http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2022/12/176-web-netsol-lttr.html
#176 Blog Post - Tuesday, December 13, 2020
Posted by Denny Hatch
The Textbook Example of a CEO's
eLetter That Is Awful to Read
Here Is David L. Brown's
Letter Retyped for Readability
Dear Loyal Customer,
I have great news for you! Network
Solutions is now a Web.com company, and with that everything just got easier.
Not only will you still have access to
the Network Solutions products and services you currently enjoy but you will
now be able to take advantage of Web.com's acclaimed Build-it-for-Me products
too! Web.com is focused on helping small businesses succeed online with our broad
range of Build-it-for-Me services. So, what do we mean by that? Each website we
design, Facebook page we launch or online marketing campaign we build is
customize-to meet your specific needs, starting with an in-depth interview with
you. We want to understand what makes your business tick in order to build the
most powerful web presence for you. You say it, and we build it.
Plus, our designers and copywriters are
experts in optimizing for Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Facebook and many others. We
make sure your business gets found in the places where you customers are
searching, whether it's a site we've built for you or a site you already have. Over
the coming weeks, you'll be introduced to the many ways in which Web.com can
offer its support and expertise.
Still prefer to do it yourself? You'll
continue to enjoy the same portfolios of products from Network Solutions that
you do today, supported 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by our customer service
teams.
Network Solutions is excited to offer
this expanded portfolio, and Web.com is excited to serve you. You say it. We
build it. It's as easy as Web.com!
Sincerely,
/s/ David L. Brown
David L. Brown
CEO
Web.com
This email was sent from a notification-only
address. Please do not reply to this message. For Network Solutions customer
service inquiries, please visit
http://www.networksolutions.com/help/index.jsp
The Backstory of David L. Brown's E-letter to Me
On August 3, 2011, Web.com acquired Network Solutions for $405 million plus stock. I was (and am) a Network Solutions customer having used them to acquire several domains.
Shortly thereafter I received the above letter from David L. Brown, head honcho of Web.com. I read it and was about to click on the trash can icon.
I read it again and decided it broke so many rules of copywriting it deserves a prominent place in the hierarchy (lowerarchy?) of direct marketing mediocrity. I filed it for future use.
About Sending a Letter
The entire purpose of contacting someone at home or in the workplace—either via e-mail, direct mail, FedEx or telemarketing—is to generate a response.
If you get no response, you haven't a clue whether anybody read your message. Whereupon the entire effort was a waste of time and money.
Here's David L. Brown's Preposterous P.S.
This email was sent from a notification-only
address. Please do not reply to this message. For Network Solutions customer
service inquiries, please visit
https://www.networksolutions.com/help/index.jsp
The Salutation
David L. Brown, CEO of web.com, sent the above letter to my email address. His computers know my name. Yet his salutation is the lazy and insulting, "Dear Loyal Customer."
IMO the correct salutation to a stranger is: "Dear Denny Hatch."
Not "Dear Denny." (We've never met. Friends and family call me "Denny.")
Not "Dear Mr. Hatch." (It's dumb to assume gender these days. I know of a woman named Sidney and well remember the Johnny Cash song, "A Boy Named Sue.")
Were I known to be an M.D. or Ph.D., "Dear Dr. Hatch," would be correct.
The Lede
• "The first 10 words are more
important than the next ten thousand."
—Elmer "Sizzle" Wheeler.
Here are David L. Brown's first 16 words:
Dear Loyal Customer,
I have great news for
you! Network Solutions is now a Web.com company...
The lede of a letter should be an instant stopper that drives you to keep on reading. As founder of the newsletter, WHO'S MAILING WHAT! for over 30 years I read roughly 1800 mailings a month in 249 categories. Below is my favorite lede for the four-page masterpiece written by a Franciscan Priest in 1972.
Friday, 10:40 PM
Dear Friend,
A lady should never get this dirty, she said.
She stood
there with a quiet, proud dignity. She was incomparably dirty -- her face
and hands smeared, her clothes torn and soiled. The lady was 11.
—Fr. Bruce Ritter, Covenant House
Ritter's 4-page, typewriter font letter launched
the New York City runaway children's shelter that mushroomed into 34 free, safe
refuges in cities across six countries that provide food, beds and counseling
for 1.5 million young people a year, victims in the streets of homelessness and
trafficking. The "dirty lady" letter was the control for many years.
"Normally the best lede paragraph
for your letter is buried somewhere in the middle of your first draft copy."
