It’s not an insult to call your prospects and customers procrastinators. It’s just true. I readily admit that I procrastinate. And I’ll bet you do too.

After all, making decisions takes effort. And every day forces us to make an endless series of decisions. What will we wear? What will we eat? What will we buy for that birthday? Will we go to the beach or the mountains for vacation? Which school will our kids attend? Will we say yes to the party invitation? Should we apply for that new job? Can we afford the new car?

Your customers live busy lives. They’re stressed and tired. And they don’t want to put any more effort into making a decision about your product or service than they have to. If they can put it off, they will. And that means a lost opportunity for them and a lost sale for you.

The limited-time offer provides the perfect solution. Psychologists and sales people know that if you give people a yes or no decision to make, it’s more likely to turn out in your favor if it’s made quickly. And the best way to force a quick decision is to limit the time available.

In addition, people don’t like to miss out on a good thing. They’re hardwired to avoid loss, even if it’s just the loss of an opportunity to get a great deal.

So, while “Save 25%” is an attractive offer, “Save 25% — Offer ends Tuesday” is more likely to prompt a purchase.

Assuming I’ve convinced you that limited-time offers are a good thing, here are three tips for getting the most from this technique:

Highlight the end date. Don’t hide the date in tiny legal mumbo jumbo. Make sure people see it. Call attention to it with bold text, a bright color, an underline, or box. A time limit only works if people know about it, so you can’t be subtle about how it appears in your ads.

Use command language. Never be shy about telling people what you want them to do. Tell them to “call today,” “reply now,” “order immediately,” or “register online.” This is sometimes referred to as the “call to action” and helps emphasize the urgency of your time limit.

You might even add the word “hurry” to help connect the end date with the call to action. “Hurry! Call today. This offer ends on March 15.”

Stick to it. If you say that your offer ends on July 7, mean it. When July 8 rolls around, it’s over. If customers learn that your offers don’t really end on the specified date, they’ll stop responding.

For example, I’ve purchased several audio products from a company that incessantly offers deep discounts. Their ads and catalogs scream a time limit to these offers, but when the time expires I know I can still get the deal on their website. Or I can just wait to hear from them again, because I’ve learned they’ll just extend the deadline.

Do I still order their products? Yes, but not as often. Why should I respond now when I know I can place an order anytime and get the special deal?

If you’re looking for a way to improve the response to your ads, try a time limit. It costs you nothing and it’s proven to work.

After all, who wants to mess with copy once it’s written? It’s agonizing to rip into your own prose. But that’s exactly what it takes to turn good copy into great copy.

Here are 9 ways to polish and energize your copy when you give it that second go-around.

Write long and cut. It’s easier to overwrite and cut than to underwrite and add. Get everything down — no matter how sloppy or rough — then go back to trim and rearrange.

Be ruthless. Don’t fall in love with your own patter. Stay focused on your big idea and the action you want to create. Get rid of everything that doesn’t support response.

Avoid the windup. Often, a writer will spend some time warming up to a topic before getting to the point, especially in letters. When you’ve finished your first draft, see if there’s a better lead buried a few sentences or paragraphs in. If so, that’s where you should start.

Write lean. Small words, short sentences, and short paragraphs are easier to read and understand. With words, the fewer syllables the better. Your average sentence should be about 16 words and express a single thought. Once a sentence exceeds 32 words, it becomes harder to understand. Paragraphs should ideally be 7 lines or shorter.

Forget what you learned in school about sentence structure and paragraph development, advertising must communicate fast for people who are usually not engrossed in your subject.

Minimize the punctuation. Punctuation is meant to help organize copy and divide thoughts so they are easily understood. However, complex sentences with an abundance of commas slow readers down. Opt for simpler sentences with lighter punctuation. Avoid periods on headlines because they stop the reader for a split second. Use semicolons sparingly, since they are not understood as readily as other marks.

Write in the appropriate voice. In addition to knowing your reader, you must also know your writer. The writer of a sales letter, for example, is not you but the person signing it. So you should know how that person thinks and feels. And you should match your voice, tone, style, and mood to fit that writer.

The same holds for brochures, flyers, ads, and other items, though they are usually less personal and are written from the point of view of a company instead of a person. You may occasionally be lucky enough to have an interesting personality to use as the writer. However, in most cases, you will create these qualities as needed for each promotion. Always ask, “Who is talking or writing? Is this the most credible and interesting point of view?”

Justify the price. In any situation where you are asking for money, you must make the price appear to be a bargain, or at least reasonable. This requires you to speak in terms of “value” instead of mere price.

