Direct Mail Marketing Agency Says "Over, Please, with 'Over, please . . .' in Sales Letters."

By: Alan Sharpe
Submitted: 2007-01-17 15:32:20
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When your direct mail sales letter is longer than one page, should you write “Over, please . . .” or “Please continue” at the bottom of the page? Of course not.

Phrases like that work against you. In every letter you craft, you’re trying to sound personal, conversational, as though you are sitting opposite your reader, having a personal conversation. Writing “Continued . . .” or something just as inane at the bottom of the page breaks that mood and puts you in the position of huckster.

Richard Goldsmith disagrees. The author of Direct Mail for Dummies says people tend to do what you tell them to do, so he recommends that you put “Over, please . . .” in the lower right corner of your multi-page letters.

I say this is advice that belongs in another century, if anywhere. Your reader knows to turn the page. Your job is not to command your reader to continue reading, but to compel her. You do that by borrowing a trick from the soap operas, not by employing a silly and worn-out piece of direct mail advice.

Fans (or should I say addicts?) of Coronation Street, The Young and the Restless and other popular soap operas tune in each week because each episode leaves them with a love unrequited, a slight unrevenged, a dream unrealized or half a box of Kleenex remaining. The viewer must tune in again next week to see how the villain meets his timely end or the heroine gets her man, or her woman, as the case may be these days.

Your sales letters need to move your reader from page to page in the same way. You cannot trust them to turn your letter over and continue reading simply because you said “Please continue” at the lower right corner. You must compel them to continue reading because they simply have to discover how your story ends.

Writing “Continued, over . . .” makes you interrupt yourself to remind the reader that you are selling something, rather than having a mutually beneficial conversation with the reader. It also insults his intelligence. And makes your letter look formulaic rather than original.

I suggest that you never end a page with a period or a complete idea. Write instead as though you have a stutter. Express half a thought at the bottom of the page, and force your reader to turn the page over to hear how you complete it. Whenever possible, make the topic of this transition sentence as intriguing and interesting as possible. Goldsmith calls it a cliffhanger.

If your prospects are concerned a great deal about your price, then write about your price at the end of the page, breaking your thought in half and continuing it on the next page. If you have a persuasive testimonial, begin it at the bottom of one page and continue it on the next. Which reminds me, what do you call a boomerang that doesn’t come back?

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