Someone once tried to tease the tall and lanky Abraham Lincoln by asking him how long a man’s legs should be. With scarcely a moment’s thought, Lincoln fired back with a reply that probably answered the question for all time:
“Long enough to reach the ground.”
Perhaps the most commonly asked question in the world of direct marketing is how long a direct-mail letter should be. And the typical response to this question is some variation on Lincoln’s tautology: “Long enough to do the job” … “Long enough to tell the story” … “Long enough to sell the product.” Or my personal favorite: “Long enough to reach the customer’s wallet.”
Amusing, yes. But not much help if you’re really looking for an answer.
Implicit in this question – especially when it’s asked by people outside of or new to the business – is a certain skepticism about whether long letters really work. “Why do direct-mail letters have to be so darn long?” is what I’m often asked at cocktail parties when I’ve told someone what I do for a living. Clients who are new to direct marketing usually don’t pose it in terms of a question. They tend to make flat-out pronouncements: “People don’t read long letters,” they insist, or, “Long letters don’t work.”
Well, maybe people don’t read them. But they definitely do work.
When I first started in this business in the mid-1970s, the vast majority of direct-mail letters were one or two pages long. Back in those days, when I got about halfway down the second page of a letter in my typewriter, I’d hit something equivalent to what marathon runners call “The Wall.” I couldn’t write a three-page letter if my life depended on it. But nowadays, I can’t even say hello in less than three pages. The notes I leave to my wife about being out of cornflakes can run to eight pages or more.

Based on casual observation, I would say that the average length of a direct-mail letter these days is six pages, with many going to eight, ten, or even twelve pages in length. (I’m not even talking about magalogs, which can run into dozens of pages long.)
What caused the change?

Well, somewhere along the line, direct marketers discovered that longer letters generally work better than shorter ones. Perhaps the key moment was in 1972 when Tom Collins wrote a letter for the “McGovern for President” campaign that ran over seven pages in length.

At the time, political fundraisers considered one-page letters to be bsolutely sacred. Even commercial direct-mailers were unaccustomed to mailing letters more than two pages long. But the enormous success of the McGovern direct-mail campaign ($16 million in less than a year) began to open everyone’s eyes to the possibility that long letters might pull better than short ones.
Why?
Well, like so many things in this business, it’s one of those facts that we know to be true without fully understanding why it’s true. But there are some theories – the best of which is one I call the theory of “Readership vs. Response.”
When people tell us flat-out that they don’t read long letters, they’re probably telling the truth.

Most people don’t read long letters. But a few people do. And those people are the ones who are most likely to respond to direct mail.
Look at it this way. If you send a very short letter to 100 people, perhaps 90 of them will read it. After all, it doesn’t take much time or effort to read a short letter. But out of that group of 90 readers, perhaps only one or two of them will respond.
On the other hand, if you send a very long letter to 100 people, maybe only ten of them will sit down to read the whole thing. But those aren’t just any ten people. They happen to be the ten people out of a hundred who are most interested in your product, most willing to learn about it, most likely to buy.

Having captured the interest of this self-selected audience of prime prospects, you now have four pages, six pages, twelve pages to convince them to place an order. You can persuade, cajole, argue, wheedle, tease, tickle, and seduce them into helpless submission. So out of those ten hardy souls who sat down and read your 12-page letter in its entirety, maybe five will respond.
To put it succinctly: Short letters get a higher readership and lower response; long letters get a lower readership and higher response.

Stop and think about it, haven’t you seen this happen in your own life? Perhaps you’re convinced that only short copy works and that you never read long copy. But have you ever bought a new car?

I’ll bet you not only sat down one night and read five or six 20-page automobile brochures, but when you finished, you were probably clamoring for more.

When I was hunting for a DVD player recently, I became so fascinated by DVDs that I would’ve gladly read a 100-page letter about them if only some courageous direct mailer had sent me one.
Would I have read it word for word?
Probably not. Tom Collins draws an analogy between a long direct-mail letter and a smorgasbord. Everybody loves a smorgasbord, but nobody sits down in front of it and eats the whole thing. We pick and choose what we want. The same goes for a long direct-mail letter or magalog.

The reader may browse through the letter looking for what interests him. He doesn’t have to read the whole thing in order to respond. But on the other hand, if he doesn’t find what he’s looking for somewhere in the letter, he may not respond at all. So a direct-mail letter must contain all the information a customer needs to make a buying decision. And if that takes 12 pages … well, so be it.
Are there exceptions to this?
You bet. Whenever you’re writing to previous customers or current members (of a non-profit organization), your letters can be shorter simply because you have less information to convey. A salesman, for example, may spend more than an hour with you on his first visit to your office. But after you’ve done business with him for a while, he’ll just call you on the phone and ask if you need anything.
The same is true whenever you’re writing for a product or an organization that is very well known to the reader. Every Christmas, groups like the American Lung Association and the Salvation Army raise millions of dollars by sending out direct-mail letters that are scarcely more than a few lines long. Well-known products like Time magazine and Newsweek have enjoyed success by mailing so-called “double-postcards” or “voucher” mailings.
This technique is called skimming the list. A short (and therefore inexpensive) letter can be used to skim the cream off the top of a mailing list – namely the people who are already familiar with your product, already interested in it, and already predisposed to buy. But even the best mailing lists contain only so much cream.
If you want to milk your list, write long!