Profitable Sales Emails, Ads, and Letters

Everybody wants to make money. In fact, most people would like to hit upon something that makes them fabulously rich! And seemingly, one of the easiest roads to the fulfillment of these dreams of wealth is mail order or within the professional circles of the business, direct mail selling.

The only thing is, hardly anyone gives much real thought to the basic ingredient of selling by mail – the writing of profitable classified ads. If your mail order business is to succeed, then you must acquire the expertise of writing classified ads that sell your product or service!

So what makes a classified ad good or bad? First of all, it must appeal to the reader, and as such, it must say exactly what you want it to say. Secondly, it has to say what it says in the least possible number of words in order to keep your operating costs within your budget. And thirdly, it has to produce the desired results whether inquiries or sales.

Everybody wants to make money. In fact, most people would like to hit upon something that makes them fabulously rich! And seemingly, one of the easiest roads to the fulfillment of these dreams of wealth is mail order or within the professional circles of the business, direct mail selling.

The only thing is, hardly anyone gives much real thought to the basic ingredient of selling by mail – the writing of profitable classified ads. If your mail order business is to succeed, then you must acquire the expertise of writing classified ads that sell your product or service!

So what makes a classified ad good or bad? First of all, it must appeal to the reader, and as such, it must say exactly what you want it to say. Secondly, it has to say what it says in the least possible number of words in order to keep your operating costs within your budget. And thirdly, it has to produce the desired results whether inquiries or sales.

Grabbing the reader’s attention is your first objective. You must assume the reader is ‘scanning’ the page on which your ad appears in the company of two or three hundred classified ads. Therefore, there has to be something about your ad that causes them to stop scanning and look at yours! So, the first two or three words of your ad are of the utmost importance and deserve your careful consideration. Most surveys show that words or phrases that quickly involve the reader tend to be the best attention-grabbers. Such words as: FREE… WIN… NEW….

Whatever words you use as attention-grabbers, to start your ads, you should bear in mind that they’ll be competing with similar attention-grabbers of the other ads on the same page. Therefore, in addition to your lead works, your ad must quickly go on to promise or state further benefits to the reader. In other words, your ad might read something like this: MAKE BIG MONEY! Easy & Simple. We show you how!

In the language of professional copywriters, you’ve grabbed the attention of your prospect, and interested them with something that even they can do.

The next rule of good classified copywriting has to do with the arousal of the reader’s desire to get in on your offer. In a great many instances, this rule is by-passed, and it appears, this is the real reason that an ad doesn’t pull according to the expectations of the advertiser.

This about it – you’ve got your reader’s attention; you’ve told them it’s easy and simple; and you’re about to ask them to do something. Unless they take the time to further ‘want your offer’, your ad is going to only half turn them on. They’ll compare your ad with the others that have grabbed their attention and finally decide upon the one that interests them the most.

What I’m saying is that here is the place for you to inset that magic word ‘guaranteed’ or some other such word or phrase. So now, we’ve got an ad that reads: MAKE BIG MONEY! Easy & Simple. Guaranteed!

Now the reader is turned on, and in their mind they can’t lose. You’re ready to ask for their money. This is the ‘demand for action’ part of your ad. This is the part where you want to use such words as Limited offer – Act now! Write today! Only and/or Just.

Putting it all together, then, your ad might read something like this: MAKE BIG MONEY! Easy & Simple. Guaranteed! Limited offer. Send $20.00 to:

These are the ingredients of any good classified ad – Attention – Interest – Desire – Action. Without these four ingredients skillfully integrated into your ad, chances are your ad will just ‘lie there’ and not do anything but cost you money. What I have just shown you is a basic classified ad. Although such an ad could be placed in any leading publication and would pull a good response, it’s known as a ‘blind ad’ and would pull inquiries and responses from a whole spectrum of people reading the publication in which it appeared. In other words, from as many ‘time-wasters’ as from the bona fide buyers.

So I will try to give you an example of the kind of classified ad you might want to use, say to sell a new book. Using all the rules of basic advertising copywriting, and stating exactly what my product is, the ad reads as follows:

MONEYMAKER’S SECRETS! How to Write Winning Classified Ads. Simple & easy to learn – should double or triple your responses. Rush $20.00 to ABC Sales, 10 Main, Anytown, NSW, 2000.

The point I’m trying to make is that:

• You’ve got to grab the reader’s attention.
• You’ve got to interest them with something that appeals to them.
• You’ve got to further stimulate them with something (catch phrase) that makes them desire the product or service.
• You need to demand that they act immediately.

There’s no point in being tricky or clever. Just adhere to the basics and your profits will increase accordingly. One of the best ways of learning to write good classified ads is to study the classifieds – try to figure out exactly what they’re attempting to sell – and then practice rewriting each ad according to the rules I’ve just given you. Whenever you sit down to write a classified, always write it all out – write down everything you want to say – and then go back over it, crossing out words and refining your phraseology.

The final ingredient of your classified ad is of course, your name and address to which the reader is to respond – where they are to send their money or write for further information.

Generally speaking, readers respond more often to ads that include a name than those showing just initials or an address only. However, because advertising costs are based upon the number of words or the amount of space your ad uses, the use of some names in classified ads could become quite expensive. If I were to ask my ad respondents to write to or send their money to One-day Workshops Affordable Business Education, my advertising costs would be prohibitive. Thus I shorten my business name to One-day Workshops. The point here is to think relative to the placement costs of your ad, and to shorten excessively long names.

The same holds true when listing your post office box number. Shorten it to just plain Box 40, or in the case of a rural delivery, shorten it to just RMB. The important thing is to know the rules of profitable classified ad writing, and to follow them. Hold your costs in line.

Now you know the basics…. The rest is up to you.