When selling a subscription to a website that provides artists with royalty-free photographs, for example, don’t talk about a $29.95 subscription. Instead, talk about having access to over $300,000.00 worth of photos for just $29.95. This juxtaposition of value and price transforms a transaction into a offer that can’t be refused.

Build credibility by showing a limitation. People expect exaggerated claims and are predisposed to doubt what you say. One way to diffuse this doubt is to admit a limitation along with your promise.

For example, if you’re selling an investment newsletter and are targeting what you consider to be smarter, more conservative investors, you might say, “The Conservative Investor Report can’t predict the future and can’t promise to make you rich overnight. However, it will help you put your hard-earned money in the right places, to keep it safe and make it grow.”

There is a strong promise here, but it is more believable because you have admitted a limitation and therefore sound more reasonable and honest.

Use active verbs. On a self-mailer for health supplements, I listed a series of benefits on the front panel and used active verbs for each:

Boost your energy! Relieve arthritis pain! Fight off cancer! Strengthen your heart! Lose weight fast! Sharpen your memory! Improve your vision!

Consider how much stronger this is than passive constructions, such as “You will boost your energy!” or “You can lose weight fast!” Direct marketing is all about action, so your copy must be active.

I’m sure you’ve been spurfing up a storm and have tons of testimonials by now. So let’s look at how to make them work for you.

Select testimonials from customers similar to your prospect. This increases the feeling of identification and relevance. A teacher will believe other teachers. A business owner will believe other business owners.

The more similarity you can show, the more weight your prospect will give to your testimonials. Even seemingly nonsensical similarities, such as where people live, have an effect. “Oh, he’s from Ohio too!”

Select testimonials that give specifics. Consider these two testimonials for a lawn fertilizer:

“I think Lawn Magic is a wonderful product. My lawn looks great.”

“For 6 years I tried every weed control powder and spray at my local garden store, but nothing could get rid of those darned dandelions. Then I saw your ad for Lawn Magic and decided to give it a try. I got it in the mail last Saturday and immediately tried the Quick Cover method you suggested and WOW! Just a week later, there’s not a single speck of yellow anywhere – except in my neighbor’s yard.”

Which one makes you want to try the product? Specifics turn empty enthusiasm into a powerful and dramatic moment you can almost see. Not only does this add credibility, it also clearly relays a benefit. If you have a potentially good testimonial that lacks specificity, call your customer and clarify the details.

Edit carefully and lightly. Don’t change the meaning. Don’t enhance. And don’t present words and phrases out of context. If a statement is too long, awkwardly punctuated, or otherwise unclear, you are justified in taking a blue pencil to the copy. But keep it light.

If you use the testimonial collection system I suggested last year, you will be typing up many of your testimonials and getting customers to sign off on them. Here especially, you must be careful not to enhance. You’ll lose the special flavor of actual testimonials.

Group testimonials for greater impact. Testimonials are a powerful way to build credibility and prove your claims. And they can work wonders no matter how you use them. But they pack a doubly powerful psychological wallop when you group them because they both prove your claims with objective endorsements and engage the Bandwagon Effect – “Lots of people are doing it. I want to do it, too!” Seeing testimonial after testimonial sends a visual signal that your widget has widespread appeal.

Use many short quotes instead of a few long ones. If you’re going for the Bandwagon Effect, this just makes sense. It’s a matter of showing as many people as you can who approve of the thing you’re selling. Twenty pithy testimonials can be more powerful than 5 big chatty ones. On the other hand…

Don’t be afraid of long testimonials. Sometimes, you get a gem that says it all. It may be a story, an emotional revelation, an authoritative remark from an expert, or just a simple comment that hits the nail on the head. You might want to separate it visually from the others, in a sidebar, for example. If it’s paragraphs long though, don’t use it as a testimonial; use it as a success story.

Include full names, titles, and locations when possible. This makes testimonials more real and relevant and enhances their credibility. I’ve even seen one instance where a seminar marketer included phone numbers and challenged readers to call other attendees. Obviously, you must consider privacy and security issues, but remember that, in general, full names are more believable than initials. Titles show authority, experience, or expertise. Locations, such as cities and states, help prove that people are real.

Feature photographs (maybe). They are further proof that people are real. And they help your reader identify with the testimonial-givers. This can be tricky, though. Sometimes photos can subtract impact if they are of poor quality or show people who – for whatever reason – don’t look right to readers.

