A little exercise to help new copywriters flex their sales copy muscles

Good morning Mr. and Mrs. Copywriter (and all the ships at sea)

Here's a little game to help you new writers (and experienced writers as well) exercise your sales copy brains.

I don't remember when I first picked up the lesson? But one of my writing coaches taught it to me years ago. And every once in a while it's something I still do (when I have the time)

Basically we take a winning sales letter and dissect it. To see what makes it work.

This one is a direct mail piece I got, from a local insurance guy.

I did not write it. And I'm not affiliated with the guy in any way.

But I've gotten this same letter every couple months, for more than a year now. Which leads me to believe it's a responsive control piece.

(for the new writers here, a "control piece" basically means it's getting a good enough response rate, to make it worth mailing, over and over again)


I blocked out the contact info, just for privacy sake. But the rest of the letter is intact.


Anyway, here it is...



So what do you think my fellow marketers?

What parts are strong?
What parts are weak?
What would you leave?
What would you tweak?

(hmmm... I think I just channeled my inner Dr. Seuss with that last part )


I spent a few minutes this morning (the time it took to drink my first cup of coffee) dissecting the piece, and picking out what I think are some of the good parts... and some of the not so good parts.

I'm sure I missed some stuff, but here's what I came up with...

(The notes in green are good...The notes in red are not so good.)




P.S. This is my first humble attempt to make this copywriting section a bit more hands-on educational. If I'm just being Pollyannaish (it's a word... look it up) just let me know, and I'll go back to just lurking around, and answering a few posts now and then.


All the best,
SAR