Interview with Josh Manheimer, Writer of (Several of) The World’s Greatest Direct Mail Sales Letters

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Today I’m interviewing direct mail superstar Josh Manheimer.

The books The World’s Greatest Direct Mail Sales Letters and Million Dollar Mailings feature Josh’s sales letters.  Need I say more?

I’m also impressed Josh brings an element of FUN to his copywriting.  Internet marketing educator Ken McCarthy once described copywriting as the art and science of transmitting emotions to the reader.  Reading his copy, you can just feel Josh is having fun writing it, which makes it fun for you the reader.

Read on for the interview…

RYAN:  How did you get started in direct marketing? Who were some of your top influences and mentors in the business?

JOSH: I started as a publicist writing funny letters and getting my clients press attention.  One letter, for a company that made fudge sauce and salad dressing, was sent to a magazine called New England Monthly.  Apparently, the food editor was laughing hysterically when the Circulation Director walked by.  He called me up and asked if I would write their next subscription solicitation.  I said “sure.”

At that time, I was working with a graphic designer named David Wise who know a lot about direct mail.  So I asked him if he would help me.  Our package did great and we were off.

Over the next 10 or 15 years, Manheimer and Wise created some of the most successful packages in the history of direct response marketing — mostly for clients in publishing.

David passed away a few years ago, and now I work with a bunch of talented direct mail designers.  But David was brilliant.  There was no such thing as type that was too large.

When I was starting out, I spent a lot of time upside down in the dumpster outside our local post office, reading copy by Bill Jayme, Ken Sheck, Judy Weiss, Linda Wells, Hank Burnett.

Today, Richard Armstrong is the copywriter I admire and would hire.

RYAN: Can you tell me a little more about your agency and what you do for clients?

JOSH: I provide creative — copy and design — for direct mail packages in publishing, insurance, credit cards, crafts, software … you name it.  I’ve also gotten into creating landing pages, websites, emails, and some political stuff.

RYAN: Why do you think most companies prefer general/image/brand advertising versus direct response?

JOSH: I don’t really know much about the other side of the business.  Frankly, now with Google AdWords and landing pages, everyone is turning into a direct marketer.

RYAN:  How much do you leverage direct response techniques in getting publicity?

JOSH: Publicity for my clients?  I will use letters and often include a reply form with an action device for them to return. Example: Including a plastic spoon for some fudge sauce…

RYAN: If you could summarize one secret to creating a control in direct mail, what would it be?

JOSH: There is no one secret.  You have to assemble hundreds of secrets, and they’re not secret.  Just study the masters.

RYAN:  Do you have any advice for starting a sales letter, i.e. the lead, or the first sentence after the salutation?

JOSH: Ideally, you want the letter to capture the tone of the product.  Since I often sell magazines, a letter to readers of MORE magazine — for women over 40 — sounds a lot different than a letter to the readers of Popular Mechanics.  You need to get people nodding their heads.  That means speaking in the language and vernacular they understand and respond to.

RYAN: For someone looking at a career in direct marketing, what advice would you offer?

JOSH: Which end of direct marketing?  A lot of copywriters have backgrounds in theater — no surprise there.  You have to be able to get inside someone’s head.  If you want to play with spreadsheets, well, learn Excel.

RYAN: How much do best practices in direct mail translate to Internet marketing (landing pages, websites, etc.)?

JOSH: The web is still evolving, so I’m not sure you can make any fast rules just yet.  But it does seem that sites with personality … that express an offer simply … that give you several paths to find your own way at your own pace … do well.

RYAN: Where can people go to learn more about you?

JOSH: Visit me at www.directmailcopy.com.

RYAN: Thank you Josh. And I encourage all of you to visit www.directmailcopy.com to learn more about Josh and read some of his samples he’s got up on his site.

Interview with Denny Hatch, The Method Marketing Man

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Today I’m sharing an interview with Denny Hatch.

If you don’t know Denny, he’s one of THE experts in direct mail. How much of an expert? Well, he used to read and analyze 3,000 to 4,000 direct mail packages a month!

I was blown away by his book, Method Marketing. If you haven’t yet read it, you need to. It’s a classic. Not only does it cover the psychology of effective direct marketing, it also tells the origin stories of two companies famous for direct mail: Agora Publishing and Boardroom, Inc.

Here’s the interview:

RYAN: What is the origin story of Method Marketing? Where did you get the idea to write the book?

DENNY: After spending years of collecting, studying, analyzing and writing about direct mail for my newsletter, “WHO’S MAILING WHAT!” I wanted to understand what made for a control-a mailing that kept coming in month-after-month, sometimes for years. Here was a perfect stranger engaging another perfect stranger with such powerful copy and design that the reader becomes convinced to become a customer or donor. How was this possible?

The answer, of course, is research-with the writer becoming intimately familiar with the product or service being offered and studying the list being rented and (ideally) other mailings that the prospect responded to previously. In short, getting to know the prospect.

