The Death of Sales Letter – A Review

Rummaging through my ‘blogging folder’, I found this interesting free report by Michel Fortin of the Success Doctor, Inc. The title of this report is quite controversial – about the death of sales letter. If you still haven’t read (or heard about it), then you’re surely missing out a lot.

The Death of Sales Letter has been released sometime around 2007. With the title itself, you can just imagine the kind of hullabaloo it caused in the industry especially to copywriters, internet marketers (who heavily relies on good copies) and even SEO practitioners that optimize sales letters and landing pages.

Who is Micheal Fortin?

As Michel puts it, he is “a copywriter”. But apparently, this kind of description needs to be attributed to the people he works for, namely; John Reese, Frank Kern, Kirt Christensen, Armand Morin, Shawn Casey and Stephen Pierce- simply the biggest names in the internet marketing industry. And if you don’t even know any of them, you’re living under a very, very big rock.

The guy’s a well known professional among the league of top-notch copywriters. You. Should. Know. Him. Go to www.michelfortin.com

The report actually started with a sort of briefing about web 2.0. But let’s skip that part and go straight to the juice of the story…

Is the Sales Letter Really Dead?

And this was the biggest controversy of all. Well actually, that’s the biggest misconception about this report. The truth is, no, it doesn’t really talk about sales letter being dead per se (because that would be impossible for obvious reasons). What Michel was pointing out the old overused (and abused) style in writing copies – long letters with big bold red texts and frequent uses of catch phrases like ‘one time, limited offers etc.’. In a way, the title helped it to be a viral free report even if it has mislead some of its readers (well at least on the up side, this has advanced the cause of improving the copywriting industry)

In this report, he pointed out that the practiced and widespread kind of sleazy writing to entice possible buyers have in fact developed adverse effects. People started to veer and avoid from these kinds of marketing. The common observation is that from numerous times of exposure to copies like these, people are figuring a sense of a ‘marketer’s trap’ via too-good-to-be-true (and sometimes exaggerated) claims.

The Keyword of the Story: Interactivity

Of course this doesn’t mean that Michel conclusion is about people who are tired of being consumers, the moral of the story is that actually, that people at the end of the day still want to consume but not in a way that we force or lure them to.

Businesses of the traditional copywriting used to believe that they know what people want, when in fact, they are alienating consumers from their own preference– interaction. Michel describes how web 2.0 transformed us from mere readers of static web page texts into people who quench for interaction (a sense of 2-way communication). Certainly, the rise of social media, applications, and so many things that provides unlimited communication has been a catalyst for this kind of behavior.

To add to that, Michel also describes a phenomenon called the “ping factor” wherein the common internet user are faced with millions of website options and countless of competing distractions (from mail, to chat, to many kinds of notifications of various accounts etc.). This kind of multi-tasking invariably pushes humans to be efficient time-wise. For copywriters to be specific, this only means that the ones long copies (sales letters) are losing its effectiveness because it simply takes too much time, thus, it was observed how shorter, more straight-to-the-point copies started to get better results.

Innovation, Interaction, Experience, Efficiency

As I see it, that’s the root principles by which Michel Fortin wrote his report. Being almost 2 decades old in the industry (internet at it’s baby stage), you can very well experience through his words how fast and powerful the internet has evolved to what it is now.

In effect, this has also spurred a kind of change towards or time perception and capacity to consume. We want to do more in less time and we still want to buy, though we need better ways to be convinced in a more human, emotional fashion.

Reading The Death of Sales Letter just blows you away. It wouldn’t even take an hour tops to finish everything but the kind of information (or at least perception) shared by Michel is priceless to the current situation and approaches in various fields in the internet.

This review doesn’t even cover its awesomeness.

So therefore, I suggest you read it by yourself. Download The Death of Sales Letter by Michel Fortin

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Sean Si

About Sean

is a Filipino motivational speaker and a Leadership Speaker in the Philippines. He is the head honcho and editor-in-chief of SEO Hacker. He does SEO Services for companies in the Philippines and Abroad. Connect with him at Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. Check out his new project, Aquascape Philippines.