By Claude C. Hopkins and Troy S. Laughren

© 2005 Troy S. Laughren All Rights Reserved
No part of this 2005 version May be reproduced in any form.

The harshest test of an advertising person is selling goods by mail.  But that is a school from which he must graduate before he can hope for success.  There cost and results are immediately apparent and false theories melt away like snowflakes in the sun. The advertising is either profitable or it is not, clearly on the face of returns.  Figures, which do not lie, tell one at once the merits of an advertisement.

This tests men on their courage.  All guesswork is eliminated and every mistake is made obvious.  One quickly loses his overconfidence by learning how often his judgment is in error - often nine times out of ten.

With mail order one learns that advertising must be done on a scientific basis to have any fair chance of success and he learns that every wasted dollar adds to the cost of results.

Additionally one learns to be efficient and profits or loses under a master who can't be fooled, thus is the harsh reality of the mail order business.  Then, and only then, is he apt to apply the same principles and baselines to all advertising.

A man was selling a five-dollar product.  The replies from his first ad cost him 85 cents each.  Another man submitted an ad which he thought was better, the replies cost $14.20 each and yet another man submitted an ad which for two strait years brought replies in at an average of 41 cents each.

Now consider the difference of 250,000 replies a year.  Just think how valuable that person was who cut the cost of the advertisement in half.  What would it have cost this company to continue using that $14.20 ad without first finding a baseline on the return?

Yet thousands of advertisers do just that everyday.  They spend large sums on a guess.  And they are doing what that man did - paying for sales from 2 to 35 times what they need cost.

The study of mail order advertising reveals many things worth learning.  It is a prime subject for study.  You quickly learn what pays and what does not.

The probability is that the final ad has resulted from many traced comparisons.  It is therefore the best advertising, not theoretical and will not deceive you.  The lessons it teaches are principles which wise men and woman apply to all advertising.

Mail order advertising is always set in small type.  It is usually set in smaller type than ordinary print.  That economy of space is universal.  So it proves conclusively that larger type does not pay.

Remember that when you double your ad space by doubling the size of your type.  The ad may still be profitable.  But traced returns have proved that you are paying a double price for sales.

In mail order advertising there is no wasted space, every line is utilized and borders are rarely used.  Remember that when you are tempted to leave valuable space unoccupied.

In mail order advertising there is no chitchat.  There is no boasting, except of super-service.  There is no useless talk.  There is no attempt to entertain.  There is nothing to amuse.

Mail order advertising usually contains a coupon to be cut out as a reminder of something the reader has decided to do.

Mail order advertisers know that readers forget.  They are reading a magazine of interest and may be absorbed by a story, or another article catches their attention and they move on, forgetting your advertisement. A large percentage of people who read the ad and decide to act will forget that decision within five seconds if something else catches their attention.  The mail order advertiser knows that waste by his many tests and does not accept it.  So he inserts a coupon to be cut out, making it more easily accessible when the reader is ready to act.

In mail order advertising the pictures are always to the point.  They are salesmen in themselves.  They earn the space they occupy and the size is gauged by their importance.  The picture of a beautiful ladies gown may occupy much space.  Less important things occupy smaller spaces.

Pictures in ordinary advertising often teach little and probably resulted from a whim.  Pictures in mail order advertising may form half the cost of selling.  And you may be sure that everything about them has been decided by many comparative tests.

Before you use meaningless or useless pictures, merely to decorate or for interests’ sake, look over some mail order ads and see for yourself the type of pictures that are used.

Look over ads that have appeared again and again for they have proven their worth.

A person advertised an incubator to be sold by mail.  Type ads with right headlines brought excellent returns.  But he conceived the idea that a striking picture would increase those returns.  So he increased his space 50 per cent to add a row of chickens in silhouette.

It did make a striking ad, but his cost per reply increased by exactly that 50 per cent.  The new ad, costing 50% more for every insertion, brought not one added sale.

That person learned that incubator buyers were practical people. They were looking for attractive offers, not attractive pictures.

Think of the countless untraced campaigns that have existed where a whim of that kind cost half the advertising money all without a penny in return. And all too often it goes on year after year.

Mail order advertising tells a complete story if the purpose is to make an immediate sale.  You see no limitations on the amount of sales copy that is used.

The motto therefore is, "The more you tell the more you sell." And it has never failed in any test we know.

Sometimes the advertiser uses small ads, sometimes large ads. None are too small to tell a reasonable story.  But an ad twice larger brings twice the returns.  A four-times-larger ad brings four times the returns, and usually some in addition.

But this occurs only when the larger space is utilized as well as the small space.  Set a half-page copy in a full page space and you double the cost.  We have seen many a test prove just that.

Look at an ad of the Mead Cycle Company - a typical mail order ad.  These have been running for many years.  The ads are unchanging.  Mr. Mead told the writer that not for $10,000 would he change a single word in his ads.

For many years he compared one ad with the other.  And the ads you see today are the final results of all those experiments.  Note the picture he uses, the headlines, the economy of space, the small type.  Those ads are as near perfect for their purpose as an ad can be.

So with any other mail order ad which has long continued. Every feature, every word and picture teaches advertising at its best.  You may not like them.  You may say they are unattractive, crowded, hard to read - anything you will.  But the test of results has proved those ads the best salesperson those products have yet discovered.  And they certainly pay.

Mail order advertising is the court of last resort.  You may get the same instruction, if you will, by keying or base lining other ads.  Mail order ads are models.  They are selling products profitably using a difficult system to master.  It is far harder to get mail orders’ than to send buyers to stores.  It is hard to sell goods which can't be seen.  Ads which do that are excellent examples of what advertising should be.

We do not often follow all the principle of mail order advertising, though we know we should.  The advertiser forces a compromise.  Perhaps pride in our ads has an influence.  But every departure from those principles adds to our selling cost. Therefore it is always a question of what we are willing to pay for our frivolities.

We can at least know what we pay.  We can make baseline comparisons, one ad against another.  Whenever we do we invariably find that the nearer we get to proven mail order copy the more customers we get for our money.

This is another important chapter.  Think it over.  What real difference is there between inducing a customer to order by mail or ordering from his dealer? Why should the methods of salesmanship differ?

They should not.   When they do, it is for one of two reasons.  Either the advertiser does not know what the mail order advertiser knows and is advertising blindly.  Or he is deliberately sacrificing a percentage of his returns to gratify some internal desire.

There is some apology for that, just as there is for expensive office buildings.  Most of us can afford to do something for pride and opinion.  But let us be aware of what we are doing.  Let us understand the cost of our pride.  Then, if our advertising fails to bring us the wanted returns, let us go back to our model - a good mail order ad model - and eliminate the pride, the waste.