Rewind to 1950 and 1952 when I was an apprentice at the Ivoryton Playhouse, a summer theater in Connecticut and was able to study actors at work close-hand and actually talk to some of them. Among them: Cedric Hardwick, Carol Channing, Marlon Brando, Joan Bennett as well as many second bananas.

It was there that I first learned of Constantin Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theater where he developed the concept of Method Acting – actually becoming the character you are playing. This concept was, of course, taught at the Actor’s Studio In New York founded in 1947 where Lee Strasberg, Harold Clurman and Stella Adler picked up on Stanislavsky and taught the likes of Anne Bancroft, Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson and scores more.

Method Acting and Method Marketing came together in my head and resulted in the book.

RYAN: In today’s world of Internet Marketing and Twitter, do you feel Method Marketing holds up as relevant?

DENNY: I believe the concept of Method Marking will hold up just fine. The great copywriter John Caples said, “Times change; people don’t.”

What will not hold unless its management figures out how to monetize it: A recent survey (Pew, I think) asked Twitter users if they would pay to subscribe to the website and to a person, they said they would not pony up money. I think the demise of Twitter is just a matter of time. The business model is right out of the dot-com bust of the late 1990s where the cry was, “We are attracting eyeballs!” In the words of the great entrepreneur Bill Bonner of Agora Publishing, “The only bank that takes eyeballs is the eye bank.”

Will Facebook crash and burn also? My bet is yes.

RYAN: One of themes I picked up is how profitable it is for copywriters to transform themselves from service-providers to business-owners, such as Bill Bonner did with Agora.  Do you have any advice for copywriters aspiring to take the leap into starting a real company?

DENNY: Bonner had serious ups and downs until he wrote a direct mail package for a newsletter that did not exist (a dry test). The newsletter was International Living. Prospects read the copy and signed up in droves. Bonner published it and became the foundation for the sprawling Agora empire.

Could a copywriter do likewise today?

Sure. You test and see what happens.

RYAN:  What are your thoughts about learning direct response from courses, versus learning by taking action and putting it into practice?

DENNY: In the 1960s, Grolier Enterprises was run by four dynamos: founder Elsworth Howell, whose real love was judging dog shows; VP Bob Clarke, who started in the Grolier mail room; Ed Bakal, a rough-hewn ex-paratrooper; and Lew Smith, a brilliant, low-key creative genius.

Grolier’s business at the time was selling Dr. Seuss books to kids. The competition was Weekly Reader Book Club and Scholastic’s paperback book clubs, which sold books to students in classrooms through the teacher.

Using the Scholastic paperback model, a guy named Joe Archy started the Willie Whale Book Club. Elsworth (“The Shark”) Howell watched it grow and told Archy he was interested in buying Willie Whale. They signed confidentiality agreements and, stupidly, Archy laid out his entire business plan and results for Grolier to see. Whereupon Howell told Joe Archy that he had decided not to buy Willie Whale and started the Peter Possum book club offering children’s paperback books. Archy sued and lost.

I was Peter Possum.

Brand new to direct marketing, I was handed the book club to start from scratch and run. The only ground rules: All titles had to be 64 pages and in the public domain – Howell was not about to pay royalties. They could, however, be in full color.

I was expected to do everything – find royalty free books, put them into production, write and design the mailing pieces, work with the list people, figure out keys with production wizard Mike Chomko, count orders (if any) and tally up money.

A direct mail virgin, I charged forth. Every time I found myself in over my head I would yell for help and one of the four partners would immediately clear his desk, sit me down and talk me through the problem. I can say it was the greatest job I ever had, and I earned what had to be the equivalent of an MBA in book club management in three months.

RYAN: You didn’t mince any words with your analysis of The Teaching Company or Absolut Vodka. Do you know if anyone at those companies read your book? Or did you get any response from them regarding your analysis?

DENNY: I’m sure if either of them did, they didn’t give a damn—nor do I.

RYAN: Other than working directly with Agora, Boardroom or J. Peterman, what’s fastest easiest way for someone to learn how to become a Method Marketer?

DENNY: The best way for newbies to learn the business is by apprenticing at a direct marking company or agency and volunteering to do anything and everything that is hurled at them—especially the jobs nobody else wants.   “Whoever knows only one direct marketing skill, whether it’s art direction, copywriting or list management, does not even know that properly,” said freelancer Martin Gross.

If jobs are scarce, find a product, do the arithmetic and do a small test in space, mail or email and see what happens. This is how Lillian Vernon and Richard Thalheimer of Sharper Image started.

RYAN: What’s next with Denny Hatch? Any new books in the works?

DENNY: Newest book out this past June: “The Secrets of Emotional, Hot-Button Copywriting.” See dennyhatch.com for details.

Finished and ready for publications is A TREASURY OF TAKEAWAYS: Quotations, Rules, Aphorisms, Pithy Tips, Quips, Sage Advice, Secrets, Dictums and Truisms in 98 Categories of Marketing, Business and Life.”

I am currently working on “WRITE IT RIGHT: What Authors can learn from the Great Copywriters.

RYAN: Where can people go to learn more about Method Marketing or your other books?

