When to Not Use Company Sales Letters

07 Jul

Posted by User Image Jay as Internet Marketing

So you’ve found an affiliate product you want to promote, and are ready to advertise.

Most companies will provide some sample sales letters you can use for advertising. The theory is that those sales letters will be of a higher quality than what you could write yourself. You can use the sales letters in email marketing, sending to safelists, etc. There are times when using company sales letters makes a lot of sense.

There are also times when it’s exactly the wrong thing to do.

First, make sure the sales letter really is better than you can do yourself. Some company sales letters are pretty bad.

Second, be aware of what other advertisements your target audience may be seeing. For example, if you have an opt-in list, you might think that sending the company sales letter to your list is a great idea. Keep in mind that the people who subscribe to your list probably subscribe to other lists on the same topic. And all of those list owners will be trying to sell them the same product, possibly by using company sales letters.

As a list subscriber, it’s really annoying to see the same sales letter coming from multiple lists. It hurts the credibility of the list owners, and makes it pretty clear that they just care about making money off their subscribers. If you are fortunate enough to have a list, take the time to write a personal letter for your list, addressing why the product is good for your subscribers specifically.

If you have a blog, especially don’t use company hyped sales letters in your blog. It makes you look unprofessional, and will hurt your search engine rankings because of duplicate content (because others will probably do the same thing). Write a proper review for your blog.

Save the company sales letters for safelists and ezine advertisements.

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10 Responses

Tyson (Who am I?)

July 8th, 2007 at 5:29 pm Quote
1
Another thing you can do by writing your own sales letter is promote related items that you are also an affiliate with. It might divert attention, but it does keep your credibility high by offering more than one thing.
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Jay (Who am I?)

July 8th, 2007 at 10:48 pm Quote
2
That’s a nice point, Tyson. I think sending out not a sales letter, but a thoughtful review of different products that all serve the same end will increase conversions while keeping credibility high.
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Erythisis (Who am I?)

July 9th, 2007 at 2:38 pm Quote
3
Thank you for hitting this point, though you should have added “this also applies to splash pages.” While many companies provide wonderful designs and content, there are equally many that utterly stink after seeing, oh, about a hundred times. Sometimes it’s more appropriate to use the splash page you’re given, sometimes you’ll do everyone a favor by making your own. There are plenty of free services willing to do the hard work if you’re not a code monkey.
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Jay (Who am I?)

July 9th, 2007 at 5:46 pm Quote
4
Great point! There are some company splash pages that are annoying with repetition, while others do get better. There are nice GUI web page creators out there that’ll let you build on in a GUI environment, too, for people who aren’t HTML fluent.
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Juggling Frogs (Who am I?)

July 20th, 2007 at 12:15 pm Quote
5
Seth Godin had a post a couple of days ago, warning not to confuse a brochure with a sales letter with an e-mail:

Letters, brochures and email
.

Great minds think alike.
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Jay (Who am I?)

July 20th, 2007 at 10:04 pm Quote
6
Thanks for the link, Seth’s version was much more concise than mine!
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Juggling Frogs (Who am I?)

July 30th, 2007 at 9:41 am Quote
7
I think you and Seth made complimentary, but different points.
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Gaje Master (Who am I?)

July 31st, 2007 at 3:17 am Quote
8
I once used a sales letter in a blog and found out what my readers thought about it really quick. a little too quick. It is a big no no. I usually don’t send out sales letters all though I probably should. I usually just blog about them.
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Jay (Who am I?)

July 31st, 2007 at 7:27 am Quote
9
I think it’s better to not use sales letters in your blogs. Like you say, readers don’t like them and they ruin the relationship you’ve built up with them.
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Juggling Frogs (Who am I?)

July 31st, 2007 at 8:24 am Quote
10
I have received a couple of these, and they make me uncomfortable. This has caused me to unsubscribe from a couple of feeds.
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