Sales Letter Openings - 3 Classic Examples

After your headline and PS, the next most important part of your sales letter is your opening sentence.

Opening sentences make or break a lot of sales letters. If you have a good headline, sometimes you can slide with a weaker opening, but who wants that?

When you write a sales letter opening, what is your main goal?

Most people say "To make sales". That may be true...but your main goal should first be:

Get the person to read the letter.

You can't sell to someone who doesn't know your offer. To engage the reader you have to start your opening sentence with something that catches the reader's eye and forces them to keep reading.

Not sure what to say? Well, you're in luck. Here are 3 Classic Openings you can use to get started.

1) Damaging Admission

Ok, I admit it. If you're looking for a big whig attorney, I'm not for you. If you've got lots money to spend on your attorney, then maybe you can find someone else. But if you need an affordable attorney with a proven track record, then I just might be what you're looking for.

This damaging admission opens the letter up with you admitting one of your apparent faults or weaknesses (we all have them.) From that point, you then turn it around and show how it is actually a great strength.

Spend time thinking about it, you'll come up with great reasons. No one said it was gonna be EASY!

2) The Question

What if I told you opening your first sentence with a question could help you double your sales and triple your opt-in rate?

That was an example of using a question to open a sentence. This is a highly recommend tool because it instantly gets the reader involved in reading. It's like you trust yourself so much you just jump in and start talking to the reader, one on one.

Now the reader wants to keep reading because you asked him a question. He wants to answer th question, now you've got to SHOW him the answers (your offer).

3) If/Then Statements

Here is a classic if/then statment.

If you'll give me just 7 minutes of your time, I can promise you it will be the smartest 7 minutes you've ever spent.

That was just a quick example. You don't have to actually use the word "then", unless you want to. Then is implied by the comma.

This works great when you want to give the reader a promise or guarantee. They love if/then statments.

There you have it! Great ways to get started for sure, huh?

Now, get out there and write a sales letter.

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How To Write Sales Letters

How To Write A Good Headline

There are 3 Headlines that make up the vast majority of all headlines you will use when creating your own sales letters.

If you can master these 3 headlines, you can work wonders in all of your marketing campaigns.

Here are the 3 most used headlines of all time.

1) Self Interest
2) News-like
3) Curiousity

Here's a brief explanation of each type and why it works so well.

1) Self Interest

What's the most important topic of interest in most people's lives? Themselves, I must confess. People love to hear about themselves and how their life can be made better by your newest gagdet, book, or service.

To use this headline, you need to think of the # 1 greatest benefit this product offers and tell the customer in a way that intrigues them to read further. Popular examples of this are:

How To Win Friends And Influence People
Why You Aren't Getting The Sleep You Need

How To and Why are great openings for these type of headlines. They can work wonders for your letters, so use them NOW.

2) News

This just in...a large reptilian creature is on the attack.

See how it works...you were compelled to read the above nonsense because it looked like news. Our entire lives we read newspapers, watch the news on TV, and listen to the radio. Over time, we get hardwired to listen, watch, and read headlines.

That is what we do...because we don't have time to get the whole story. We get what we can.

Here are some examples.

Announcing The Greatest Discovery Since Sliced Bread, The -----
New Discovery Provides Hope For Stay At Home Moms

3) Curiousity

This is the hardest of the 3 headlines to use, but once you master it you can experience great results.

Us humans are a funny bunch. We love figuring things out for ourselves. That's where curiousity comes in.

Use is to craft a headline that FORCES the reader to figure out just what you're talking about.

Here are some examples.

WARNING: What You Don't Know About Your Health Could Be Killing You
How A Freak Accident Cured Me Of My Baldness

Well there you have it. Your next step is to craft a headline. You've got 3 great ways to get started. You also should try mixing up the 3 styles for greater impact.

Here's something I just threw together using all 3 headline types.

Announcing The Discovery Of A Secret Formula That Will Triple Your Conversion Rate And Cut Your Advertising Costs In Half

Don't judge that too hard, I just wrote it. But look at how each headline method is used.

Now, go write a sales letter.

Mike

PS - Many people REFUSE to use the word "that" in their headline. If you're one of those people, please accept my apologies. I'm going to run some tests here in the future and see how "that" does.

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How To Write Sales Letters