Business Correspondence - Anonymous (best classic books of all time .TXT) 📗

certain kind of furniture polish. The letters were written in such a chatty style that they were read through and passed around to other members of the family.

 

My dear:

I know you will be surprised to hear from me and I may as well confess that I am not altogether disinterested in writing you at this time but I am glad to say that the duty imposed upon me is a pleasure as well.

You know some time ago after I had painted my floors, I wrote the company whose paint I used and they put my experiences in the form of a little booklet entitled “Mrs. Elliot’s Troubles.”

 

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This is the first page of a facsimile hand-written letter that proved highly successful as it appealed to feminine curiosity and insured careful reading

 

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The appeal to women must hover around her love of style and her desire for economy. Bring in either subject deftly at the beginning of a letter and she will be an interested reader of all the sales talk that follows.

Several mailorder houses have trained women to handle this part of their correspondence for they are more apt in the use of feminine expressions. Let a man try to describe some article as “perfectly splendid,” or “really sweet” and he will stumble over it before he gets to the end of the sentence. Yet when these same hackneyed phrases are brought in naturally by a woman who “feels just that way” about the garment she is describing, they will take hold of the reader in a way that is beyond the understanding of the masculine mind.

In the appeal to women there is more in this tinge of off-hand refinement, the atmosphere, the enthusiasm shown and in the little personal touches, than in formidable arguments and logical reasons. What is triviality to a man is frequently the clinching statement with a woman. And so a fixed set of rules can not be formulated for writing letters to women. Instead of a hard and fast rule, the correspondent must have in mind the ideas and the features that naturally appeal to the feminine mind and use them judiciously.

 

Dear Madam:

This mail is bringing to you a copy of our new catalogue, describing our complete line of Hawkeye Kitchen Cabinets.

The catalogue will tell you how you can do your kitchen work in half the usual time.

It will tell you how to save your strength, time, and energy—how to relieve yourself of the burden of kitchen drudgery.

Aren’t these things worth looking into?

Just try counting the unnecessary steps you take in preparing your next meal. Calculate the time you lose in looking for articles that should be at your fingers’ ends but are not.

Imagine, if you can, what it would save you if you could do away with your pantry, kitchen table, and cupboard and get all the articles needed in the preparation of a meal in one complete well-ordered piece of furniture that could be placed between the range and sink, so you could reach almost from one to the other. Think of the steps it would save you.

Imagine a piece of furniture containing special places for everything—from the egg beater to the largest kitchen utensil—a piece of furniture that would arrange your provisions and utensils in such a systematic way that you could (in the dark) find almost anything you wanted.

If you can draw in your mind a picture of such a piece of furniture, you will have some idea of what a Buckeye Kitchen Cabinet is like.

How, don’t you want one of these automatic servants? Don’t you think you need it?

If so, send for one NOW. Don’t put it off a single day. You have been without it too long already.

It doesn’t cost much to get a Hawkeye. If you don’t care to pay cash, you can buy on such easy payments that you will never miss the money—only five cents a day for a few months. You would think nothing of paying five cents a day streetcar fare to keep from walking a few blocks in the pure air and sunshine, yet you are walking miles in your kitchen when one streetcar fare a day for a few months would do away with it.

Send your order right along and use the Cabinet thirty days. If it doesn’t do what we say it will, or if you do not consider that it is more than worth the money, send it back at our expense and we will refund whatever you have paid. That’s fair, isn’t it?

We pay freight on all-cash orders

Yours truly, [Signature: Adams & Adams]

 

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This letter is written in an easy, natural style, which is aided by the short paragraphs. The appeal to the imagination is skillful, and the homely illustration of the car-fare well chosen. The closing is in keeping with the general quality of the letter and was undoubtedly effective. This letter is a longer one than the man would read about a kitchen cabinet, but there are not too many details for women readers

 

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All women, for instance, are influenced by what other women do, and there is no other touch more productive of sales than the reference to what some other customer has ordered, or what comments she has made. Both in educational campaigns and in writing to regular customers on some specific proposition it is a good policy to work in some reference to a recent sale:

 

“One of our very good customers from your neighborhood writes us that her new suit (Style 3587) has caused her more perfectly delightful compliments than she ever had before.”

