Sooner or later, every copywriter gets asked to write a sales letter.

And it’s a tough gig: getting the reader to continue right to the end of a letter they never asked for, about something they perhaps never thought about before.

Bird, the grand old man of UK direct marketing, works through all the essentials of writing a sales letter, from salutation to signoff. He covers assessing the competition, developing the brief, research, taking the customer’s perspective, writing style and much more – all in his brusque, irreverent style.

An essential read if you want to write effective direct mail.