Business Correspondence Part 16

"You will be interested to know that we have recently sold one of our machines to a near neighbor of yours, Mr. Henry C. Smith of Rock Creek."

This sentence was so phrased that the neighbor's name came at the end of a line and could be easily filled in.

A furniture manufacturer works in a personal touch by closing a paragraph of his letter with this sentence:

"You can find our liberal offer to s.h.i.+p freight pre-paid to Rogers Park on page 3 of the catalogue."

The name of the town and page number of the catalogue came at the end of the sentence. Another manufacturer opened his letter with this sentence: "On April 2, we received your inquiry." In this case, "On April 2," was filled in at the beginning of the sentence. Both schemes give the "one-man" att.i.tude. A personal touch in the body of the letter indicates an individual communication--as it really is.

There are four ways for making the body of the letter look like a regularly typewritten message: it may be typewritten, printed on a printing press, printed through a ribbon or printed by means of a stenciled waxed paper.

Firms sending out only a few form letters typewrite them so that no effort is necessary to give an individual touch.

But the letter printed from typewriter type by means of an ordinary printing press is obviously nothing more than an ordinary circular.

Filling in the name and address by a typewriter is absolutely useless. It is usually advisable to print form letters by means of some duplicating process which prints through a ribbon.

Where a stencil is used, the waxed paper is put in the typewriter and the letter is written on it without a ribbon. Here the stenciled letter replaces the usual type, and the impression secured can seldom be detected from a typewritten letter. A stencil can be made more quickly than type for the same letter can be set. Then the exact touch of the typist is reproduced on the duplicated letters through the stencil. No stenographer can write a letter without making some words heavier than others, the distribution of the ink is not the same throughout, so absolute uniformity in the printed letter is not advisable.

In printing the body of the letter select some process which gives the appearance of typewriting and then match the fill-in. One merchant secured an effective matching of fill-in and body by printing the form with a poorly-inked ribbon on the duplicating machine and then filling in the name and address with a typewriter ribbon that had been well used. While the general appearance of the letter was marred by this scheme, the impression was that of a letter written on a poor typewriter and it was effective.

The business man, the clerk and the farmer--everyone visited by the postman--is becoming more and more familiar with letters. The day has pa.s.sed when anyone is deceived by a carelessly handled form letter. Unless a firm feels justified in spending the time and money to fill in the letter very carefully, it is much better to send it out frankly as a circular.

Nor is this always a weakness, for a clever touch can be added that introduces the personal elements. One mail-order house sent out a large mailing with this typewritten notice in the upper left corner of the letterhead:

"You must pardon me for not filling in your name and address at the beginning of this letter, but the truth is I must get off fifty thousand letters tonight, and I have not the necessary stenographic force to fill in the name and address on each individual letter."

In spite of the fact that each man was frankly told that 49,999 other persons were receiving the same letter, the appeal was as personal as an individual message. Another writer opened his communication in this way:

"This letter is to YOU. and it is just as personal as If I had sat down and pounded it off on the typewriter myself, and I am sure that you, as a business man, appreciate that this is a personal message to you, even if I am writing a hundred thousand others at the same time."

This letter struck a popular and responsive chord, for each reader took it to himself as a frank, honest appeal, from a frank, honest business man. It was a direct personal communication because each reader felt that although it was duplicated a thousand times it nevertheless contained a live message.

But the care that some writers take to make the form letter look personal, is the very thing that kills it. They make the letter too perfect. To avoid this result, leave an imperfect word, here and there, throughout the body of the letter. Watch the setting up of the type to be sure the lines are not s.p.a.ced out like a printed page. Many correspondents imitate the common mistakes of the typewritten letter from the mechanical standpoint and in the language.

Time spent in correcting these errors with pen and ink is usually considered a paying investment. The tympan of the duplicating machine is sometimes made uneven so that the impression of a typewriter is still further carried out. Some duplicating machines advertise that their type print "loose" for this very purpose. A favorite scheme with firms where letter presses are used is to blur the letter slightly after it has been filled in and signed. A word "x.x.x'd" out as by a typewriter lends an impression of the personal message, as does also the wrong spelling of a word, corrected by pen and ink.

But fully as vital to the individuality of the letter is the manner in which it is closed. The signature of the form letter is a subject that deserves as careful consideration as the superscription and the body of the letter. The actual typewritten letter to Henry Brown is signed with pen and ink. Even where the name of the company also appears at the end of the letter, the personal signature in ink is desirable. And when you write all the Henry Browns on your mailing list, you should apply the pen-and-ink signature to every letter.