 

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Such testimonials are to be found in every mailorder house that has attained even a moderate success, for women who are pleased are given to writing letters profuse in their expressions of appreciation.

At times it is desirable to quote a whole letter, withholding, of course, the name of the writer. The most convincing letters to use are those that tell about first orders, or how some friend induced the writer to send in a trial order, or how she came to be a customer of the mailorder house. These personalities add a touch of human interest, they create an atmosphere that is real, they mean much to a woman.

Quoted letters are especially effective in getting a first order after a woman has become sufficiently interested to write in for a catalogue. Here is one lifted from a letter sent out by the general manager of a suit house:

 

Dear Mr. Wardwell:

You ask me to tell you how I came to send you my first order.

I think I had written for your Style Book three seasons. Each time I found many garments I liked. I found waists and dresses and skirts that were much prettier than the ones I could get elsewhere. And yet, some way or other, while I longed for these very garments, I did not order them. I think it was simply because I never had ordered by mail.

One day when looking through your Style Book the thought came to me: “If you want this dress, why don’t you stop hesitating and wondering and sit down right now and order it?”

And I did—and ever since I have bought my suits, dresses, waists, almost everything, from you.

 

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Testimonial letters from prominent women, wives of distinguished men and others whose names are widely known, are always effective. A number of years ago Mrs. Frances Cleveland, wife of the ex-president, wrote to a furniture factory for a cedar chest. The order was in Mrs. Cleveland’s own handwriting and the letter was at once photographed and a facsimile enclosed with all the letters and advertising matter sent out by the furniture house. Such things have an influence on the feminine mind that the skilled correspondent never overlooks.

The reason that so many letters fail to pull is because the correspondents are not salesmen; they are unable to put actual selling talk into a letter. For after you have aroused a woman’s curiosity and appealed to her love of style and her desire to economize, there has got to be some genuine, strong selling talk to get the order.

The difference is brought out by a large Chicago mailorder house which cites the customer who inquired about a certain ready made skirt in a 34-inch length which could not be supplied as the regular measurements run from 37 to 43. A correspondent thinking only of the number of letters that can be answered in a day simply wrote, “We are very sorry we cannot supply the skirt you mention in the length you desire, because this garment is not made regularly in shorter lengths than 37 inches. Regretting our inability to serve you,” and so forth.

The letter inspector threw out the letter and dictated another:

 

“We cannot furnish skirt, catalogue number H4982, in a 34-inch length, but we can supply it in a 37-inch length; this is the shortest length in which it is regularly made. You can have it altered to a 34-inch length at a small expense, and as the skirt is an unusually pretty style and of exceptionally good value, the price being only $7.65, we trust you will favor us with your order.”

 

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This is letter-writing plus salesmanship. The correspondent did not spill over in his eagerness to get the order; he did not describe the skirt as the finest to be had nor insist that it was the most wonderful bargain in the catalogue. Rather he told her it was an “unusually pretty style and of exceptionally good value.” It was so simply told and so naturally that it carried conviction. It refers to style and to economy—two things that appeal to every woman.

Letters personally signed by the “Expert Corsetiere” of a large wholesale house were mailed to a selected list of lady customers in cities where the Diana corsets were handled:

 

Dear Madam;

Here’s an incident that proves how important corsets are in wearing the new straight, hipless gowns.

Mrs. Thompson, who is stouter than the new styles require, tried on a princess gown in a department store. The gown itself was beautiful, but it was most unbecoming and did not fit at all, tho it was the right size for her.

Mrs. Thompson was about to give up in despair saying, “I can’t wear the new styles”—when a saleswoman suggested that she be fitted with a Diana Corset in the model made for stout figures.

The result was that the princess gown took the lines of the corset and fitted Mrs. Thompson perfectly. In fact the original lines of the gown were brought out to better advantage.

This only goes to prove that with a good corset any gown will drape right and take the lines of the corset.

You’ll find it easy to wear the new long straight style gowns if you wear a Diana corset in the model made for your style of figure.

The Dianas are made after the same models as the most expensive French corsets costing $10 to $25. Yet $1 to $5 buys a Diana.

The Diana is not heavy and uncomfortable as so many of the new corsets are this year. The fabrics from which they are made are light and comfortable. At the same time, so closely meshed and firmly woven that with reasonable wear every Diana corset is guaranteed to keep its good shape and style or