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BARRON'S "WIDOW & ORPHANS" LETTER
Another direct mail letter that proved unbeatable in test after test for dozens of years is the
"Widow and Orphans" letter used by Barron's financial weekly. Although the statistics needed to
be changed from time to time, the storytelling opening is a classic:
Back in 1925, Barron's published an article suggesting how
$100,000 might be well invested in securities for a widow with two
small children.
The plan was based on a set of ten rules for investors, stated in the
article.
The securities (stock and bonds), all picked in accordance with the
first seven of the ten rules, are today worth $379,002.
The stocks are worth $330,364 — many times over their original
value of $51,000.
Average annual income, for the entire forty-nine years, has exceeded
$11,200.
Latest reported income was $21,556.
So here you have to date how a list of securities, compiled in the
third year of Calvin Coolidge's presidency, weathered the wild twenties,
the woeful thirties, World War II, and the 1969-1971 market
plunge — yet without benefit of the important interim supervision
provided for in the last three of the original ten rules.
The letter goes on to offer a booklet reprinting the ten rules as an incentive to order a trial subscription.
As a general rule, booklets aren't particularly powerful as a premium. But with such a
powerful letter opening, hundreds of thousands of new subscribers have eagerly sought the
Barron's booklet.
www.greatestsalesletters.com - 55 -