World s Greatest Copywriter Letter

# World s Greatest Copywriter Letter

World's Greatest Copywriter Finally
Agrees To Reveal All Those Secrets
That Made Him Rich! Dear Friend,
would you like to make your direct mail
letters and mail order space ads as much as
17-times more effective? You would? Since that's the
case, this is going to be the most exciting
letter you will ever read. Here is why:
name is Gary Halbert (I'm the one with
glasses) and, al though I don't know for sure,
it seems to me that I've just about got to be
the highest-priced copywriter who ever lived. Here is an example:
A few years ago a friend
of mine, Eric Weinstein,
who is a list broker,
to Ernest Borgnine and his wife
At that time they had a struggling
little cosmetic company called TOVA-9 and they
desperately needed a winning ad. to them was very simple,
agree to pay me 5% of everything
you take in, I will write an ad that will knock your socks off!'
Did they go for it? Of course. And, as promised, they got their "killer
ad." The headline was:
THE AMAZING FACE-LIFT IN A JAR
USED BY HOLLYWOOD STARS WHO
DON'T WANT PLASTIC SURGERY! Remember that one? Well, that ad and its derivative successor (which I
also wrote and which is still running) continues to gross, after all these years,
an average of $506,340.00 per month! How do you like those apples? Not too bad, right?

O.K., now listen: the
point of this letter is not to brag and tell you how good I am or how much money I
make or anything else
The point of this letter is to prove to you
if you will let me,
profitable that will tink you are hedge are metter savent
I'm not kidding. I have discovered certain tricks and techniques that are
so powerful (when it comes to increasing response) that I honestly believe that
many people in the Direct Marketing Association would literally give up their
eyeteeth to find out about them. And guess what else? Believe it or not, what I have now decided to do is
to publish a very powerful, hard-hitting DM newsletter in which I am going to
reveal virtually everything I have learned. This newsletter is amazing. going to learn so much stuff that is new to you land so exciting and so pmfit-
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able!) that you are going to start to wonder whether or not I am a madman or a
genius. I'm both. And, not only that,
I'm also someone who has had more impactful experiences
(both good and bad) in the field of direct marketing than anyone else you will
Are you skeptical about that? Don't worry. I'm going to prove it to you
before you finish reading this letter. Here are some facts about my background:
My first successful promotion was a simple one-page letter that sold a coat-of-
arms (family crest) research report. This research report was printed on parch-
ment-like paper and it was suitable for framing.

Ihe left side of the report told
the origin and meaning of a person's family name and the right side had a drawing
of the earliest known coat-of-arms that was recorded with that name. MORE IHAN 7,000,000 REPLES! It was a fascinating little product and the sales letter I wrote about it
became the most widely mailed sales letter in history. Before it was all over,
more than 140 million of those letters had been mailed (all first class) and they
pulled in 7,300,000 cash-with-order customers. This letter was truly a classic. It pulled so well that we often received more than 20,000 checks in a single day
and it took as many as 30 full time employees just to make the bank deposit! But that was just the beginning. As soon as someone ordered a research
we sent them another letter along with a color photograph that showed them
a walnut wall plaque upon which their coat-of-arms had been hand-painted in full
This letter was modified somewnet over the years as we developed different
products and more efficient ways of doing business, but the basic sales message it
contained remained the same and together,
these two letters I have just described
generated more than $58,900,000.00 in sales:
I was hooked. You know, when you are just starting out and each of your first two sales
letters generates something like 29 million dollars apiece it does something to
your mina. It gives you a rush that is absolutely incomparable. You can't get it
from alcohol, drugs, sex or anything else whatsoever.