One investment mailing I received used blurry black and white photos of an odd assortment of people I instantly perceived as total losers. I certainly did not want to identify with these people, so the testimonials fell flat – they even turned me against the product. Use good photos or use none at all.

Enclose each testimonial in quotation marks. Readership studies show that people are strongly attracted to quoted copy. It draws the eye. It makes reading easier and faster. And the subject matter is usually more relevant and interesting, since people are endlessly fascinated by other people – in what they do and what they say.

So for the sake of identifying a quote as a quote, use standard quotation marks around each statement. Never substitute italics for quotation marks because long lines of italicized text are harder to read.

Use a powerful headline to introduce testimonials. Don’t settle for a lame, do-nothing header, such as “Here’s what people are saying about the Laminator 2000.” Follow standard headline rules and provide a complete message, such as “Over 124,000 small businesses like yours rely on the Laminator 2000 to make their own professional-looking tags, instruction sheets, and signs.”

Creative Ways to Use Testimonials

Testimonials are one of the most flexible techniques in your creative tool kit. No matter what you’re selling or to whom, they can give a powerful boost to virtually any promotion. Here are just a few suggestions based on how I’ve used testimonials in the hundreds of promotions I’ve created:

• Build your entire promotion around one or more testimonials.
• Turn your best testimonial into a powerful, sure-to-be-read headline.
• Use testimonials to boost TV and radio ad response.
• Add sizzle to your website with a separate testimonial page.
• Build confidence in your catalog with product-targeted testimonials.
• Turn testimonials into reader-friendly envelope teasers.
• Use a powerful testimonial to start your letter with a bang.
• Spice up letter body copy by sprinkling in a few choice testimonials.
• Save a special testimonial for the P.S.
• Transform a good testimonial into a great lift letter.
• Feature a dozen or more testimonials in a separate insert.
• Boost your brochure wow factor with benefit-specific testimonial headlines.
• Give a last-minute push by including testimonials on response forms.
• Cement satisfaction and reduce returns with testimonials in your fulfillment.
• Liven up product packaging with short testimonials.

This is not a comprehensive list by a long shot. I’m always thinking of new ways to use testimonials. In fact, I’d love to hear how you’ve used testimonials in your direct mail packages, ads, television and radio spots, and other marketing materials.

Their idea was to manufacture a 6” x 12” piece of cedar wood. You put your salmon on the wood plank, put the plank into your home barbecue, and—voilà—cedar plank salmon.

When Aldrich met with the seafood buyer for the Fred Meyer stores in Portland, Oregon, he didn’t bother with sales patter. He just said, “I’m here to help you sell more salmon.” Then he let the buyer taste a filet cooked on one of his cedar planks. The reaction? “Wow!”

Aldrich provided some facts and benefits, but the buyer was sold with the first taste. Within a week, Aldrich and Maddocks had lucrative orders from more than 100 Fred Meyer stores. And they sold truckloads of those little cedar planks.

The lesson here is simple. One of the best ways to sell is to let your product sell itself. With a few proven techniques, you simply give your prospects a “taste” and their enthusiasm does the rest.

Two techniques are obvious:

Sample—A printer embosses a sample calendar with my business name, telling me I can order this very item for my clients. A generic perfume company offers two scented samples, one with an expensive name brand and one with a knockoff, challenging my wife to guess which is which. A textile company encloses a sample of a fireproof fabric and a match, daring business buyers to set the bit of cloth on fire.

When you have a good product or service, nothing will sell it as well as simply putting it directly into the hands of your prospects.

Free Trial—This is the single greatest offer in the world. You let prospects try your widget for a time period: 10 days, 20 days, 30 days, whatever. Or you can offer a free issue, shipment, or some unit of sale.

The Free Trial is often tied to a negative option. “Try 3 free issues of Wingnuts Today Magazine. If you like it, you’ll get a full year for just $14.95. If you don’t, just write ‘cancel’ on the bill. But keep the first 3 free issues as our gift to you.”

But samples and trials aren’t the only way to give people a taste of your product or service. The point is to bring products and prospects closer together. And you can do that to a lesser degree right in your direct mail package or ad.

Here are a few ideas:

Teaser Copy—I used this technique in a recent newsletter subscription package for administrative assistants. At the top of the letter, I showed a picture of the newsletter with a list of teasers preceding the offer, such as “How to dress down and still look professional,” “9 steps for motivating a lazy coworker without stressing yourself out,” and “7 ways to be a take-charge employee.” Virtually any information product offer can do the same thing.

