Four Direct Marketing Style Sales Letter Designs

Quickie overview…

Creating a new site from scratch can be a daunting task. There are two schools of thought that can often dominate and inspire the development process, and those two schools often come from…

- Web design “specialists”, who tell you that you need an eye-catching design, the latest Flash animations, and something “cool” for your prospects to connect with.

- Copycat marketers. They see what everyone else has in place, and model their own sites based on what they see. This is why in the marketing sector, you’ll sites that look nigh-on identical to each other. The same designs, pages, fonts, formatting, etc.

Here’s the good news. I’ve tried virtually every type of website design imaginable — from mini-site designs, to full-blown corporate websites. Yet, those sites that made me the most money all shared the following characteristics.

* They were all designed within 15 minutes, from scratch!
* No web designers were used at any stage during the design process
* I spent ZERO dollars on the research, development and implementation

And most startling of all…
* I didn’t use ANY graphics on the site at all - except for “direct design elements”, such as a signature, arrows and testimonial pictures. NO headers, footers or graphics were included!

In fact, when testing these sites, I often found that they pulled up to 300% more sales than those with graphics. Simply “going back to basics”, presented a ticket to immediately increasing profit!

Why did this work…?

In testing my sites, here’s why I feel these “simpler designs” work better than anything else…

- Marketing is all about communicating a message. The best way to do that, is to strip away the fuzz and confusion, and present the RAW message.

Most sites are designed with visual appeal in mind… but that’s not always the best route to seducing your prospect. Your copy will say more than ANY image could.

- It’s based on the very premises Direct Marketing is based upon. When you rip open your mail in the morning, I’m guessing you get at least 1-3 pieces of Direct Mail in the post, right? Think how many years this has occurred. How many infomercial’s you’ve watched. Your prospects have become accustomed to get “excited” by certain things.

- Ignorance breeds ignorance. The designs you’re told that “work”, will probably have been propagated by people who have never really stopped to think about WHY they work, or, if they even work at all. They just copy the design, make a few sales, and it never occurs to them that they could, in fact, probably be doing things a lot better.

So, I tested my theories, and came up with certain designs that I thought may work.

The results of simple designs…

The very site that initially sold this product, was based on one of these designs. You’ll find it included below. It’s responsible for generating some of the most insane conversions I’ve ever seen in this industry. Every visitor was worth an astonishing $14.22 each!

I’ve done it with many products, in and out of the marketing industry, and I’m noticing the same thing throughout. Whenever I go back to basics, strip away the fuzz, unnecessary images and what we’ve otherwise been led to believe “works”, per se, sales shoot up to a level I’ve never attained before.

What this Quickie will give you…

I’ve included four simple formats that have worked well for me, and are best used in various scenarios (explained below).

Each of them are given in a ZIP file format, which means you’ll need a program like WinZip to uncompress the files to a folder on your PC.

You can use these templates as-is, and simply modify them in your favorite HTML editor, to add your own sales text and marketing messages. I use Dreamweaver to edit my pages. It’s easy to use.

MEMBERS AREA

Download your templates here:

Sales letters templates

Template # 1 - The “Free Report” Entrance page

After unzipping, open: style1.html (edit in Dreamweaver, or any HTML app)

This particular template makes a perfect “lead-in” page for the rest of your sales offer. It’s neat, simple, and excellent for shorter sales letters (which is what makes it great for lead-in pages).

Here’s a great little strategy you can use…

First, write some kind of “report”, related to whatever it is that you’re selling. It could be a mini course, a simple 1-2 page report, or a free gift of some sort. The aim here is to capture the leads hitting this page, and pool them together.

Then, hook up the “dotted form” section to an autoresponder/list builder. You could use a service like GetResponse or Aweber, or a server-side program like Autoresponse Plus. It doesn’t matter.

When a prospect hits this page, its sole intention is to grab their details as soon as possible. There is no information on your company, your products, or contact details presented at this point. All you are offering is a free report, and in turn, trying to capture your prospect’s name and email address.

(Note: Make sure you do capture your client’s first name too. It’s helpful when you come to use the personalization Quickies included on these discs)

When you have those names and your autoresponder is busy delivering the “reports” (or whatever you are giving away, as a lead-in teaser), you are automatically building a base of prospects. Then, along with the teaser reports, you would include a link to your MAIN website, at another URL.

By the time they hit your main page, they already know who you are, what you offer, and have a taste for your expertise/how you can help them. So, it’s not only directly advantageous in the fact that it’s building an email list for you - but, it also pre-qualifies prospects by the time they hit on your main sales page.

Template # 2 - The “Post Lead” page (or standalone sales letter)

After unzipping, open: style2.html (edit in Dreamweaver, or any HTML app)

This one is real simple, but extremely effective at the same time. It’s wide enough to accommodate both a powerful sales letter, and any graphical elements you might use to represent certain aspects of it (such as testimonials, arrows, coupons, etc) — whilst the font is crisp, clean and strong.

It makes an excellent post-lead-in page (after you’ve used the first template, to gather your prospect’s details) to send your visitors to right away - or, even as a standalone sales letter.

Template # 3 - Direct Marketing Style #1

After unzipping, open: style3.html (edit in Dreamweaver, or any HTML app)

This has been one of the most effective templates I’ve ever used, in terms of presentation and the sales it has produced as a result. It’s a very simple style, based on a “shadowed page” design that I whipped up in Adobe Photoshop, that is one of the easiest, neatest ways to present info online.

The font I’ve used, as you can see, is Courier New. It’s the original typewriter font that spawned more Direct Marketing sales letters than any other, and works incredibly well. It’s also great for formatting, because, the spacing and dimensions of each character you type are very accurately displayed — for instance, bold formatting of your letters takes up the same space as standard text.

Template # 4 - Direct Marketing Style #2

After unzipping, open: style4.html (edit in Dreamweaver, or any HTML app)

This is probably the most technically simple of all templates, comprising of a table filled with a light yellow gradient pattern, on a white background, with Courier New Font.

TO USE THESE FILES…

On this Quickie page, you’ll see a link to the ZIP file. Click the link, and your default unzip program should open the file, and allow you to extract the contents to a location on your hard drive. If this doesn’t happen (and the contents of the ZIP file aren’t shown), you’re probably lacking a ZIP app on your PC. If that’s the case, go grab a copy of WinZip over at http://www.winzip.com.

To use these files, first extract them to a location on your hard drive (maybe, C:\sales-letters or something that you’ll remember). Then, you’ll notice a bunch of image and HTML files that have been stored in that dir. You can edit style1.html, style2.html, style3.html and style3.html in that dir respectively, using a program like Dreamweaver (or your favorite HTML app), to begin using them.

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