How to Write a Compelling Marketing Letter: Keeping a Reader’s Attention

How to Write a Compelling Marketing Letter: Keeping a Reader's Attention

By Mark Satterfield

In my last article, I gave you a template for hooking the reader’s attention. It’s important to reiterate that the purpose of the first sentence is simply to get the reader to read the second sentence. Not surprisingly, the purpose of the second sentence is to get the reader to read the second paragraph. If we can get the reader to read the second paragraph, then we have a good chance that they’ll read the entire letter.

If the focus of the first sentence is to raise a potential problem that the reader may be facing, the goal of the second sentence is to expand on that problem. There are a couple of ways we can do this.

The first is to focus on why the problem occurs. In some instances the problem that you’re communicating about is well understood. It’s been around for a long time and everyone acknowledges the issue. So, stating that you too understand the problem won’t earn you much credibility in the eye of the reader.

What will enhance your credibility is to briefly communicate why the problem exists. Now I realize that every company is unique, and it’s impossible to explain the exact reasons a problem exists with anything close to 100 percent accuracy. However, if you’re marketing to a specific niche (which you should be) then there are going to be some common reasons that are shared across companies within a particular group.

By communicating the reasons why the problem exists, you demonstrate that your understanding of the issues is deep rather than superficial. Here’s an approach I use:

“Although the problem is well understood, the underlying issues are often not so readily apparent. For example in many cases we find that the key contributors to this problem include: (A, B, C).”

When you create the three bullet points make sure you keep them short and concise. Remember that, at this point in the relationship building process, we are trying to raise enough interest so that the reader will do what we want them to do once they have finished reading the letter.

In other situations, the challenge may be that the problem you raised in the opening sentence just isn’t seen as “all that big a deal.” If that’s the case, then the second sentence needs to focus on why this issue is important. The way I do that is by communicating what is likely to occur if the problem isn’t addressed. The key at this stage is to strike the right balance. You want to raise real consequences of not addressing the problem, while not going overboard and sounding like Chicken Little.

I like to use a bullet point approach for listing the consequences. The bullets can be set up with a simple statement such as, “Unfortunately, the consequences of not addressing this issue can include…”

If we’ve done our work correctly, at this point we’ve got our reader’s attention. Now we want to shift the focus of the content to what we want the reader to do after reading the letter. This is where we make the reader a very compelling and specific offer, which is designed to move the relationship building process to the next step.

And that will be the topic of my next article.