Product Photos or Illustrations—Visuals give your prospect a sense of the quality and value of the thing you’re selling. For subscriptions and books, show the front cover. For software, include screen shots of the most powerful features. For industrial or high-tech equipment, provide cutaways with callouts describing prominent features. For less visual offerings, such as financial services, create an offer you can show, such as a special report, brochure, certificate, coupon, etc.

Letter with a Story—While it’s often best to present your offer quickly, a good story can start a letter with a bang while allowing your prospect to experience your product or service second hand. I created a package recently to sell a book on how to buy a house, and the letter told a little story before giving the offer:

I could just kick myself!

A couple years ago, my wife and I bought a new home. After we moved in, our neighbor asked us over for coffee.

What a shock! He had the same house design, but it was full of all the extras we couldn’t afford — like a fireplace, panel doors, tile, oak cabinets. It was stunning.

When I asked how much it cost, he smiled. “Nothing. I knew how to get the extras added on free.” And it was so simple, I could have done it, too. If I had only known the secret!

Testimonials—In addition to adding credibility and supporting your claims, testimonials let people vicariously sample your product or service through the experiences of others. But don’t settle for vacuous verbiage such as “I love it!” The best testimonials include specific details about using the product.

Harry Aldrich and David Maddocks made a fortune by giving prospects a taste of their product. What would happen if you gave your prospect a taste of yours? There’s only one way to find out.

If you’re the typical advertising type, you can get pretty fed up with all those direct response techniques.

How dare anyone suggest that your job is about something as crass as getting people to read a sales pitch or generating profit. After all, you’re a creative genius, right?

Besides, while you’re pretty sure that direct marketers know a thing or two about getting people to respond to ads, they don’t know squat about what’s really important. Winning awards!

I mean, sheesh! They’re so spastic. Always whipping out calculators and crunching numbers … as if numbers have anything to do with advertising!

Let’s take a quick look at a few sure ways to create ads that impress your colleagues, win pointy plastic prizes, and give you a well-deserved break from all that pesky response.

Start with a “concept.” Ads that have something interesting and relevant to say don’t win many awards. That’s because they get people involved in a topic of personal importance, which can lead to people actually reading copy instead of admiring your handiwork.

Remember, form over function. Instead of researching your audience or uncovering benefits, start with a pun, an obscure cultural reference, a witty visual, or some idea that proves you’re ultra creative and which justifies your salary.

Feature stunning photography or artwork. Years ago, I saw an ad for a fax machine with a huge, sepia toned photo of a woman’s head with tubes and wires and gadgets attached. Not a fax machine anywhere. And the copy was reduced to a few tiny lines hidden at the bottom to explain the picture.

Talk about award-winning! Irrelevant visuals and minimal copy are the keys to stifling response and stocking your lobby with those clear resin obelisks!

Design it first and fill in the copy later. Sometimes, a cantankerous client will demand that you bring in an outside writer. But be careful. An experienced copywriter may give you lots of powerful words that send response through the roof. Not only will you have less room for pictures—a design nightmare!—you may be expected to produce results with every ad.

To keep copy, and your writer, under control, begin with a layout. Leave little blank spaces and tell the writer to fill them in. And if your writer is still overwriting and risking response, let your designer edit the copy to fit.

Get fancy with type. This helps when you’re stuck with a bunch of copy that goes on and on about benefits, the offer, a call to action, and other award-losing techniques. You see, you can easily discourage reading with tiny type, unusual typefaces, lots of all-cap text or white text reversed out of black, text over artwork or running in odd directions, and huge blocks of copy in unbroken lines that span an entire page.

In other words, treat the copy as a visual element instead of thoughts and ideas you want to communicate clearly. Who reads all that stuff anyway?

Make your phone number really, really small. Nothing is more gaudy than a big phone number. I mean puleeeeze. It just screams, “Call me now!” And nothing is more off-putting to judges than appearing too eager to conduct business.

So if you can’t talk the client out of eliminating the phone number altogether, set it in small type, buried in the three lines of copy hidden in light gray text waaay down at the bottom of your artwork … er, advertisement.

Use a coupon with an unusual shape. Actually, there is something more gaudy than a big phone number: a conspicuous coupon! Will the shame never end? A square coupon with a dashed border is so old fogy. I mean, it draws attention to your ad, highlights the essence of your offer, and shouts, “Cut me out and send me in!” Again, way too eager.

If you have to include a coupon, try some odd shapes. If you’re selling dog food, shape it like a bone. If you’re selling clothes, shape it like a pair of pants. If you’re selling a drug to treat impotence, shape it like … well, maybe that’s not a good idea.

