care.

3. Mention local people, places, and events if possible: People will feel a sense of belongingness if local people, places and events are presented as a part of sales letter. It will trigger them subconsciously to go through the entire letter. For example: Health at home has won the trust of people in Chabahil through its unique services.

4. Empathize - feel with your reader: We can grab the attention of the readers by making them feel that we are also one of them and we can relate to their feeling and emotions. For example: We all are worried about the health of our loved ones, especially when we are not around them.

Sales letter can be an effective tool for attracting new businesses. So it should be carefully planned and written (Brennan, 2016).

References
Bell, A. H., & Smith, D. M. (2006). Management Communication (3rd ed.). New York: Wiley.

Brennan, M. (2016). 5 Tips for Writing a Sales Letter That Works . Retrieved from Business 2 Community: business2community.com/sales-manag...