It is a unique high and it
makes your greed glands immediately fire up to full secretion! Anyway, after that euphoric experience with direct mail, I couldn't wait to
try my hand at space ads in newspapers and magazines. My first effort was for a
$3.00 book on how to get government benefits and the headline was:
HOW TO GET
WHAT IHE U.S. GOVERNMENT
OWES YOU! I loved that one. It was such a honey! It ran in hundreds of newspapers
all over the country and it sold 1-1/2 million books and generated revenues of
$4,500,000.00-
My next newspaper ad was for another $3.00 book that told the reader how to
maximize his or her social security benefits. I sold about two million copies of
(go to Page 3)
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this book and the gross sales created by this particular promotion were approximately $6,000,000.00. This ad also ran in newspapers all over the country and
you've probably seen it many times. The headline I used in the ad was also the
title of the book. It was:
HOM TO COLLECT
FROM SOCIAL SECURITY
AT ANY AGE! Let's see. If my arithmetic is correct, I've just told you about four
promotions that have brought in roughly $79,400,000.00 and I'm just getting
tarted! After the success of those first two books, I really got the hang of i
and starter selling books by mail with a vengeance.

lere are some of the head-
lines I used: HOW TO MAKE MONEY WITH YOUR CREDIT CARDS (for a book titled "How to
Tum Plastic into Gold"); HOW TO KEEP YOUR MONEY FROM BEING MURDERDI (for a book
titled "How to Rob a Bank Without a Gun"); THE WORLD WOULD BE A BETTER PLACE
WITHOUT FAT PEOPLE - HERE'S HOW YOU CAN HELP GET RID OF THEM (for a book on
reducing); HOW TO INCREASE THE FREQUENCY AND QUALITY OF YOUR ORGASMS (for a book
on high-tech sex); and so on. There were others but, truthfully, I don't remember them all. I don't
remember the sales figures either because, by that time,
I had stopped counting. Life was good back then. I had all the badges of success. A showplace
luxury cars,
a huge bank account,
recognition of my peers, a boat, a condo
in Florida and whatever else I wanted that money could buy. I also had an ego as big as the national debt. It was at this point in my career that I began to think of myself as
someone really special. I considered myself the best advertising man who had ever
lived (except for Claude Hopkins) and, naturally, I wrote an ad about myself so
the rest of the world would be sure to be aware of my wonderfulness.

in Advertising Age, Madison Avenue and The Reporter of Direct Marketing and it had
a modest headline that went like this:
HOW TO WRITE COPY THAT
WILL MAKE YOU RICH
- A challenge fran the best
advertising writer alive today -
This ad did not seek sales, it sought other advertising people who would
write ads for me and add to my ever-growing bank account. I received a lot of
Copywriters from more than 1,700 ad agencies responded to that ad and
many of then sent me mail order ads that I tested in various publications. None of those ads worked. Not to worry. My own ads were still working and pulling in money like
there was no tomorrow. In fact, sometimes, some of my ads or letters would pull
in as much as $60,000.00 in a single day. Take that one about the book on social
fot to worry. My own ads were still working and pulling in money lik
In fact, sometimes, some of my ads or letters would pul
senarine that is distributed in Sunday noses
One of the publications I ran was Parade which is a
The cost of that particular ad
was $33,214.00 and the sales generated were $228,492.00. air that's just one ad in one publication! (go to Page 4)
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But it wasn't enough. As I said earlier, I had a giant ego and it needed a
lot of care and feeding. All my life I had been poor and now that I was raking in
the money, I wanted everybody to know about it.

One of the dumb things I used to
lo back then was waltz into our little local bank with a duffle bag full of checks
and money orders and rather unceremoniously dumo them onto
ver seen twenty or thirty thousand checks and money orders
It makes a hell of
a impression on you and I milked it for all it was wortt
I wanted attention and I got it. It came in the form of two men wearing
ski masks and armed with U.S. Army.45 handguns. It was a Friday evening during
the first week of July, 1973. what happened is that I was unloading groceries
from the trunk of my car when I was approached by the aforementioned two men who
had been hiding in the woods adjacent to my property. One of them flashed his gun
at me (God, it was big!) and told me to be quiet while the other one went on into
the house to capture and tie up my wife. A Very Bad Scene! At first, these guys were very courteous. The one outside with me asked me
to remove my glasses and told me
to put them on top of the air conditioner. way, he explained,
I'd know where they were when ali this was over. After that,
marched me inside to the master bedroom where his partner had my wife blind-
gagged, and tied up on the bed. Then, these guys did the same thing to me
they added an extra touch. The extra touch was they stuffed me inside a canvas bag. It was a memorable experience.

