William Strunk wrote a short, valuable essay on the need to omit needless words: "Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have ...

Do your letter proposals generate business? Or do they often miss the mark? I've learned that letter proposals must do four things. Incorporate these four steps into every letter proposal and you'll see improvements. 1. Focus on your prospect'...

Want to learn a vital lesson in public speaking from the CIA? Make eye contact with your listeners. Failure to make eye contact is often a sign of deceit, says Lindsay Moran, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer and author of Blowing My Cov...

Do your donation request letters lack a protagonist? The most compelling appeal letters feature a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, that captures the donor's attention and makes the appeal human, moving and profitable. The most memorable novels, movies ...

Know one of the quickest ways to boost the effectiveness of your direct mail sales letters? Mail two letters instead of one, in the same envelope. The second letter is called a lift note. You slip it in your direct mail package to "lift" (increase) res...

Successful fundraising letters are exciting to read. They take you to crack houses, battlefields, logging protests, prisons, floods and other places you will never set foot yourself. Effective donation request letters show you the organizations you suppor...

You will succeed at business-to-business direct mail sales lead generation if you master three calculations, and your response rate is not one of them. Your response rate tells you only a small part of what you are doing correctly. I am assuming that y...

Back in 1985, which I now realize is more than 20 years ago, a homeless man stood at the corner of College and Yonge streets, in downtown Toronto, begging for money. This was his cry: "Quarter! Quarter! Dime! . . . Nickel! . . . Eeeeeeeeven a penny wil...

Two of the greatest challenges for a company doing direct mail sales lead generation are getting attention and creating attractive offers. A compelling package with a poor offer will flop. And a poor package with a compelling offer won't even get opened. ...

Fundraising letters are about people. People talk. So your fundraising letters should include the voices of people. In a novel, the characters come alive only after you hear them talk. What they say, how they say it, when they say it, where they say it...

The number-one advantage of dimensional mailers is that they get noticed. Amidst the #10 envelopes, postcards and other traditional mail that your prospects receive daily, boxes, cylinders and lumpy oversize envelopes stand out. The number-two advanta...

When the Argentine army surrendered in June of 1982, ending the Falklands War, some Royal Marines discovered that the quickest way to get the attention of stubborn Argentine prisoners, since we did not speak their language, and they did not speak ours, wa...

My wife received an irresistible offer in the mail the other day. So she didn't resist. The publisher of a health newsletter offered her eight free reports in exchange for trying out the publication risk free. She could read the sample issue and, if sh...

How would your next fundraising letter perform if Agatha Christie wrote it? "Alan," you're whispering, "Agatha Christie is dead." "I know," say I. "But I'm trying to make a point here. So bear with me." Agatha Christie is the world's best-known m...

I once wrote a direct mail piece that generated a dreadful response rate. It was too high. My client was a brand new stadium in Canada's capital city, Ottawa. The stadium featured luxury suites that businesses could rent or lease to entertain prospects...