How to Write Copy for an "Upper Scale Demographics"

How to Write Direct Mail Copy

Sometimes you will be asked to write direct mail copy for an upper scale demographics.

This would be a group of highly educated individuals, making above-average income and with evolved tastes. It's a hard-to-please crowd, used to the best of everything. They are doctors, engineers, financiers, world-traveled CEOs. You need to chose your words carefully to win their business.

Here is how FINANCIAL TIMES did it in a magazine subscription letter:

The letter is topped with a Subscription Form that is attached to the main body of the letter with an easy-to-tear perforated line.

And on top of the coupon, in hard-to-miss big bold fonts, is the label:

You see, it is an "act of kindness" extended to you because you are recognized as a "Professional"... how can you say "no" to that?

And the letter is not asking for you to "pay for a subscription" but it only asks for your "Acceptance"... see how gentle the approach is and how it is focused of pampering you from the get go?

Then comes the MAIN BODY of the letter:

Again the word COURTESY is used for the SECOND TIME... subliminal message is: if you do not subscribe it would an NON-COURTEOUS act, and that's bad for a "professional"... The text is set up to force you not to violate your own "professional values" and to be courteous is assumed by the copywriter of this letter to be one such value in your socioeconomic group.

The "professional rate" which sounds "special" is not only discounted but it is DEEPLY discounted... just for you! Don't you already feel to RECIPROCATE by subscribing and balancing the "psychic debt" scale?

The appealed to you twice with COURTESY; discounted the price DEEPLY as an ENTITLEMENT for you. Now all you need to do is RECIPROCATE (by taking out your wallet). Are you going to turn them down?

Continues:

This is an awkward sentence since the clauses are not parallel. The first one starts off with an action verb ("return") but the second one starts with an affirmation ("welcome"). It just does not flow smoothly.

But still it has some key words that push us for action: "Simply" and "acceptance" signal that what we are expected to do is NOT HARD and it is NOT BUYING either. It's ACCEPTANCE. It's as simple as "saying YES." Are we that ANTI-SOCIAL to deny that much ACCEPTANCE to a voice who seem to talking to us from the core of our own value system and socioeconomic group? Wouldn't that feel like rejecting a friend, a family member, a colleague or a neighbor?

Do you see the subliminal guilt trip that this copy unloads on us? That's how good this subscription letter is.

Once you decide who your audience is then you can hone in your message accordingly to fit that "special demographics." FINANCIAL TIMES, read mostly by upper-scale finance and investment professionals, accomplishes that nicely in the subscription letter analyzed above.