Today I received a letter from Newsweek in the mail. It Pertains to renewing our subscription.

It's a really sorry letter no offense, but it's not very motivating to make me want to return as a subscriber . So my question would be is there anything wrong with me writing a new letter? Basically changing this letter making it more compelling, and sending it to them?

I feel that if the letter were more personal maybe people would renew their subscriptions.

Thanks for your time, and thoughts.

April

You or may or may not get any results but,

Nothing will get done if you just think about it. Take action.

In any case your approach is important. How do you plan to present your "solution"?

A.

April,
Andy is right... Go for it.

Even if they don't respond, at least you'll have something to put into your portfolio (have a before/after).

Now, if you're truly serious about Newsweek actually using your letter, you might want to contact them and see how they are creating these sales letters. Are they going in-house (probably the case if it's crapola)?

Another possibility is that they are shooting out different salesletters in a test to see which pulls better... you may have gotten the loser control.

Contact them and tell tem you would like the opportunity to beat their control. See how they respond.

Let us know how it goes, including their response to your calls.

I had the same thoughts about doing this after hearing a radio advertisement for the new Donald Trump protege' program... the ad truly sucks rotten eggs and sounds like it might have been written by Mr Trump, not at all a pro copywriter.

I just recieved a free cd in the mail last week, but only so I could see who they are using for their marketing.

I'm going to check into this and see if it's worth my time to re-word their radio ad... I'll let you know how this plays out.

I'd suggest marking it up, showing them what's wrong. Give them a letter explaining why it's not working, and what you could do to make it work.

But don't tell them how to make it work. Don't rewrite it for them.

It will take too much time for you to do a good rewrite.

And it might not go anywhere.

Or they might use your ideas for free.

You have to sell your services, not give them away for free.

If you can't sell your own copywriting abilities, how are they going to expect you to sell their magazines?

If they see you have time to re-write their letter for free - you'll probably have a hard time getting paid properly, if they were to hire you at all.

That's my opinion - whether it's right or wrong - there it is.

Capture, captivate, convert!

John

Excellent points John!

Although I haven't heard the commercial, I find it easy to believe it's lousy.

But here's what's wrong with the idea of submitting a "better" commercial to the advertiser:

Assuming your evaluation is correct -- that it's a bad commercial -- then your opinion will go either to the person who wrote the spot...or to the person who hired the person who wrote the spot.

To receive a positive response to your contact, either the first person has to think, "By golly, he's right: I AM a lousy copywriter" or the second person has to think, "By golly, he's right: I DID do a lousy job of hiring a copywriter."

My experience in the "real world" of the advertising biz is that neither will happen.

Hell,
I actually thought I would call Donald Trump personally and have him pass on these two magic words to his ad guys...

"You're Fired"

But then I was thinking the reason it sucks is because Donald wrote the ad himself to satisfy his huge ego!

BTW - I really do think he wrote it... he is the one narrating most of the ad.