Writing Persuasive Message Chapter: 8 Writing Persuasive Message

What is Persuasion? Each month our mailboxes seem to contain a growing number of persuasion messages. A political candidate wanting our vote, a not-for-profit organization requesting donations, a business firm trying to market its goods or services, a co-worker who wants a proposal approved ---- all these are examples of the many types of persuasive messages.

What is Persuasion? Persuasion is the process of influencing or changing attitudes, beliefs, values, or behaviors. Persuasion motivates people to change. Persuasion is a key element in sales contacts that try to convince prospects to purchase company products. Persuasion is also crucial in collecting past-due accounts from customers who have failed to pay outstanding debts.

Persuasive Goals Adoption: Messages of adoption try to persuade readers to start doing something. Adoption is the essence of most sales letters. Example, American Express sends letters to prospective cardholders urging them to apply for various cards. Continuance: Messages of continuance urge the continuation of a behavior. Continuation is the basis for selling any ongoing service. For instance, Business Week magazine sends letters to current subscribers trying to convince them to renew subscriptions.

Persuasive Goals 3. Discontinuance: Collection letters frequently use persuasive messages to encourage credit customers to make payment on delinquent (bad) accounts. Messages that ask for such behavior changes are referred to as messages of discontinuation. 4. Deterrence: Messages of deterrence (prevention) try to prevent an action from taking place. They might be used, for example, when important clients consider moving their accounts to a different company. A deterrence letter might be written to convince the clients that the move is a mistake.

Persuasive Appeals Persuasive messages appeal to the reader’s sense of reasoning, establish the credibility of the document, and evoke an emotional response from the reader. Persuading through reasoning: Persuasive documents try to convince readers to accept a particular point of view through the logical presentation of evidence. They thus involve the act of reasoning ---- using available evidence to reach a conclusion.

Persuasive Appeals Persuading through credibility: Credibility is the degree to which a statement, a person, or a company is perceived to be ethical, believable, trustworthy, competent, responsible, and sincere. Three types of credibility influence whether messages succeed or fail: (I) Initial credibility: what the reader already knows --- is particularly important in sales letter. (ii) Derived credibility: credibility created during the message ---- is influenced by the logic of the presentation, the strength of the evidence, the emotional appeal, and even the way the information is arranged on the page. (iii) Terminal credibility: credibility created when readers evaluate the writer, company, and product after reading the message --- is the sum total of all previous reactions.

Persuasive Appeals Persuading with emotion: Where logical arguments sometimes fail, emotions often have the power to motivate people to respond and act. For example, if security needs are most important to your reader, your message should be phrased quite differently than if a person’s social needs. Words like free, new, announcing, and special tend to be power words, they are frequently used to enhance persuasiveness.

Sales Letters Types of sales letters: 1. Direct-mail Messages: Direct-mail sales letters allow businesses to send personalized letters to groups specially selected from mailing lists of target-market customers. 2. Retail-sales announcements: Retailers commonly use sales letters to announce such events as specialized sales. A department store, for instance, may use a sales letter to alert customers to price reductions on mattresses.

Sales Letters 3. Inquiry solicitations: Almost everyone has seen a letter announcing that “You are a winner” --- a common attention grabber. To claim prizes, however, readers must fill out and return prepaid responses or call telephone numbers. By opening with the offer of a prize, the writer ensures the reader’s interest. The reader is then contacted again by phone, in person, or by additional letters in an effort to turn interest into desire by pointing out special features or benefits. Then, to increase the possibility of customer action, the salesperson may offer a coupon or discount certificate.

Sales Letters The fundamental goal of the typical sales letter is to move the reader through the four steps of attention, interest, desire, and action --- the AIDA concept --- and then to close the sale.

Developing a Sales Letter Strategy 1. Sales Goals: Define the purpose. Are you trying to make a sale, encourage an inquiry, prompt a store visit, or promote goodwill? 2. Audience: Sales letters are mailed to individuals and organizations with shared characteristics. When the people to whom you are writing share common traits, you can personalize your message and increase the likelihood that they will respond. 3. Product: All successful sales strategies depend on a thorough knowledge of the product and, more importantly, on understanding why people are likely to buy it. Because benefits create a product-customer connection, it is critical to stress benefits over features.

Organizing a Sales Letter A successful sales letter must take a prospective customer through each of these four steps. First, it must gain the attention of the reader, and then it must arouse interest. Next, the letter should try to stimulate desire by convincing the reader to accept an idea or to purchase a good or service. Finally, it should convince the reader to take action, usually in the form of purchase.

Organizing a Sales Letter Attention Gaining: You must find a way to capture and hold attention so that your recipient will continue to read your letter. You can use startling headlines, ask questions, provide testimonials from credible sources, relate striking incidents or statistics, make readers feel unique or special, and identify needs.

Organizing a Sales Letter Creating Interest: Interest is created in two ways: by presenting claims that emphasize benefits over features and by making emotional as well as logical appeals. Translating Interest Into Desire: While interest is largely an intellectual response, desire is basically an emotional reaction that propels people to action. Desire and motivation are closely connected. To move readers from the interest to the desire stage, the persuasive letter writer must present specific facts and statistics.

Organizing a Sales Letter Encouraging the reader to take action: Readers must be convinced not only to take specific steps to purchase the product but to act quickly. Experienced sales professionals realize that unless most readers respond immediately, they are unlikely to respond at all.

Organizing a Sales Letter Techniques for producing action: 1. Identifying specific action: It is important to give readers clear purchase instructions. Example: a typical sales letter might tell the reader: “To take advantage of this special offer, call NOW!” 2. Using inducements: Inducements are gifts or other considerations that encourage readers to take immediate action. Inducements are considered positive when they give readers something they want; negative when readers must take action to avoid unpleasant consequences. For example, while contests and discounts are positive inducements, deadlines and the threat of limited availability represent negative inducements.

Organizing a Sales Letter Positive inducements: discounts, Premiums: items given frees or at reduced cost with the purchase of another product. Contests: offering a chance to win something of value. Negative inducements: Deadlines Limited Availability

Organizing a Sales Letter 3. Aiding reader response: Most sales letters include pre-addressed postage-paid response cards, order forms and envelopes requiring readers to take action. Many sales letters also rely on toll-free telephone numbers that readers can call at any time for immediate service.

Collection Letters Because a sale is not complete unless money has been collected, many companies create their own debt-collection programs to ensure that they will be repaid in full for all credit sales. The collection letters have a dual purpose: try to persuade debtors to pay the money they owe, and encourage continued business.

Collection Letters Collection letters should be persuasive rather than threatening, Constructive rather than accusatory, and Empathetic rather than cold.

Collection Series Letters Four types of persuasive appeals used to collect outstanding debts: Reminder letters Inquiry letters Aggressive collection notices Last-resort letters Every letter in the collection series should state three pieces of information: the amount owed, the length of time the bill has been overdue, and the specific action the customer should take to remedy the situation.

Reminder Letters If no payment is received following an end-of-month billing, the next month’s billing typically includes a reminder of the unpaid bill and a late-payment fee. After sending out a monthly statement informing the customer of the outstanding debt, most companies wait a few weeks for a reply. If none comes, a reminder letter is sent to inform the customer that payment has not been received. There is no request for money in the letter, just a reminder that the account is overdue.

Inquiry Letters The next step is to determine what is preventing the customers from making the required payment. The tone in the inquiry letter should be friendly as you question customers about whether they have forgotten to pay or whether you can help in any way. For example, you might offer to work out a new payment plan.

Aggressive Collection Notices This letter is firmer and more insistent than the inquiry letter. Include one of the following appeals in your letter: Fairness: An appeal to fairness emphasizes that the customer is already using your company’s goods and services and that it is only fair that you receive payment in return. Sympathy: When you appeal to sympathy, you make the point that payment is crucial to your own operations and that late payments put you, the creditor, in a difficult position. Self-interest: This appeal emphasizes the consequences of continued nonpayment. Future credit problems are mentioned.

Last-resort Letters This letter informs customers that unless the money is received by a specific date, your company will begin taking action. The tone of the last-resort letter should express a reluctance to take these actions but a determination to do so if the customer does not pay within a stated time limit --- usually no more than 10 days. To reinforce the seriousness of your message, have a senior executive sign the letter and consider sending it by certified mail, return receipt requested.