The format of a promotion letter is kind of free and open. You can do almost
anything you want. It does not follow a regular business format. In other words,
you're not gonna have a heading, opening body, and closing. That's not the way
promotion letter works. That's a sales letter. A promotion letter is going to be
basically design or some kind of different way to make it, like a poster
kind of, like an advertisement, not like a regular business letter.
So there's really no guidelines to this format. You are free you are free to make
it any way you want, and you can be as creative as you want. Creativity is a
positive in this kind of situationwith a promotion.
Promotion letters may or may not have a letterhead. That means the address from
where they're coming from or where they're going to. It really depends. They
may or may not have a complimentary closing. Usually, they won't because
they're going to be very creative. Although you could if you wanted to
design it that way.
Promotion letters often include these parts. They have multiple subject lines,
not just one because remember you're addressing the a and the B and the C and
the D, not just one of those. So you can have a is like a subject line, and B is
like a subject line, and C is like a subject line, and D is like a subject
line all over your promotion.
Promotions often have lists. What are lists for? The list is to help the
reader see what the benefits of the product are. That is this idea to
create more interest or .... create more desire, I mean. They think
this is actually going to be useful.
Indentations--that means that inside of the letter there may be empty spaces, and
then you have text over here, and then maybe there's some empty space here, and
you have text over here, and then maybe have some big text up here. All of these
things are possible in a promotion. Underlines and capital are very common,
And of course pictures or graphics-- some kind of design. Let's look at this
example here. So this is a perfect example. This is from an internet company,
and you can visit an online promotion, so you see this online, and you can see that
right there, they've got the main idea. What is the product. They use graphics to
get your attention, in this case a female faces. This company's very famous. They're
using successful and attractive women in their advertisements. I think at this
time they were using racecar drivers, so these are female racecar drivers to get
your attention. They also have some famous people that give testimonials, that
say how good this service is or how good this product is, and you can see here we
have a kind of list. This is one point, one point, one point, another point
another point, another point, another point, so these are lists, so clearly this
section here is not doing the same thing as this
section here. This is your A, getting your attention, and this is your B, building
up the interest by giving you information to let you understand more
of what's going on. And then testimonials-- they help with the C, creating a desire.
Yes, I think I can use this just like that person can use it, and then you have
your D right here, your price and how to buy it, how to pay it, how easy it is.
D is telling the consumer how to buy, how to purchase, but not only that, also
making it easy for them, like you get one month for free, or you only have to pay
six dollars a month instead of $100 at one time. We can spread it over many
months, or maybe there's another thing where you get a free exchange, or a free
return, or a guarantee. All of these are the D--a way to help the person think, Hey,
yeah I can buy this, and it's easy to buy.
Some promotions can come in the email as the one I just showed you. And some of
course can be even interactive, so you may click on the email, and when you
click on the email, it takes you to a website, and the website has the
promotion built in with more detail. And you may be able to click on areas of the
promotion, and they give you more information, so this is a perfect example
here. I think they're selling a computer here, and you can see all of this section
here, all of all of these words here-- These are all details about the product,
so this is the B, building the interest. The A was in the email getting your
attention. You went ahead and you clicked. Then, what about this bit here? That is a
lot of information. It's very boring, right? Well, if you're interested in the
information, if you're interested in this computer product, if you're a computer
expert, I think you probably want more information. But what do we do? We make it
easy by having a click. You use your mouse and click it, and then boom it
opens up over here. So you would not make a promotion that has you know a thousand
words in it and 100 points in it. That's gonna be really hard for people to
take. But there's ways with the interaction to do that. You click it, and
it opens. There, problem solved, and that is a lot of the B, which is very helpful.
Down at the bottom here, there's some details about buying the product.
This is helping with the D. This is helping with the D, telling us how to buy,
how to make it easy. Okay, so those are some real-world
examples, and I think that you can see them all over the place.
Promotions are so common. Here's an example of a promotion that can be sent
in the mail, so it's actually a cardboard paper, and it has three sections, and this
is the outside part. So this is the A, to get the attention, and then it's very
common this way-- that the promotion is designed with different pages, but each
page can be one of those points, the A, the B, or the C. The a obviously is on the
outside here, and then probably the B here is here. You see we have a list of
facts, and then the C is probably right here because we're showing pictures of
people using it and saying hey this is easy to use. This would be perfect for
you, and then over here is how to buy, how to pay for it, and how to get the
subscription, or or how to pay in advance, or how to pay later.
So the ABCD--this is a really great way to just divide it up in a little kind of
promotion pamphlet, or a booklet, or in this case, I think this is a mailing that
we can mail to people. Another way you can do those promotions, you can just
hand them out. So you can have them inside a store or in a location where
sometimes companies will set up a little pop-up booth. That is a little stand, and
inside that stand, they can they can put at the train station, the bus station
will be one person. That person will be handing out information. Think about when
you go to the supermarket. There's some people that are paid by the brand to
stand next to the products and to try to get you to try out those products. That's
in the supermarket or Costco, where they actually can cook up some samples and
let you taste the samples. That again is the same idea. It is a promotion, and the
A is the person standing there. They know it's much easier to get your attention
with a person rather than just a sign, so they go ahead and put a person there and
get your attention, so that's a perfect example. Then you walk up, and the
person will say, Hey, try out this yogurt, or try out these cookies, or try out this
noodles, and try out this drink, and they'll go ahead and cook it for you, or
make it for you, and hand it to you, so that's kind of the information, and they'll talk
to you, Oh, this has got a lot of vitamin C, and it's very healthy for you.
This is very easy to cook, and this is very useful, and that's building up that
information, building up the interest. Okay, tell me more. Then
they'll pull out the product and say here it's on sale, and sometimes, they'll
put the product with another product, so maybe it's a yogurt, and then they put a
jelly on top of it, or maybe it's some noodles, and they put some sauce with it,
and they say, "Oh buy this, and you get this for free, and that's the C creating
the desire. And then they package it all together and hand it to you, and you go
to checkout, and that's the D they're making it easy for you to buy. So we see
these ABC rules everywhere around us, and you can use those as examples to improve.
In this example, we even have a CD enclosed. This is an example of a demo
program that's sent on a CD, very common. Sometimes you can download a program and
use it as a demo, or sometimes they have a limited time, one month you can use it.
Here's a little bit of hardware. I think this is a hearing aid to help you hear
more clearly. So again pictures to get your attention,
lists to give you the facts, so the A and then the B, and then showing people how
they're using it and it's useful, creating a desire--yes I would like to
have that too. Then you go ahead and you make it easy to buy, and that's the D.
There is also some dealers saying here's the advantages of buying now, and here's how
we make it easy to buy. So that's a promotion letter. Every company needs to
sell their product or services, and a promotion is a great way to do it. Make
it interesting. Make it exciting, but most importantly make it A, B, C, D. Good luck!