Business Correspondence Part 36

In the first place, the average woman would know nothing about the financial standing of the house. It is evident that the man who wrote the letter had been handling the correspondence with dealers and firms that necessarily keep posted on the rating of manufacturers. And the way the proposition is stated that "if anything is not right we will make it so" suggests that possibly the suit might not be satisfactory.

But while women are susceptible to flattery there is danger of bungling, of making the effort so conscious that it is offensive.

"Your natural beauty will be enhanced by one of our suits for our cutter understands how to set off a woman's form and features so she is admired wherever she goes." The average woman is disgusted and reads no further.

HOW DIFFERENT ARGUMENTS APPEAL TO WOMEN

Style _Foremost consideration_ Price _Secondary consideration_ Quality _Slight_ Exclusiveness _Valuable_ Service _Minor importance_ Sentiment _Effective_ Flattery _Expedient_ Testimonials _Impressive_ Reputation _Desirable_

Mere cleverness in expression will fall wide of the mark and facetiousness should be strictly avoided. It is better to depend on a very ordinary letter which will have little effect on the reader one way or the other than to offend her by too obvious flattery or an apparent attempt to make capital from a feminine weakness.

Arouse her curiosity--the curiosity of woman is proverbial, and a general store at Nettleton, Mississippi, found a "Cousin Elsie"

letter, mailed at Atlanta, Georgia, to be the most effective advertising it ever sent out, for it aroused the greatest curiosity among the women of Nettleton. Here is a letter just as it was sent out, the name of the recipient filled in on the typewriter:

My Dear Cousin:--

I know you will be surprised to get this letter. I spent such a delightful Winter in California and wished so often that my dear Nettleton kin could be with me.

On my return trip, I met the Wilson Piano Co's Manager. He told me the Nettleton Supply Co. was giving away one of its $400.00 pianos this year in advertising. I do hope that some of my ambitious Cousins will get to work and get it. It will certainly be worth working for.

Then what do you think? The first thing when I came to the office this morning, I made an invoice of the Millinery that the Nettleton Supply Co's buyer had bought of our house and I was certainly surprised to know that such beautiful stuff is sold in a small town like Nettleton. Our salesman said that this is one of the nicest bills that he has sold this season.

I met the buyer and talked with her about all of you and promised to attend the Spring opening. I know it will be one of the best the house has had, as it will have so much pretty stuff to show.

I will have only a day or two and I want to ask you and all my Cousins to meet me at this opening. I am anxious to see you and this will be a good opportunity for us to meet. Don't fail to meet me.

I have lots of work to do and must bring this letter to a close.

With a heart full of love for all the dear old Nettleton folks and an extra lot for you, from,

Your Cousin, Elsie.

P.S.--Don't fail to come to the opening. I will be there if possible. Miss Smiley will let you know when to come. Buy a pair of Peters' shoes this Spring; you will never regret it.

Such letters could not be used very often but occasionally they are immensely effective. "Mrs. Elliott's troubles and how they were cured" have become famous in some parts of the country. Written in long hand, they bore every resemblance to a social letter from a lady to some old neighbor and told how many of her housekeeping troubles had been ended by using a certain kind of furniture polish.

The letters were written in such a chatty style that they were read through and pa.s.sed around to other members of the family.

My dear:

I know you will be surprised to hear from me and I may as well confess that I am not altogether disinterested in writing you at this time but I am glad to say that the duty imposed upon me is a pleasure as well.

You know some time ago after I had painted my floors, I wrote the company whose paint I used and they put my experiences in the form of a little booklet ent.i.tled "Mrs. Elliot's Troubles."

_This is the first page of a facsimile hand-written letter that proved highly successful as it appealed to feminine curiosity and insured careful reading_

The appeal to women must hover around her love of style and her desire for economy. Bring in either subject deftly at the beginning of a letter and she will be an interested reader of all the sales talk that follows.

Several mail-order houses have trained women to handle this part of their correspondence for they are more apt in the use of feminine expressions. Let a man try to describe some article as "perfectly splendid," or "really sweet" and he will stumble over it before he gets to the end of the sentence. Yet when these same hackneyed phrases are brought in naturally by a woman who "feels just that way" about the garment she is describing, they will take hold of the reader in a way that is beyond the understanding of the masculine mind.

In the appeal to women there is more in this tinge of off-hand refinement, the atmosphere, the enthusiasm shown and in the little personal touches, than in formidable arguments and logical reasons.

What is triviality to a man is frequently the clinching statement with a woman. And so a fixed set of rules can not be formulated for writing letters to women. Instead of a hard and fast rule, the correspondent must have in mind the ideas and the features that naturally appeal to the feminine mind and use them judiciously.

Dear Madam:

This mail is bringing to you a copy of our new catalogue, describing our complete line of Hawkeye Kitchen Cabinets.

The catalogue will tell you how you can do your kitchen work in half the usual time.

It will tell you how to save your strength, time, and energy--how to relieve yourself of the burden of kitchen drudgery.

Aren't these things worth looking into?

Just try counting the unnecessary steps you take in preparing your next meal. Calculate the time you lose in looking for articles that should be at your fingers' ends but are not.

Imagine, if you can, what it would save you if you could do away with your pantry, kitchen table, and cupboard and get all the articles needed in the preparation of a meal in one complete well-ordered piece of furniture that could be placed between the range and sink, so you could reach almost from one to the other.

Think of the steps it would save you.

Imagine a piece of furniture containing special places for everything--from the egg beater to the largest kitchen utensil--a piece of furniture that would arrange your provisions and utensils in such a systematic way that you could (in the dark) find almost anything you wanted.

If you can draw in your mind a picture of such a piece of furniture, you will have some idea of what a Buckeye Kitchen Cabinet is like.

How, don't you want one of these automatic servants? Don't you think you need it?

If so, send for one NOW. Don't put it off a single day. You have been without it too long already.

It doesn't cost much to get a Hawkeye. If you don't care to pay cash, you can buy on such easy payments that you will never miss the money--only five cents a day for a few months. You would think nothing of paying five cents a day street-car fare to keep from walking a few blocks in the pure air and suns.h.i.+ne, yet you are walking miles in your kitchen when one streetcar fare a day for a few months would do away with it.

Send your order right along and use the Cabinet thirty days. If it doesn't do what we say it will, or if you do not consider that it is more than worth the money, send it back at our expense and we will refund whatever you have paid. That's fair, isn't it?

We pay freight on all-cash orders

Yours truly, [Signature: Adams & Adams]

_This letter is written in an easy, natural style, which is aided by the short paragraphs. The appeal to the imagination is skillful, and the homely ill.u.s.tration of the car-fare well chosen. The closing is in keeping with the general quality of the letter and was undoubtedly effective. This letter is a longer one than the man would read about a kitchen cabinet, but there are not too many details for women readers_