And by the way, one big advantage of winning pointy plastic awards is that your office will always be neat and tidy … unlike those know-it-all direct response types who are often buried under piles of coupons and order forms from paying customers. Bunch of slobs!

Yes, I know. You’ve probably never heard of him because he’s not as well-known as some Madison Avenue ad executives, but he had a powerful impact on the industry.

He was born in Oklahoma, migrated to Texas, and worked his way up to become head of the Tracy-Locke agency in Dallas, one of the country’s most successful agencies. And he did it by focusing on his clients’ growth rather than on producing clever ads.

He was also an innovator in the area of consumer research long before it became fashionable. And he always looked for the “big idea” to craft sales messages that would trigger consumer response on a gut level.

For me, Hite represents the ideal ad man: smart, down-to-earth, plain-spoken, and enthusiastic, with an indomitable can-do attitude and a laser-like focus on profits. Here’s what he had to say about the craft and business of advertising. Not everything here is about direct marketing, but there is plenty to learn from his wise words.

“Advertising is salesmanship mass produced. No one would bother to use advertising if he could talk to all his prospects face-to-face. But he can’t.”

“Advertising moves people toward goods; merchandising moves goods toward people.”

“If an ad campaign is built around a weak idea—or as is so often the case, no idea at all—I don’t give a damn how good the execution is, it’s going to fail.”

“If you have a good selling idea, your secretary can write your ad for you.”

“Is advertising moral? It is part and parcel of the American free enterprise system… I challenge anybody to show any economic system that has done as much for so many in so short a time.”

“It is not the purpose of the ad or commercial to make the reader or listener say, ‘My what a clever ad.’ It is the purpose of advertising to make the reader say, ‘I believe I’ll buy one when I’m shopping tomorrow.’”

“It takes good clients to make a good advertising agency. Regardless of how much talent an ad agency may have, it is ineffective without good products and services to advertise.”

“Next to Christianity, advertising is the greatest force in the world. And I say that without sacrilege or disrespect. Advertising makes people discontented. It makes them want things they don’t have. Without discontent, there is no progress, no achievement.”

“No agency is better than its account executives.”

“The agency’s account executive should be able to step into the sales manager’s shoes if the sales manager drops dead today.”

“The headline is the most important element of an ad. It must offer a promise to the reader of a believable benefit. And it must be phrased in a way to give it memory value.”

“The ultimate test of a finished account executive is his ability to write a sound marketing plan.”

“There is more money wasted in advertising by underspending than by overspending. Years ago someone said that under spending in advertising is like buying a ticket halfway to Europe. You’ve spent your money but you never get there.”

“There is no such thing as national advertising. All advertising is local and personal. It’s one man or woman reading one newspaper in the kitchen or watching TV in the den.”

“To establish a favorable and well-defined brand personality with the consumer the advertiser must be consistent. You can’t use a comic approach today and a scientist in a white jacket tomorrow without diffusing and damaging your brand personality.”

“To Mrs. Mufoosky, the commercials may seem as long as a whore’s dream. But to the new advertiser who has spent 100 Gs for his first network commercial—he gets a new understanding of a split second. It’s the fastest half minute of his lifetime.”

“There’s no secret formula for advertising success, other than to learn everything you can about the product. Most products have some unique characteristic, and the really great advertising comes right out of the product and says something about the product that no one else can say. Or at least no one else is saying.”

That last quote demonstrates my entire approach to creating direct response ads. Great advertising really does come right out of the product.

Now I know that sounds a bit odd. After all, the word “writing” is in the word “copywriting.” So it’s understandable why you might misunderstand.

But writing and copywriting are two very different things.

When you write a novel or a poem, readers wants great words. They enjoy the rhythm, the imagery, the wordplay. People expect this kind of writing to deliver a certain art and beauty.

When you write websites, ads, white papers, or other business materials, readers simply want information. They don’t care about the artistry. They aren’t looking for beauty. They just want to find out how to solve a problem or meet a need.

This isn’t to say that copywriting can’t be well-crafted. It should be. But it should be crafted in such a way that the words disappear and the meaning shows through. I like to think of good copywriting as if it’s a toy store window, clean, polished, and invisible, providing a clear view of the wondrous goodies inside.

So when copywriters forget that their job is to convey meaning, to connect with needs, to influence and persuade, they focus on the words alone and create, well … crap. When you do this, it’s not that you’re stupid. It’s just that you’re ignorant.