That is the only effective way.

It is not so essential that the signature should be applied by the writer personally. Often a girl writes the signature, saving the time of a busy department head. Many firms use a rubber facsimile stamp for applying the signature, but it is not as effective, for it is seldom that the stamped name does not stand out as a mechanical signature. One concern adds the name of the company at the bottom of the letter and has a clerk mark initials underneath with pen and ink.

The form letter has a heavy load which carries a row of hieroglyphics at the bottom of the page--the "X-Y-Z," the "4, 8, 6,"

the "Dictated WML-OR" and the twenty and one other key numbers and symbols common to the form letters of many houses. When a man receives such a letter, he is impressed by the ma.s.s of tangled mechanical operations the message has undergone; on its face he has the story of its mechanical make-up and its virility is lost, absolutely.

Then consider the various notes, stamped in a frankly mechanical manner at the bottom of the letter, such as, "Dictated, but not read," "Signed in the absence of Mr. So-and-So." To the average man who finds one of these notes on the letter, there is the impression of a slap in the face. He does not like to be reminded that he may converse with the stenographer in the absence of the president. When a letter says "Not read" he feels that the message was not of sufficient importance to warrant the personal attention of the writer. Eliminate all such notes from the form letter.

Sometimes a postscript may suggest a note of personality. For instance, one firm writes underneath the signature: "I want you to look especially at the new model on page 37 of the catalogue." This is effective if done with pen and ink, but if printed or stamped, it gives no additional tone of individuality to the letter. One manufacturer had a postscript written on an extra slip of paper which he pasted to the corner of the sheet.

Another concern writes out on a piece of white paper the blue-penciled postscript: "I'll send you this three-tool garden kit _free_ (express prepaid) if your order for the patent roller reaches me before the 5th." This is made into a zinc etching and printed in blue so perfectly that the postscript appears to have been applied with a blue pencil.

Still another postscript scheme is to write the form letter so that it just fills the first page, then to dictate and sign a paragraph for a second page--a most effective plan.

Then you must consider the enclosure that often goes with the letter. This frequently stamps it a circular. If you are offering a special discount or introductory sale price, for instance, it would be ridiculous to say in your letter, "This is a special price I am quoting to you," when the reader finds the same price printed on the circular. Print the regular price, and then blot out the figures with a rubber stamp and insert the special price with pen and ink, or with a stamp.

If you offer a special discount it is best to say so frankly:

"I am making this special discount to a selected list of a few of our old friends. And in order that you may be sure of this discount I am enclosing the discount card which will ent.i.tle you to the special prices."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _A series of letterheads that ill.u.s.trate various uses of the product and so not only vary the appearance of successive letters but afford good advertising_.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _For different departments, to handle different cla.s.ses of correspondence or simply to vary their follow-up, varying letterheads are used_.]

The discount card should be filled-in with the name of the person written and stamped with a serial numbering machine. The date the special offer expires should also be stamped on the circular. In making a special offer to a "limited number of persons," the enclosure describing it and the return order blank should not be too elaborate or carefully prepared. It is more effective to make them inexpensive and give a careless appearance. Aim to carry the impression that with a hundred or so you could not afford to do it better.

Do not let an opportunity pa.s.s to give the enclosure the same personal touch that you aim at in the letter. Some houses even sign the reader's name to the card. A pencil or pen mark over some particular feature of the enclosure is another way to suggest personal attention.

Refer to the enclosure in a way that indicates individual attention.

A correspondence school takes off the weight of the overload of enclosures by inserting this paragraph:

"So in order that you may properly understand our proposition I am enclosing these circulars and application blanks. It is impossible to tell one whole story in a single letter, or even a series of letters. To make them perfectly plain I have asked my stenographer to number them with a pen, and I will refer to them in this letter in that order."

A manufacturer who has succeeded in the mail-order business turns down a page in his catalogue, and refers to it in this way:

"I have turned down the corner of a page--39--in my catalogue that I particularly want you to read. On this page you will find pictured and described the best value in a single-seated carriage ever offered to the public. Turn to this page now and see if you can afford not to investigate this proposition further."

A successful campaign prepared by a wholesale house consisted simply of a letter and a cheap-looking yellow circular, across the top of which had been printed with a typewriter duplicating machine this heading: