Copywriting – letters to “swipe” and getting the “appeal” right

Reading time: 2 – 4 minutes

Perhaps unique to copywriting is the idea of “swiping” sales appeals from winning letters written by yourself or other copywriters. This is not, and should not be approached as, strict copying of others’ work, for a couple of reasons. 1) plagiarism is illegal and will land you in hot water because you WILL get sued if you do it in direct marketing, and 2) there is an art to adapting a proven sales message STRUCTURE to the thing you want to sell and the state of AWARENESS in the marketplace at the time.

That’s another way of saying that running old copy won’t work – it must be adapted.

How to get ideas to create winning copy for today adapted (“swiped”) from yesterday’s winning copy:

Any salesletter written by a A-level copywriter that has the APPEALS in it I need for whatever I am working on at the time. Don’t make it hard on yourself by studying Gary Bencivenga’s food letters (which I believe he still writes mostly because it’s fun) and try to apply the methods to selling info-products.

Get the appeal right. I know this seems very basic and obvious, but it’s the difference in most cases between
success and failure in my experience. If you have the right appeal you can get away with copy that isn’t very good, just as long as people understand easily what you are selling and the offer entices them. I learned this from Robert Collier, because in his book he claims he isn’t a great copywriter, but he was able to figure-out the appeal to sell a given product at a given time, ways to incite action or position his product as the best value. He was writing copy in a very competitive and cost-conscious era, so his “Letter Book”, while dated, is invaluable to study.

That being said, his writing is dated and the sophistication of today’s buyer makes borrowing his appeals challenging today, but from them, if you apply yourself, you can learn PRINCIPLES and apply them in your own writing.

Also – most of the greats specialize in a few areas.

Many of the letters in Dennison Hatch’s book are excellent to learn from and they are all proven winners you can model for a variety of sorts of products. They are all sort of mass-market and were all mailed in the millions, so you’ll have to account for that when borrowing ideas from them for more specialized niches.

Currently there are some secondhand copies on Amazon selling for insanely cheap considering it’s a $90 book… and worth it. Amazon.com: Million Dollar Mailings: Dension…

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Loren Woirhaye prefers to play gypsy music on guitar or accordion – but when he isn’t doing that he writes direct-response copy, consults with clients to help them make money with their websites, coaches people who want to fire their employers and blogs about success, life, his personal foibles, and online marketing at http://malibumentor.com

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The post author, Loren Woirhaye writes sales copy and creates marketing systems for business clients who want to slash customer acquisition costs and position their businesses For 20%-30% sales growth in the next 12-18 months. He writes regularly about marketing and life at his Entrepreneur Blog.