15 Sales Letter Building Blocks

1. The pre-head

The pre-head is also sometimes referred to as the eyebrow. I guess that assumes that you think of a sales letter as a face. Because it’s a sentence fragment usually found at the top left of the sales letter, it may look a bit like an eyebrow.

It might look something like this: “Attention, Pug Owners!” Now, if you’re the owner of a dog that belongs to the pug group, that’s going to grab your attention quickly.

How do I know? Because I am a proud pug owner, and I can tell you that anytime I see something that’s directed to pug owners, it’s got my attention. I want to know: What do you have for me? What might I be able to spend my money on for my dog?

That’s how the pre-head works. It is a short sentence fragment designed to grab the reader’s initial attention. It works very well regardless of what your product might be.

If you have a product that’s designed to help people learn to play guitar, the pre-head could simply be: “Attention, wannabe guitar students!”

Or, if you have a product that’s targeted toward people learning to fly airplanes, it could be: “Attention, student pilots!” Or, if your product is for parents whose children suffer from ADHD, it could be: “Attention, parents of ADHD kids!” I think you see the principle involved here.

You’re targeting the prime prospect for your message and you’re qualifying him or her. You’re saying, in essence, “Do you belong to this group? If you do, this message is for you. Pay attention!” That’s what the pre-head is about.

2. The headline

The headline is the ad for the rest of the ad. Its job is to make the reader want to keep on reading—specifically, to get him or her to read the next sentence. That’s all your headline has to do.

Studies show that you have about two seconds to grab the attention of people who are coming to your copy for the first time. That’s how long it’s going to take them to decide whether or not they’re going to keep on reading. In many cases, they’re going to click the button and they’ll be gone.

So you’ve got to do your job well in the headline and really grab their attention and get their focus. You will frequently see the headline in larger type and sometimes in a different color (red is used most often). This truly is the ad for the rest of the ad. The headline is something you need to spend a lot of time working on.

What exactly do I mean by “ad”? Well, the kinds of Web sites that we’re writing are Web sites that sell. Often they’re referred to as a “sales letter” Web site, and what that means is that it’s written in letter format as if it were a letter on paper. Often it’s on one long, scrolling Web page.

This is the primary tool of the online marketer, because it’s been pretty much proven to be the most effective tool. I refer to that as an ad, and I also refer to an e-mail that’s trying to make a sale as an ad, and I also refer to a Google AdWords ad as an ad. Whatever copy you’re writing, for the purposes of our discussion in this book, is an ad.

Each of those items that I just mentioned—the e-mail, the sales letter, AdWords—has a headline, so the principles apply, even though the execution may be somewhat different. You can compare this formula to just about any sales letter you encounter online, and I think you’re going to see that they all follow it pretty much to the letter.

3. The deck copy

Some people call this the subhead, but I think that’s inaccurate because we have another block in our stack of building blocks that we’re going to call a subhead. So I want to distinguish that from the deck copy, which comes right underneath the headline.

The deck copy will be a block of type that is usually in black bold type and set apart from the rest of the text. It comes between the headline and the beginning of the letter.

The job of the deck copy is to reinforce the impact of the idea proposed in the headline and to also arouse more curiosity.

4. The body

This is the bulk of your text. This comprises most of your sales letter. It also contains all the other elements that we’re about to list. You can almost look at these top four as the main elements of the letter and the remaining parts as sub-elements that fall within the body.

Before we move on with the list, let me say a word or two about how to do the research necessary to write your ad. The first thing I would do is a simple Google search on your product and also on your target market (example: search “pug” as well as “pug owner,” “pug lover,” “pug training,” etc.). Try to form in your mind what your market is looking for and start searching for keywords that they might use In other words, pretend you’re a pug owner wanting to find out what’s available for your pooch.

Another way to do it is to think about the generic terms used for the product category that you’re working with and take those generic terms and combine them with the word forum. That’s a great way to find places where people are discussing your topic online. You can just lurk, read the threads in the discussion forums, and see what people are talking about and what topics keep coming up over and over again.

If you find teleseminars hosted in the market that you’re writing copy for, get on those calls and listen to the questions that are asked. If they’re “real-world” seminars, go to those seminars and talk to people who are there—not about your product but about their problems.

Especially attend the question-and-answer sessions at real-world seminars. Listen to the questions that people are asking.

There’s a somewhat famous story about Armand Morin—who is a huge success in Internet marketing—attending one of his first seminars.

He was taking notes but not very many notes. Someone with him asked, “Armand, aren’t you getting much out of this?”

He said, “It’s great! I’m getting a lot out of this!”

His friend said, “But you’re not taking very many notes.”

He said, “Oh, I’m just writing down the questions that people are asking. That’s how I’m going to know what products to create.”

