If you read many of my posts and/or comments, you know I believe in prospecting – by both email and direct mail.
You may also know that to receive any kind of prospecting letter in our community is a rare 
occurrence. That said, I always read the ones that do arrive.
This week I got a doozie.
I will give this agent credit for trying, by oh my – the letter she sent!
For starters, it broke the first rule in writing prospecting letters. It was all about her. After that, it went downhill.
She began by making some silly, unbelievable claims – while using language designed to impress. Unfortunately, she didn’t look up the meanings of the words she was using. In addition, she forgot – or didn’t know – that marketing letters should be written with a 6th grader reader in mind.
The result: Some people won’t know what the words mean while others will know and think her foolish.
She forgot to give her readers a breather – I read this aloud to my son and should have thought to take a deep breath before I started. I nearly ran out of breath before getting to the end of the 39 and 41 word sentences.
It looks like perhaps she did some editing, but didn’t finish, and definitely didn’t proofread. That resulted in sentences that were garbled. For instance, part of one long sentence says “…figure out your property’s market value is worth.
And then… she came up with my pet peeve: ”…please reach out to myself or my team…”
This letter, with more than a dozen major errors or ridiculous statements, bugged me so much that I examined it in detail on my Copy by Marte blog. If you’re interested, you’ll find it at: https://copybymarte.com/marketing-fail-anatomy-of-a-terrible-prospecting-letter/
Failed stamp courtesy of Stuart Miles @freedigitalphotos.net
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