Again thanking you for this order, and trusting that we may be allowed to serve you again, we are Yours very truly, From the reader's point of view, this letter lacks freshness of thought and expression. It has a sing song tone. In a similar case another correspondent wrote as follows: Dear Sir:— Your order, dated September 10th, is being carefully and quickly filled, and ought to be on its way to Peoria by American Express this evening.
We thank you for this order and are looking forward to the pleasure of serving you again soon.
Very truly yours, This letter has the right tone. It is definite and illustrates the economic use of words. It shows bet ter salesmanship.
The first letter, altho it does not say as much, uses about twice as many words. It fails to give that im pression of action which is so essential if the customer is to be convinced that he is being served effi ciently.
The conclusion of the second letter, "We thank you for this order and are looking forward to the pleasure of serving you again soon," suggests that the corre spondent knows that his house has done its work satis factorily.
The mention of the addressee's town gives this let ter a definite touch of individuality. With the' ex ception of the name of his own concern and his own name, a successful business man likes best to hear the name of his own town. This letter, tho economical of words, is natural in expression. Thus, nearly all the chief characteristics of an effective letter might be found in this "routine" letter.
6. Case of a delayed following let ter is another example of the mistake of overdoing an impression. It was sent to a business man who wrote about his order for a book that did not arrive within three days after be had received a letter acknowl edging his order and informing him that the book had been sent.
Dear Sir: We are indeed deeply sorry to learn from your letter of the 18th that you, up to that time, had not received the copy of Rider's "Freedom" which we sent you.
The book was temporarily out of stock, however, and was not shipped until two or three days after our letter of the 8th was mailed to you. The book was forwarded as soon as a new supply was received from the binders, and should have reached you by this time.
If it has not come to hand, let us know, and we will be glad to send you a duplicate copy.
Regretting the inconvenience that you have undoubtedly been caused, we are Very truly yours, The addressee gained a distinctly unfavorable im pression of this publishing house from the letter, which somewhat overdoes its attempt to impress the reader with the depth of sorrow the house feels for the inconvenience he has "undoubtedly been caused."
"When one considers that this letter was about three times as long as necessary and had a weeping tone, and that the addressee must read it carefully in order to find out when his book will arrive, or whether it will arrive at all, it is a safe forecast that any adver tising literature sent from that publishing house to this man—in the near future, at least—will be bur dened with a handicap hard to overcome.
7. Right kind of letter.—From the addressee's point of view the following letter would have been more effective for, judging by his letter, the customer was obviously' a good business man: Dear Sir: Your copy of Rider's "Freedom" ought to reach you in a day or so. The fact that this book was temporarily out of stock caused the delay, which we regret. Your orders will always receive prompt attention.
We hope this delay has not caused you much incon venience.
Yours very truly, This letter tells first what the reader most wants to know, and then explains, the cause of the delay. It gives the impression, in a straightforward way, that the writer genuinely regrets any inconvenience which the delay may have caused. This letter, moreover, in eludes one sentence that shows exceptionally good salesmanship, without any suggestion of apology: "Your orders will always receive prompt attention." That is the correspondent's way of telling the reader that his order was filled as promptly as possible, and at the same time it carries assurance that future or ders will have prompt attention.
8. Risk in following rules.—Why did the writer of the longer letter quoted in the preceding section mention his former letter notwithstanding the fact that its mention would only serve to cause the reader to remember that it had given him a false impression of the time when the book would arrive? Also, why did he mention the date of the letters to which his letter is a reply? He was under the impression that it is always necessary to refer to the date of all let ters directly connected with the subject matter of any letter that is written. He read that rule some where. Therefore it was his custom always to men tion at the beginning of a letter the dates or num bers of any preceding letters. But in this case it was not necessary to remind the addressee that he had been put to the trouble of writing a follow-up on his order.