The danger of sending the wrong paragraphs is lessened by examiners. It has been found that less than one-half of one per cent of letters that are picked are inaccurate or incomplete. Each picker addresses the envelop for each of her letters as well as the en velops for any printed matter that is to go with it. Thus one girl does all the work needed for one letter. This seems to be the highest possible development of the form-paragraph system.
Even if the "slip" system did not result in a bet ter letter, as it does for this concern, the big difference between the cost of a letter produced by this method and that of a typed-from-dictation letter might com mend its use, especially to a big house that has a large volume of correspondence.
7. Knowledge of mailing list.—The mailing list is the basis of direct advertising. Like the evolution of an efficient form-paragraph system, the development of an efficient mailing list takes time. One man's "mailing-list creed" reads as follows: "Every possi ble customer not on my list represents a leak in my future profits, and every name on my list which is not that of a possible customer represents a leak in my present advertising expense." It is decidedly advisable to know a great deal about a list of names before sending out letters and printed matter. One concern requires the correspondent to answer the following set of questions before he circu larizes any part of a big general list of prospective purchasers : What is the origin of the list, especially that part of it to be circularized? How many names are on it? What territory does it cover? How are the names distributed, territorially? What distinct classes of people does the list include? What percentage is each class of the total names listed? What are the chief characteristics of each class? Should not the appeal to each class differ? If so, how? If not, why not? What are the chief interests of a typical person in each class? What are the chief resistances of each class to your propo sition? Is your knowledge of each class accurate? These questions serve to impress the writer with the fact that he is writing to individuals in classes and not merely to a general class of persons. Frequently the writer sees that it is advisable to get out several editions of a letter, each edition especially adapted to one of the classes represented on the list. For ex
ample, the International Harvester Company got out three tractor letters to three classes of farmers : Eastern farmers, Western farmers, and Middle Western farmers. The value of the tractor for use in farming large tracts of land was emphasized in the letter to farmers; the variety of uses to which it could be put was emphasized in the letter sent to Eastern farmers, and so on. The "reader's point of view" is the principle underlying this kind of adaptation.
8. arrangements as an aid in mailing follow-up letters at the right time are well known. For some reason, many concerns de cide that their prospects are to be given a ten-day or a twenty-day follow-up, as the case may be, and a corn plicated scheme is worked out whereby an inquiry re ceived on the fifth of the month, for example, will, without fail, receive a follow-up letter on the fifteenth, twenty-fifth, and so on. One executive who had charge of follow-ups in an office-appliance manufac turing business decided that such a system wasted time. His clerk had to go thru the entire follow-up file every day and pull out the few cards that had the names of those due for follow-up, and then return them to the file. He had to perform this operation every day. In this system no care was exercised con cerning the days on which follow-up letters would reach the prospect. And this, notwithstanding the fact that it was advisable to send out mailings the first of the week so that the letters would reach the pros pects about Thursday or Friday, not on Saturday, when the man had gone to the country or was doing a day's work in a morning, or on Monday or Tuesday, which are big days for incoming mail of all sorts.
This executive now has an active inquiry file; each person on the list gets a follow-up series of about five different pieces, one each week. On Monday the clerk prepares the follow-up. Every one on the list receives a letter. The list is classified in order that each person may receive the right letter. It is much easier for the clerk to separate the names according to the series, or the number of the letter in the series, than to go completely thru the file every day. All the follow-ups then go out on Tuesday or Wednesday.