When creating headlines for your direct mail piece, it must sell your product or service, or you’ve wasted the majority of your investment.
The job of a headline is to grab attention, appeal to the reader, communicate benefits, and introduce you immediately. The headline should motivate, regardless of whether it generates excitement or fear; as long as it generates some emotion that motivates the reader to continue reading; it’s doing its job. Headlines are the first, and often the only, impression you have to make on a prospect.
There are many techniques to writing headlines, but they usually come back to copy that focuses on the benefit(s) that you offer that no one else does; your competitive advantage.
Here are some tips for a more compelling and stronger headline:
• Think of your headlines as being news.
• Use words that sound important and valuable.
• Use quotation marks around the headlines.
• Use upper and lower case letters; not caps.
• Use benefit- and action-oriented words.
• Be extreme and outrageous yet compelling.
• Pique curiosity.
• Move the reader to the body copy.
• Reveal mistakes.
• Be short and sweet in the number of words in your headline.
• Use numbers to quantify your promise and to convince and emphasize.
• Highlight an advantage.
• Make an appeal to an emotion.
• Make a comparison.
• Reveal a secret or insider information.
• Relate to your products or services.
• Ask a question.
• Identify your prospect’s biggest challenge or area of pleasure, and address it.
• Make a promise or recommendation that addresses challenge or desire.
• Use emotional motivators.
• Converse with the prospect in a one-on-one conversational tone.