—Pat Friesen
David L. Brown's eMail: Visually Cold and Uninviting
Imagine the above letter appearing on your computer screen, iPad or iPhone. It's a forbidding 295-word gray wall of type.
"Avoid gray
walls of type."
—David Ogilvy
"Short words! Short sentences! Short
paragraphs!"
—Andrew J. Byrne
"Type
smaller than 9-point is difficult for most people to read."
—David Ogilvy
Where's David L. Brown's Headline?
"The wickedest
of all sins is to run an advertisement without a headline."
—David Ogilvy
"The headline
selects the reader."
—Axel Andersson
"The headline is
the ticket on the meat. Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the
kind of product you are advertising."
—David
Ogilvy
"The headline is
the hot pants on the hooker."
—Bill Jayme
On a direct mail letter, the headline can be a powerful teaser on the outside carrier envelope. Or it can be a short boldface attention-getter or a Johnson Box at the top of the letter.
In email, the headline can be the subject line or an old-fashioned boldface headline atop the message.
David Brown's
headline/subject line is ho-hum:
A message from CEO David L. Brown from Network
Solutions to you
Harry Walsh: About the Direct Marketing Letter
"The tone of a good letter is as direct and personal as the writer’s skill can make it. Even though it may go to millions of people, it never orates to a crowd, but rather murmurs into a single ear. It’s a message from one letter writer to one letter reader.
"Tell a story if possible. Everybody
loves a good story, be it about Peter Rabbit or King Lear. And the direct response
letter, with its unique person-to-person format—is the perfect vehicle for a
story. Stories get read. The letter I
wrote to launch the Cousteau Society twenty-some years ago has survived
hundreds of tests against it. When I last heard, it was still being mailed in
some form or other. The original of this direct mail Methuselah started out
with this lede: 'A friend once told me a curious story I would like to share
with you...' "
—Harry Walsh
Malcolm Decker: About the Letter
"The letter is itself is the pen-and-ink embodiment of a salesperson who is speaking personally and directly to the prospect on a one-to-one basis. The letter is the most powerful and persuasive selling force in direct marketing, once the product, price and offer are set. The writer creates the salesman, usually from whole cloth, and you must be certain that this sales representative is truly representative of your product or service as well as of your company.
"The letter is likely to be the only 'person' your market will ever meet—at least on the front end of the sale—so don’t make him highbrow if your market is lowbrow and vice versa.
"Make sure he speaks your prospect's language. If he’s a Tiffany salesman, he writes in one style; if he’s a grapefruit or pecan farmer or a beef grower, he writes differently (‘Cause he talks diffrunt.) I develop as clear a profile of my prospect as the available research offers and then try to match it up with someone I know and 'put him in a chair' across from me. Then I write to him more or less conversationally.
"The salesperson in the letter is doing the job he obviously loves and is good at. He knows the product inside and out and is totally confident in and at ease with its values and benefits—even its inconsequential shortcomings—and wants to get the prospect in on a good thing. Here is someone with a sense of rhythm, timing, dramatic effect and possibly even humor—getting attention... piquing curiosity... holding interest... engaging rationally... anticipating and assuaging doubts... and ultimate winning the confidence (and the signature on the order) of the prospect. The personal technique is seen most clearly in long letters.
"How long should a letter be? The best-known answer to that age-old question is: 'As long as it has to be.' That doesn’t tell you much, but perhaps it suggests two important criteria: economy and—above all—efficiency. As a sometime angler, I get a better sense of length by remembering a fishing trip to Maine when we used dry flies with barbless hooks. Unless you kept up the tension all the way to the net, you lost the trout. Try it. You should feel the same sort of tension when you write and when you read a letter. If not... reel in the slack.
"Whatever your marketing stance, a good designer can help you express it, and that helps your reader identify you. The objective is individuation—to stand out in the increasingly competitive marketplace of the mailbox—so that when it comes time to toss the me-too mail, yours won’t be part of it.
"The letter MUST be quickly scannable: that is, a reader should get the gist of the proposition simply by reading the (1) eyebrow, (2) lede paragraph, (3) crossheads, (4) wrap-up, (5) P.S. If not, send it back for surgery, because without a strongly integrated skeleton, the body of the argument will slump.