Ignorant of the purpose of your copy. Ignorant of the meaning of your product or service. And ignorant of the perceptions of your readers. In other words, even beautifully-crafted copy can go bad when you pay too much attention to how you say something and ignore the meaning of what you’re saying.

How do you avoid being ignorant?

You must reach into the world other people live in. For example, if you’re a liberal and you’re writing web copy for a conservative website, you have to abandon your own views and immerse yourself in the world view of people who think differently.

You must empathize with the feelings and beliefs of your readers. They say you can’t understand someone until you walk a mile in their shoes. So become a shoe thief, walk, jog, run in as many shoes as you can. You have to feel what others feel to write copy that connects with them.

You must have an interest in everything … and then some. In a recent conversation, a writer told me that he hates projects about things he has no interest in. How can you be a copywriter if you’re not curious about new things? You should know a little about everything.

You must be a quick study. Copywriting is always on a deadline. You have to inhale information and understand it rapidly. You have to be a pregnant woman in the morning and a retired trucker in the afternoon. A senator on Monday, a heart surgeon on Wednesday, and a champion cyclist on Friday.

You must always do your homework. Read everything. Ask questions. Take notes. And when you think you know it all, keep digging. As Edmund Burke said, “Fact are the mind what food is to the body.” (Edmund Burke? Could I have chosen a more arcane reference?)

You must be willing to change your copy to meet a goal. You can’t be a diva. Yes, you spend hours or days or weeks writing and rewriting. But if the copy doesn’t do the job, you have to let go. Top writers are ruthless editors and heartless revisionists.

You must recover from mistakes and learn from them. We all make them. What separates good writers from great writers is that great writers learn from mistakes and become greater. Other writers make excuses and seek to avoid similar situations.

To help myself with this, I use a copywriting cheat sheet, a series of questions to help me start to understand who a client is, what they’re selling, and the people they’re selling to. Depending on your area of specialty, you might want to adapt this sheet to your own needs, adding or deleting questions.

If you’re a copywriter, you’re probably pretty smart. What you have to watch out for is being ignorant.

Q: We’ve tested self-mailers, but they never seem to work. What are we doing wrong?
A: As for what you’re doing wrong, I can’t possibly answer that question without seeing your self-mailers.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the format. I have created successful self-mailers for many clients, mostly for lead generation but also for direct sales. One of my clients uses self-mailers exclusively to sell books and videos to a business market.

A self-mailer works best when your audience is familiar with your company or your product category. The more you have to explain or the more credibility you have to build, the more likely a direct mail package will get a better response.

Q: What do you think of bingo cards?
A: Not much. Their purpose is to generate inquiries, but the quality is usually poor. When I see a bingo card, I circle dozens of numbers on a whim just to get some mail. I think that’s what most people do.

If you want inquiries, offer something free and get a response right off the page. Give your phone number. Include a coupon. Or add a bind-in response card. Bind-ins work like crazy.

Q: My boss wants to test an “invoice” format. It looks official, as if someone has ordered our product and we’re just billing for it. Is this legal?
A: It depends on how far you go to make it look official. You’re walking a thin line. Even if it’s legal, it may not be ethical. I’m seeing more and more of these. Some are just stripped-down, economical solicitations. But some are blatant trickery.

Ask yourself: if you have to dupe people to get them to buy your product, doesn’t that mean there is something wrong with your product? Why not sell something people want instead of snookering them into paying for something they don’t want?

Q: Are there any sure-fire direct mail techniques?
A: Nothing works all the time, but there are some techniques that seem universal in their effectiveness:

• A yes/no offer usually beats offers without a no option.
• A negative option offer usually beats a positive option offer.
• A credit card payment option usually beats cash.
• An offer with a time limit (especially with a specific date) usually beats an offer with no time limit.
• An offer with a free gift usually beats discount offers (especially when the gift closely matches your prospect’s self-interest).
• Sweepstakes usually increase order volume, especially for impulse items (though sweepstakes customers will seldom be loyal).
• Envelope packages usually beat self-mailers.

Q: Should headlines be short or long?
A: A long time ago, I interviewed for a job at a small advertising agency in Las Vegas. The owner considered himself a master advertiser and insisted that headlines should be seven words or shorter, without exception. I told him he was wrong and gave him several good examples of long headlines. He smiled, nodded, and showed me to the door.

I run into this short or long argument all the time with both letters and headlines. And it’s just nonsense. A headline should be as long as it has to be to get the reader interested in reading more. I’ve written headlines as short as one word and as long as 30 words or more. Loosen up. Focus on selling, not on formulas.

