| The World's Greatest Sales Letter |
© 2003 Bruno Carlson
It all started innocently enough.
One day I got one of those marketing letters in my email
box. You know, the one where you send 5 dollars to each
person on the list and then everybody's supposed to send
money back to you. I'd never even given any of those kinds
of emails a second look before, but this one got my attention.
It was the sales letter. My stars, it was a thing of beauty to
behold! All done up in brilliant colors in HTML. Wow! And saying
and doing all the right things with bullet lists of benefits and
plenty of testimonials. If all those people say it worked for them
then certainly it will work for me! What's this, this one
guy says in his testimonial that he's a medical doctor but
it's signed Joe Smith, Ph.D.? Not to worry! It's just a typo...
And the brilliance of the idea. Wow! MLM without any of the
work!
Somebody had carefully crafted that letter down to the finest
detail just to hook me. And it worked. Boy did it. I was a goner.
The next thing you know I had sent off the 5 bucks to each of
the people on the list. I anxiously awaited the special reports
they would send back so I could start sending out my own
copies of the letter (I had never even heard of "spam" and the
people in the reports would tell me that "bulk emailing" was
perfectly legitimate).
Once I got the reports I did EXACTLY as they said to do. I knew
nothing at all about any of this Web marketing stuff and this guy
in the report sounded like a real heavy-duty expert to my untrained
ear. Lots of free classified ads and lots of bulk mail, he said.
So I put out a ton of free classified ads in the places the report
said to. And I bought a million emails from some service. That's
right, a million! As one not-so-famous guy once said, "When you
go on a spree, go the whole hog plus postage."
Yes, I went for it. Imagine sending out a million emails! It boggled
my puny mind. If only 10% of those people answer...
So out went that exact same letter that had hooked me, but with
my name now proudly emblazoned at the top of the list. To a million
people. And then the waiting started...
I waited... And waited... I told my wife that it would take a few weeks,
and then the money would just start filling up our mailbox, like
with that teenaged kid in the letter. She looked at me with amused
skepticism written all over her face, but didn't say anything. Which
was nice of her.
So I waited... And waited... And waited some more. Nothing. Not one
single solitary reply.
I'd been had. But it had seemed like such a sure thing! Surely at least
a few of those people would answer. All those ads... And a million emails...
A million is a huge amount, after all. And didn't I fall for that letter?
How could others not fall for it? It was the world's greatest sales letter.
And so closed the first episode in my marketing life. That was over a year
ago, but I still comfort myself (my wife just looks at me funny and shakes
her head) by telling myself that those million emails never really went
out. You see, it was the world's greatest sales letter...
==================================
Online home biz and writing coach
Bruno Carlson would just love to
have you join him for weekly tips,
hints, articles and humor. Subscribe
to BrunoMarketing News today at
http://www.BrunoBiz.com and receive
three great bonuses.
===================================
|
Back to Articles Index
|
|
 |
|