"The letter MUST be easy on the eyes, open, inviting and varying in its texture—with normal margins... individual paragraphs with line space between... at least one crosshead or subhead per page (two per page for long letters)... occasional variation in paragraph width... a quotation, underlined sentence or phrase... numbers or bullets to list benefits... and/or other bits of “color” to maintain reader interest by promising visual variety. The longer the letter, the more important these techniques.
"Don't overlook the color, size and vitality of your signature. Your signature is your handshake. Ugly is good. A neat, tidy computer-generated signature font kills believability."
"Make sure the right person signs the letter. (e.g., NOT Joan Pendergraft, Executive Assistant to Sid Pulitzer. Obviously Joan did not write the letter, so believability goes out the window.)"
"The letter
can have handwritten notations in the margins, a scrawled P.S or underlining
for emphasis. Make sure the handwritten notations match the handwriting of the
signature."
—Malcolm
Decker
“Of all the formats used in direct mail, none has more power
to generate action than the letter.”
—Dick Hodgson
Christian Holtz: Characters per Line
"Having the right amount of characters on each line is key to thereadability of your text. It shouldn’t merely be your design that dictates the width of your text, it should also be a matter of legibility. . .
"In
order to avoid the drawbacks of too long and too short lines,but still
energize your readers and keep them engaged, we suggest
keeping it within the range of 50-75 characters per line."
—Christian
Holtz, Baymard Institute
Walter Weintz: Variations of Direct Marketing
Copy
"There are three kinds of copy: you copy; me copy; and
it copy.
"You copy is the most important. It is found in the letter where the writer is talking intimately to you, the reader about you. Your wants, your loves, your wishes, your salvation.
“It is found in the circular or brochure where it—the product or service being sold is described and pictured.
"Me copy turns up in two places. First of all, you’ll find me on the order form, which is a reprise of the offer in the reader’s own voice. ('Yes, please send me, the product and charge my Visa. I understand that if at any time I should become dissatisfied...'
The other occurrence is in testimonials or lift letters. ('Frankly, I’m puzzled...' or 'I tried this product and I am a true believer. Here’s my story'...)
"The beauty of direct mail and email is
that it enables the salesperson to use all parts of the English language, plus
illustrations, graphs, charts and any other bells and whistles to capture
attention and engage a reader."
—Walter Weintz
Note: There ain't no we copy in direct marketing. Yet David L. Brown uses we seven times in his letter. We is not I. We is not a real person writing the letter. We is the impersonal voice of everyone in the corporation—all those wimps hiding out because they fear being mentioned by name.
The I's Have It.
“The most important word in direct copy is not ‘you’ —
as many of the textbooks would have it—but 'I'. What makes a letter seem
‘personal’ is not seeing your own name printed dozens of times across the page,
or even being battered to death with a never ending attack of ‘you’s.’ It is,
rather, the sense that one gets of being in the presence of the writer… that a
real person sat down and wrote you a real letter
—Richard Armstrong
"A letter is NOT a monolithic corporation addressing a computer-generated market profile; it is not impersonal in tone, form or content.
"A letter is NOT a letterhead on top and a signature on the bottom with the most cherished sales pitch of the VP marketing sandwiched in between.
"Direct marketing is not advertising in an
envelope."
—Bob Hacker
The 2 Hotspots in Your Email Inbox:
• The From line: If the sender's name or organization is not recognizeable, chances are an immediate delete.
• The Subject line: If the msessage doesn't immediately
grab attention, chances are an immediate delete.
• Try to limit your subject line to no more than 9 words and 60 characters.
• Many copywriters spend as much time on the subject line/headline as they do on the messages.
• When I send an important email, I always test it by sending it to myself. I wait until a number of emails have come in and then see how my subject line compares to the others. If it doesn't pop, it's back to the drawing board.
The 12 Most Powerful and Evocative words in the English Language:
You — Save —
Money — Easy — Guarantee — Health — Results — New — Love — Discovery — Proven —Safety
—Goodman Ace
"FREE is
a magic word."
—Dick Benson
The 7 Key Copy Drivers—the Emotional Hot Buttons That Make People Act:
Fear - Greed
- Guilt - Anger - Exclusivity -
Salvation - Flattery
—Axel
Andersson, Bob Hacker, Denny Hatch
Takeaways to Consider
• The entire purpose of direct mail or email, as well as advertisements and telemarketing calls—is to change behavior: get a reply, an order, a payment or a donation.
• It's been a long-held tenet of mine that corporate CEOs should run their correspondence and speeches past the eyes of an experienced copywriter before clicking SEND.
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Word Count: 2472