Q: Is the word “FREE” overused?
A: No. Offering free stuff is the one and only technique that will never, ever lose its effectiveness.

Q: How often should you update a direct mail package?
A: When it stops working or when you beat it with another package. You can test different offers, inserts, premiums, and other elements, but don’t mess with the basic package unless there’s a good reason.

Q: I hear lots of advice about direct mail success, but where’s the academic research to back it up? Everything I see seems entirely anecdotal.
A: There have been plenty of studies on reading habits but few on direct mail and, for example, how it’s opened, which pieces are read first, etc.

Frankly, I don’t know how you could run an academic study on such things. Unless people are in their natural environment, making decisions with their own money, you just won’t get good results. So the anecdotal evidence cited by most of us is as good as it gets. If there’s a rich guy out there who’s willing to fund an in-the-mail study and share the results with everyone, let me know.

However, in Sell It By Mail, James Lumley provides an overview of how people read and respond to mail. I don’t know how he arrived at this, but it’s an interesting analysis.

He begins by saying that only 15% to 20% of prospects will even consider reading your mail. So you’ve lost around eight out of ten prospects before your envelope even gets opened and its contents read. Those who do read will go through a three-stage decision process:

1. Your prospects scan for relevancy. At this point, you have 100% readership from those who do read your mail, about 20% of all those to whom you have mailed. These prospects will spend around 15 to 20 seconds opening and scanning the package. Assuming you have a good list, these people will have some preexisting interest in your offer.

The hot spots people scan include headlines, subheads, picture captions, signature, postscript, and the acceptance statement on your response device. People are not particularly savvy about direct mail, but they know where to get the scoop on your offer. And if they don’t see something that interests them, your mail goes into the trash.

2. Your prospects read for a reason to say no. If your readers are interested after scanning the hot spots, they will read more closely. At this stage you have 50% to 70% of all readers, which is around 10% to 12% of all those mailed. If they think it’s relevant, they are beginning to think about saying yes, but continue to read until they find a good reason to say no.

They will pay particular attention to charts, diagrams, tables, illustrations, bullet lists, and other summaries in order to get details quickly. In other words, most potential buyers are unsold by something in the package.

3. Potential buyers read to confirm a “yes” decision. By the time people get to body copy, they’re in the yes mode but not yet convinced. They are now looking for confirmation that this is a good decision.

At this point, you have 20 to 25% of all readers remaining or 4% to 6% of all mailed. Then, those who go on to say “yes” will be a fraction of this number, 2% or 1% or whatever your response rate.

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Got a question? Send it to me.

Like radio advertising, print ads are relatively easy to create and place. They offer a simple and elegant platform for selling. And with an endless array of niche publications, you can target prospects better than ever before.

But print advertising can also be expensive. You could buy a house for what you’ll pay for a one-page ad in an AARP publication.

Plus, you generally have to plan and place your ads months in advance. You can’t make last minute changes. So it pays to evaluate your ads carefully before you commit to an advertising schedule.

Here’s a 9-point checklist to help you make sure your ad is good-to-go:

Let your ad “cool off.” You can’t evaluate anything objectively the moment you create it. Set your ad aside and look at it again when you’re fresh. Is it still as good as you thought? Have you forgotten anything? Is there a problem you didn’t see before? You’ll be surprised how clear your vision gets after a few days or weeks.

Use the 5-Second Test. Show the ad to a few people who are not in the advertising business, preferably those to whom the ad is meant to appeal. If they don’t understand it at a glance (in about 5 seconds), it isn’t going to work. Don’t play with body copy. Revise the big things. Make your headline more clear and direct. Be sure the graphics telegraph your message. Highlight your offer.

See how it looks as placed. After all, people won’t see your ad tacked to the art director’s wall. They’ll see it in magazines or newspapers along with lots of other ads and editorial matter. Mock up the ad and insert it into some of your target publications. See how the ad works in context.

Try the Stop-or-Go Test. You should generally speak in the second person, using words such as “you” and “your.” And you should avoid speaking about yourself too much with words such as “we” and “our.” So circle all words referring to your reader with a green pen. Then circle all words referring to you with a red pen. If you see a lot of green, your copy is a go. If you see a lot of red, stop and edit.

Compare your ad to your objective. What do you want the ad to accomplish? Do all the elements of your ad lead to that goal? If something doesn’t belong, delete it. If there’s something missing, add it. And don’t let the designer dictate the message or copy length. Words sell.

