Copywriting.org Interviews Charlene Burke

When I was 21 years old I was managing a direct mail firm. This is many many years before internet. We sold custom and brand licensed caps, jackets, t-shirts via self-mailers to the auto, truck, and farm implement industries. I wrote the product descriptions, created new mailers when a partner merged with another company, and managed the house lists. We had just gotten a portable PC and a printer so I thought … let’s send a personalized sales letter to a couple of house lists to introduce a new windbreaker offer. Those sales letters brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales for the windbreakers and the re-orders for caps were larger than normal. It was fun to get a call from a customer who said they got the letter and loved it…then they placed their order. I honestly didn’t think of it as copywriting at the time. I thought it was a way to communicate directly with the person on the list to show them how their dealership would benefit from offering this windbreaker as a sales prize (could be customized with screen printing of name) or as a giveaway to attendees at a promotional event.