Page 81 - 100 Great Copywriting Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

34 SEND YOUR COPY BY
COURIER

No salesperson, once he’s discovered a sales secret, will ignore it.
He’ll take up golf, if that’s the game clients like to play. He’ll buy
them tickets to the opera, even if Speed Metal’s more his thing.
He’ll wear dark suits, if that’s what makes the cash register ring.

So what’s going on with marketeers? They will cheerfully ignore
sales secrets, preferring instead to rely on “intuition,” personal
taste, or guesswork. The secret I have in mind is, to some eyes, a
bit boring. Nerdy even. It has to do with typefaces. One in particular:
Courier.

The idea

From Everest, a home improvement company
I receive regular mailings from Everest, inviting me to buy their
double glazing. I already have double glazing, so I don’t respond. But
I notice they always set their letters in Courier. And that means their
mailings are hugely more profitable than those of their competitors
who use more fashionable typefaces.

Put simply, if you use a serif typeface—like Courier or Times
Roman—for body copy, people are five times more likely to
understand it thoroughly than if you set it in a sans-serif face like
Arial. If you mailshot 10,000 people with a letter set in Arial, it’s
like throwing 8,000 on the fire yourself. Yet despite the research,
this is exactly what happens every day of the week, as well-meaning
but dim companies send out mailings in typefaces that they just
think look nice.

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