Consider one other way to write the ad. Even if you have a successful formula, there are always other approaches that will work. If you keep an open mind, you just might find a better way. Or you may discover improvements you can incorporate. One advantage to writing a second ad after completing the first is that you will feel free to experiment and try something different.

List all the negatives. What’s wrong with the headline and copy? The layout? The illustrations? The coupon? The look or tone? Be brutal and honest. Don’t get attached to particular words or images. After all, this isn’t art. It’s not your personal vision. It’s business. If something needs to be changed, change it.

Ask a consultant for a copy analysis. It gives you a level of objectivity you simply can’t get from staff and employees. And since there are as many ways to write an ad as there are writers, you’re sure to get some good ideas. Even one small improvement can mean the difference between success and failure.

Make corporate ads work. If you’re going to all the trouble and expense of “branding” your company or products, why not distribute some literature and give your salespeople some leads at the same time? Offer a free fact kit, video, brochure, report, or anything to generate a response. This doesn’t hurt your image. It shows that you want to make a connection and that you want to help.

Here’s a strategy I’ve developed over the years that can point you in the right direction.

Simply analyze your control and mentally toss it into one of three “buckets”: Excellent, Good, or Bad.

This will determine whether you should come up with a completely new idea, tinker with your existing control, or trash everything and start from scratch.

Beat an Excellent Control with a Revolutionary Approach

An excellent control is one that makes the right offer, uses the right format, and deftly employs all the right selling techniques. From a purely creative standpoint, it delivers a high-quality message. Most importantly, the numbers indicate it gets a superior response when mailed to the right lists or placed in the right media.

The key characteristic for excellence is that the control has proven itself a consistent winner in head-to-head tests. Merely being used for a long period doesn’t count because without testing, you don’t know if it’s a true winner. The longer a control has held its ground, the better it is.

Not too many direct mail pieces or ads fall into this category. And beating an excellent control is difficult. Given its particular approach, the control is doing just about all it can do, so making incremental changes probably won’t have a significant effect. Your best bet is to test a completely different approach. A radically different offer. A totally different format. You’re looking for a breakthrough, so you need fresh ideas. The more different, the better.

The problem is that when you have a longtime winner, there’s a natural tendency to modify new test ideas to conform to the old pattern. But there’s no point in producing variations of an excellent control that get about the same response. The Revolutionary Approach only works if you allow yourself to explore new territory and take chances.

Beat a Good Control with an Evolutionary Approach

A good control is just that, good. It works. But perhaps you believe it could do better. The numbers indicate acceptable performance, though it may occasionally get beat. There may be a few basic flaws or it may not take full advantage of certain proven techniques. Perhaps it’s a solid performer that’s starting to fatigue. Or its performance may be so close to that of other controls that it cannot be considered truly superior. It may even be a longstanding producer but just hasn’t been tested head-to-head to prove its superiority.

Most controls will fall into this category. Beating a good control isn’t always easy, but since there’s room for improvement, you don’t have to come up with a radically different idea or take expensive risks. Your approach should be to start with what you have and look for ways to make it better. And better could mean better response or less cost, either of which will mean more profit.

Evolution is about making small changes that incrementally improve your control. You add something. Subtract something. Make something bigger or smaller. Beef up the benefits. Make a more attractive offer. Strengthen the guarantee. Encourage more involvement. Test personalization. Make response easier. Whatever.

This is a safe and satisfying approach because you know you’re building on something that works. The only thing to remember is not to stray too far from the original. Whatever is working should keep working. You just want the same basic approach to work better or cheaper.

Beat a Bad Control with a Back-to-Basics Approach

No one wants his control to be in this category, but it’s true for a lot of controls. And I use the term “control” loosely because a bad control is one that is not performing well. And that means it’s not really a control at all. Most likely, testing has been sloppy. Or everything that has been tested has performed poorly, and the control is merely a little less poor than everything else. Or there’s been no testing at all.

What you’ll see here are clear violations of basic direct response principles, poor use or total lack of proven techniques, a copycat approach that’s inappropriate, weak offers, anemic guarantees if any, a lack of clarity and directness, and so on.

In this situation, there’s no point in trying to evolve something that isn’t working. And there’s also no point in trying new ideas when you don’t have a solid response history against which to measure results. So the only sensible thing to do is get back to basics. This means keeping things simple and straightforward. Emulate the success of others. Choose a basic format. Make a standard offer. Use proven techniques. Only when you have found what I call your “success groove” should you try anything remotely creative.