Web Vintage Literature

Chapter 11. News Value

There is one impression that you want your letter invariably to give you want it to appear as a today product, a strictly live, up-to-the-minute communication from one man to another. And there is one way that you can give it this liveliness better than any other give it news value.

What the world wants and has wanted since the beginning is news. The business world is no exception. If you can tell a man something new, particularly something that has a relation to his business, you can get his attention and interest. Put the information into your letter, give it a sales twist and you can make of it a correspondence asset.

News as used in sales correspondence is of two kinds. You can take some live public topic a good piece of newspaper news that you know must be familiar to the man addressed, and give it an application that will boost your own goods. That's one brand of sales letter news and it makes your paper talk bristle with up-to-dateness.

Or you can tell your prospect something that is primarily of interest to him and to you. Ordinarily such news is pretty close to your own proposition it is news that originates with you or with your trade, and it scores because when you approach a man tactfully about his business you touch a responsive chord.

The sources of news that you can use are limited only by the keenness of your eyesight and ingenuity. The first kind you will naturally draw mostly from daily and trade publications. A watch manufacturer, for example, used the idea when he wrote something like this:

One of the last things that Commodore Peary did before sailing on the expedition that found the Pole was to purchase a watch. Could you imagine a stronger testimonial to the as a perfect time keeper under all climatic conditions?

There is news, human interest, and an abundance of proof in a reference like that. It makes the letter live primarily, but it carries more conviction as to quality than could volumes of argument. News of this kind can be pressed into service by any man who sells his goods through letters. Here is the way a retailer with a clever turn of mind made use of a local disaster:

Dear Mr. Henderson:

No doubt you read in the Journal Monday that the dwelling house of Mrs. Findlay, on Front Street, was destroyed by fire. The fire was caused by the explosion of a gasoline stove which Mrs. Findlay was using in her work. In attempting to extinguish the flames Mrs. Findlay was badly burned on the face and hands. Everything she owned was destroyed and the loss will reach $2,000. 00

We simply want to say this: that if Mrs. Findlay had had a gas range this would not have happened. A gas range is safer, and much cheaper than gasoline. Now is the time to buy your wife a gas range and make her work a pleasure, and her life secure.

Accounts of injuries and deaths through accidents can be used to good advantage in accident and life insurance letters. Burglaries, particularly local ones, make strong appeals in letters from locksmiths, hardware dealers, burglary insurance men, bank and safe deposit men. News items regarding impure water can be made use of by the dealer in filters. There are a thousand opportunities for the retailer, or any other man to make his letters live.

Notice how cleverly this man who wants to sell me a course in mail order work make use of a subject that is on the public mind:

Congress will ultimately pass the Parcels Post bill and when it does more than five hundred firms will enter the Mail Order field within twenty -four hours. This statement was made recently by the editor of one of the leading newspapers in this country. When that day comes, and it is not far of, there will be in less than a week, more than a thousand positions open to men who have passed the examinations of this course. The mail order spirit is in the air we can almost feel it. Are you the man to stand idly by and allow the opportunity to learn this business to pass without finding out what the mail order business has in store for you!

On the other kind of news you will have to be your own reporter. After all, it is simply a matter of telling your man something about your goods that is of newsy interest to him. It may be a new model you are putting on the market, a new service you can give the dealer or the user. Again it may be simply advice as to coming fashions or a suggestion as to the best method of handling certain goods. If it is given the news turn it gets the interest.

Here, for instance, is a newsy letter from a fork manufacturer to a retailer. It is good because it gives him an idea that he probably has not thought of before and best of all, it has practical value:

Dear Mr. Dealer:

When business is slow, and you have some time on your hands one of these warm days, wouldn't it pay you to telephone every coal dealer in your town, and try to get his order for coal and coke forks?

Next season s supply of fuel will be largely delivered to residences during the remainder of the summer, and the haulers will need forks.

Here is our heavy goods catalogue, showing all patterns and sizes. Please write us if you jobber cannot supply you with whatever you want.

For the retailer who uses the mails to keep in touch with his customers or for the manufacturer or wholesaler following up his trade, this is the kind of news that counts most. You need not go far to find it. Pick it out of your every day work or your trade paper. Every housewife wants to know what the store has new that she can use. She is glad when a Montana grocer writes her this:

The first shipment of that delicious white plume celery arrived by express today from Kalamazoo, and although it came a long way, it is just as crisp and fresh as when it left the Celery City. Just call up 72 and well send over as much as you want at ten cents a bunch.

Advance notices of coming styles are especially good news items for the lady customer, and if she gets them in a letter she will be far more impressed with the store that writes her than she ever would through reading them in its newspaper advertising.

One store managed this matter very effectively by sending a list of names of lady customers to its Paris buyer and having style letters sent from there direct. The novelty of getting those personal letters from abroad combined with the actual news value brought results.

What you consider just common things may be news to other people. For instance, here is the way a laundry man makes news out of his methods of doing work:

Dear Mr. Norton:

You'll often find among your new laundered collars, some that are scratched or blistered on the seam. (That is, unless we do your laundry work.) It is not a necessary evil, either. The explanation is simple. The seams of a double -fold or wing point should be evenly dampened before folding. Otherwise it blisters or cracks. We have a machine to dampen those seams. It must dampen evenly, for it does it with mechanical precision. So you will get no cracked collars back from us.

Just step to the telephone and call up Main 427, and your laundry will be ready for use whenever you want it.

And here is another letter that gets the idea, this from a bird fancier:

Dear Sir:

We have just received a consignment of St. Andreasberg Roller Canaries which we can offer you at the special price of $3.50. These birds are really a second grade of Golden Opera Singer. During their course of training some birds make mistakes others take up false notes. We call such birds St. Andreasberg Rollers. They sing just as often as the first grade birds and they all sing at night, but each bird has some slight imperfection in his song.

Now, personally, I have no possible use for a canary, but this man almost sold me a bird simply because, with what was news to me, he got me deeply interested.

Just keep this matter of news value in mind when you run through the letters that come to your desk tomorrow. Although you may never have stopped to analyze it before you will find that the man who tells you something new, the man that throws into his message some bit of live, up-to-now, information-that man gets your interest.

Put the idea to use yourself. You will find news making your dull dry correspondence sparkling with life. You will find it giving new pulling power to letters that have been going to the discard.

Human Interest THE great result is only the fusion of many small perfections. But all the right elements of a good letter make only conglomerate, unless they be fused in the fire of universal living they fall short, until they touch the common ground of your days work and mine.