DENNY: You are invited to visit DennyHatch.com, BusinessCommonSense.com or e-mail me directly at dennyhatch@yahoo.com. I answer all e-mails.

RYAN: Thank you Denny for these valuable insights! These are worth money in the bank.

Interview with Copywriter/Novelist Richard Armstrong

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With two kids in diapers at home, it’s hard to sit down and read fiction.  Non-fiction can be justified; after all, you’re learning something useful.

But reading… for entertainment? Are you crazy? I’ve got diapers to change…

A few months ago, I was blessed enough to stumble upon a novel which is both highly educational – and watch out – wildly entertaining.

Oh, here’s the kicker: It’s about direct response copywriting.  As well as how to steal an airplane, the mysteries of the universe and how to win comps in Vegas.

Seriously.

The novel:  God Doesn’t Shoot Craps by Richard Armstrong.  Richard is a top direct mail copywriter, having written packages for Rodale Press, National Review, The Limbaugh Letter, Phillips Publishing, and many others.  So when it comes to copywriting, he’s the real deal.

I recently had a chance to interview Richard about his novel.

And here it is….

RYAN: You’re well known as a top direct-mail copywriter.  What inspired you to try your hand at writing fiction?

RICHARD:  I really don’t know!  I’d never tried writing fiction before.  No novels.  No short stories.  No screenplays.  In retrospect, I think it was the power of the story itself that compelled me to write it.  Once the idea took shape in my mind, it had to come out.  I called the direct-mail client I was working for at the time, told them my grandmother had died or something (she’d been dead for years), sat down at my keyboard, and wrote the whole enchilada in about 3 weeks.

RYAN: What is the origin of the story of “God Doesn’t Shoot Craps?”  Was there a single genesis of the idea?

RICHARD: My old friend and colleague, Bob Bly, is in the habit of sending magazine and newspaper clippings to his friends and clients if he knows the topic is of interest to them.  Both my wife and I have received dozens of these clippings from Bob over the years, always marked “FYI-BLY.”

One day, Bob sent me an article clipped from a scientific journal about a new mathematical theory called “Parrondo’s Paradox.”  The theory states that, under certain circumstances, two losing gambling games can be combined in such a way that they yield a winning outcome.  I thought to myself, “Wow, this might make a terrific craps system!”  Then I thought, wait, it might make an even better novel.

RYAN: So how much of this novel is “based on a true story.”  Do you play craps?  Are you a pilot?  Attend a church?  Visit Vegas often?

RICHARD: All of the above.  Avid craps player.  Student pilot.  Regular church-goer (well, not as regular as I should be).  And I used to visit Vegas all the time until it became so crowded that I couldn’t get a cab or a dinner reservation.  But I still go to Atlantic City quite often.  Atlantic City has an even more colorful past than Las Vegas does, as people are finally beginning to realize thanks to the new television show, “Boardwalk Empire.”

RYAN: Telling a great story is important in direct mail.  Do you have any suggestions to help copywriters with their storytelling?

RICHARD: I’ve always been a big believer in using first-person narrative leads in direct-mail copy.  For a while, the technique was falling out of favor and sometimes it seemed like there were only a few of us still doing it.  (Check out Josh Mannheimer’s work if you get a chance; he’s a wiz at it.)  But recently, I’ve noticed more and more copywriters trying it.

My advice to fellow copywriters would be to write your copy in the first person whenever possible.  Try the product yourself and tell the reader a story about your own experience with it.  That’s the easiest way to do it and probably the most effective.

RYAN: What’s next for “God Doesn’t Shoot Craps?”  Any interest from Hollywood on optioning it for a movie?

RICHARD: Already done!  It was optioned by the producers of the musical comedy “Xanadu,” which was a big hit on Broadway a few years ago.  Of course the chances of it actually making it to the silver screen are rather remote.  But the producers do send me a check every 18 months.  Believe it or not, I’ve now made more money from “Hollywood” than I have from the book itself!

RYAN: What’s next with Richard Armstrong?  Are you still writing copy?  Writing fiction?

RICHARD: Still writing copy every day.  I wrote another novel, too, but I’m having a hard time finding a publisher for it.  It’s about a young actor who isn’t having much success until he gets involved with a diabolical religious cult.  Suddenly he starts to have a lot of success … and a lot of problems.  I think it’s great, but so far the publishing industry has been somewhat less impressed.

RYAN: Where can people go to learn more about “God Doesn’t Shoot Craps” or about your copywriting?

RICHARD: If you’re interested in buying God Doesn’t Shoot Craps, you can get it on Amazon.  But first go to the website www.goddoesntshootcraps.com and find out how to get all sorts of free gifts for copywriters.

If you’re interested in my peculiar career as a copywriter, go to www.freesamplebook.com and download the free booklet, “My First 40 Years in Junk Mail!”  It’s all about my trials and tribs trying to get started in this business, making a name for myself, and how I gradually learned to write decent copy.  Plus I’ve sprinkled a few of my direct-mail samples in there, too.

RYAN: Thank you Richard! And do visit the websites Richard mentioned. You’ll thank me later.

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