Know-How Exchange : Copywriting

Dear abarsky,

In this instance, and with this audience, I'd urge you to rethink the postcard and go with a sales letter. If my name were on that list and you sent me a postcard, your offering would go straight into the trash, unread.

You need to craft (and that's CRAFT, not write) a four or five page letter that talks to your prospective buyers about their lives as they will be once they've got the Renior, or the van Gogh, or the Monet, or the Lichtenstein, or the Warhol that they bought from your gallery hanging on the wall in their home.

Why four or five pages? You need to create a relationship, which means establishing a dialogue.
This means talking to people about what's important to them. You can't do this as effectively with a postcard.

Here, you're not selling art, you're selling bragging rights

No one buys a Rolex so that they can tell the time. No one buys a Ferrari to drive to the Stop 'n' Shop. People buys these toys to show of their wealth to other people.

The same rule applies to art.

Scarcity drives up the price, affordability creates desire, desire drives aspiration, aspiration creates desire, desire fuels scarcity. Tap into this cycle and you'll NEVER be short of people willing to buy your art.

People that earn $250K or more per year represent the top 3 to 5 percent of earners. This means they are in some way "right" about money.

The kind of message you send to these people, IF they're disposing of their income on art, has to be on a par, sales-wise, with the Declaration of Independence, NOT scribbled on the back of a fortune cookie motto, the latter of which being how your postcard may well be interpreted.

Your letter needs a clear, aspiration-based call to action in which your prospect receives something of value from you, such as a free, limited edition print that that need to collect from your gallery. During their visit you show off other wares and tell them how other people from their country club have reacted to the prints and to your offerings.

Or the letter needs to invite them to an event at which other, similarly well-heeled individuals will be present and over whom you will fawn (non-obsequiously) in order to establish your position as a detail driven dealer who wants only to please his dedicated and loyal customers.

The lure here FOR the well-to-do is to be SEEN by the well to do.

Or the letter invites the recipient to a grand charity auction, a high percentage of the proceeds of which will go to a named non-profit. Black tie, liveried wait staff, free Champagne, celebrity faces, valet parking, and photographers to document who knows whom—or who is being SEEN with whom.

This then connects the buyers with doing social good, something that always pulls the press out of the woodwork and that will gain you regional if not national exposure.

Your success here requires a little thought and a clear call to action and that outlines a clearly defined set of solid benefits to the buyer. I hope this helps. Good luck to you and happy New Year.

Gary Bloomer
Princeton, NJ, USA