5. Subheads

These are smaller headlines that separate the major sections of your sales letter. I refer to them as the “bucket brigade” of your copy.

In the olden days before there were automobiles and big red fire trucks, there was the bucket brigade. This was simply a group of people who would run down to the river or the lake and form a line between the water and the burning building. They would stand within arm’s reach of one another, passing the buckets back and forth, refilling with water and dousing the fire.

The person nearest the water would scoop up a bucket of water and hand it to the next person in line, and it would get passed along until it reached the burning building. Then the bucket would be returned to be re-filled. That’s how they would put the fire out.

I’d like to take credit for inventing the bucket brigade theory of copy … but I can’t. I don’t know if David Garfinkel is the person who originated that terminology or not, but he’s who I heard it from first.

The subheads act like your own bucket brigade. They lead your reader through the body of your copy to get the gist of your message.

There are three things that prospects who read your copy never do at first
(notice he said “at first”; it’s the job of your copy to change that!).

They never read anything at first; they never believe anything at first; and they never do anything at first.
The explanation of what that means is simple. At first they’re not going to read your letter.
At first they’re going to glance at your headline and decide whether you’re getting any more of their attention.
If you hold their attention, then there are three things they’re going to do next.
They’re going to “skim, scroll and scan”.
They’re going to skim through your letter and see if there’s anything of interest to them.
They’re going to skim your subheads to get the gist of your story.

They’re going to scroll down your letter as they skim, and they’re going to scan it for things that they are interested in. If you can capture their attention while they’re doing this, you’ve overcome the first thing they never do. Remember, they never read anything at first. If, and only if, you’ve captured their attention during this process of “skim, scroll and scan” with your powerful headline and persuasive subheads, they will go back to the top of your letter and begin to read.

The second thing people never do is they never believe anything at first. So now that they’re reading, the job of your copy becomes to overcome their disbelief and skepticism and tell them the story they wanted to hear from the beginning.

I had a conversation with somebody today, talking about the difference between manipulation and persuasion. In my book, manipulation is using tricks to convince people to do things they didn’t want to do in the first place, things that are not in their best interest.

Persuasion, on the other hand, is using tactics to persuade people to do something that is in their best interest and that they wanted to do to start with.

Think about your own experience when you’re online and searching for something, perhaps a copywriting course. At first, you’re going to
“skim, scroll and scan” the Web site and decide if this is for you. When you see there are some things that interest you, you stop and begin reading.

What you really want is to be convinced that this copywriting course will answer your questions and provide you with the ability to make more sales.

That’s what your prospects want as well. That’s the difference between manipulating them and persuading them. If you can get past the fears that cause them to object to doing what you ask them to do, then you can move them to the next of those three things that people never do at first, which is people never do anything. They never buy anything at first, but if you’ve overcome the first two, overcoming the third is often just a matter of asking, so the subheads serve as the bucket brigade that moves that process along.

6. The lead

This is the beginning of the body of the sales letter. This is the part that comes after “Dear Friend.” It can be one paragraph, two, or several.

Sometimes it consists of a simple “if, then” statement; sometimes it consists of a story that is intended to persuade you to think in a certain way.

The lead sets the criteria for whom the letter is intended and what they stand to gain by reading it. Think of the classic lead, which goes something like this: “If you’ve struggled to lose weight, if you’ve tried every diet imaginable, if you’ve taken every pill, if you’ve tried exercise routines, machines and personal coaches and you still haven’t taken the weight off; then you’re about to read the letter you’ve been waiting for all your life. Here’s why:”

That’s a lead. Does it do what we just talked about? Does it set the criteria for the intended reader? Does it tell you what you stand to gain by reading the letter? Apparently it’s going to tell you how to lose the weight even if you’ve tried all this other stuff that never worked. It doesn’t say, “The reason you won’t lose the weight is because you won’t stop eating!”, but that’s a different discussion.

7. Rapport

What we mean by rapport is relationship building. People like three kinds of people: one, those who are like themselves; two, those who are like the way they would like to be; and three, those who like them back. Those are the keys to building rapport. Rapport is building your relationship, a friendly relationship that makes a person feel understood and valued.

Rapport demonstrates that you know the reader’s pain, that you understand his or her problems, and that you have some common experiences that you can share that proves you understand his or her pain.

Dr. Stephen Covey’s book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People says that one of those habits is to seek first to understand then to be understood.

That’s what building rapport is all about. This should not be a manipulative process. It can be used for those purposes; however, I hope that you won’t.

All these techniques that we discuss, these psychological tactics, are powerful motivators of human behavior. I hope you understand that when I tell you that I want you to promise to only use them for good purposes, I mean it. These very tactics that we use in writing good sales copy, persuasive sales copy, can also be used to manipulate other people to do things that are not in their best interest.

I refuse to use these tactics that way, and it is my hope that you will as well. Rapport building is a powe