There I was, helpless inside a mail sack
(that's ironic isn't it?) and these two guys were ransacking my home and making
They took some gold and silver coins,
some cash, some of my wife's
jewelry (including a heirloon ring given to her by a treasured relative),
about $80,000 worth of orders for one of the books I was selling by mail. They
put all this into a Cadillac (mine) and then drove off. No good. That crime has never been solved and it set off a chain-reaction of events
that got me involved with insane psychiatrists, "nad dog" postal inspectors and
fiendish con men. I'll be writing about those experiences in my newsletter in an
article titled "The Dark Side of Success" and I an sure you will find it instructive and rather morbidly fascinating. But that's later. Right now, let's get back to the good stuff. O.K. with
you? Good. Anyway, along about this time, I decided to move to California and,
shortly thereafter,
I became aware of the possibilities inherent in investing in
U.S. postage stames and I decided to write a book about that subject. if the book was the same as the headline of the mail order ad I used to sell it. To wit:
THANK GOD NOT EVERYIHING PRINTED
BY IHE U.S. GOVERNMENI LOSES ITS VALUE! This book was a modest commercial success (about $250,000.00 in sales) and
working on it was good therapy for me.

Soor after writing the stamp book, I became interested in trading cormodi-
(go to Page 5)
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ties and I developed a system that I used to execute 78 consecutive winning
mail promotion I created to sell this book was spectacular. The book sold for
$35.00 (a dumb price) and one list pulled as high as 35%! Are your greed glands at full secretion yet? Are you starting to see the
possibilities? Just to make sure, let's look at a few more examples. Do you
remember this headline?

...... was such de
posit ate you freed go and tune 1 to at to you starting to te the
HOW TO BURN OFF BODY FAT
HOUR-BY HOUR! The hottest diet ad ever written. It did up t
25 times ad cost in daily newspapers! Or how about this one? ERNEST BORGNINE TELIS THE TRUI
ABOUT IHE MAFIA
(to promote a 1-man play)
Or this one? THE AMAZING CASH FLOW SECRET
OF A MARKETING GENIUS WHO IS
AFRAID TO FLY
(No, not me. This one was about Jay Abraham.)
All three of these ads were very different but they were all enormously
successful. Let's see what else? Oh yeah, Let me tell you about another little piec
of work I did for the Borgnines. what happened is that Iova Borgnine came au
Beverly Hills. Spelling and her boutique is located at 345 N. Canon Drive in Beverly Hills and I
doubt if it would hold more than 150 people at any one time. So anyway, what I said to Tova was, "Look, if I'm going to do the ad for
you, you're going
to need a much larger place."
In fact, I said,
"What you better
do is rent the entire Century Plaza Hotel."
lova tured pale. You're right. Please on me a sex and old me one my out on at or the can eig
And guess what I did? I wrote an ad for her that got so many people to
come to the hotel that the place got so crowded that the fire marshalls wouldn't
Let anybody else come in. We got newspaper and IV coverage and we even got
written up in TIME magazine. How did I do it?

Well, what I did was create a full page ad and, if you
are any kind of marketing man at all, you will realize that the ad almost had to
work as soon as you read the headline. Here it is:
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TOVA BORGNINE SWEARS UNDER OAITI
THAT HER NEW PERFUME DOES NOT
CONTAIN AN ILLEGAL SEXUAL STIMULANT! There was also a subhead which said: "Wife of Famous Movie Star Agrees To
Give Away 10,000 Free Samples of Her New Fragrance Just To Prove It Is Safe To
Wear In Public!"
What you have just read is only a handful of the promotions I have
created and,
if you are not convinced by now, you never will be. These promotions
have generated literally hundreds of millions of dollars and ail sorts of prob
I've been robbed,
tied up, put inside a bag,
incarcerated,
damned, praised and a participant in more looney experiences than you can
shake a stick at. But it hasn't been dull. And now, I'm going to tell it all. I'm going to teach every single sub-
scriber of my newsletter exactly how to
create the kinds of ads and direct mail
pieces that will bring in the kind of money I an writing about! Have I captured your attention? If so, let's get down to business. name of my newsletter is simply "The Gary Halbert letter and here are some
previews of just a few of the exciting secrets I intend to reveal:
Preview #1:
THE AMAZING DIRECT MAIL SECRET
OF A DESPERATE NERD FROM OHIO! It is my conceit that this is
the single most important article on direct
marketing you will ever read.

It will reveal my secret method of how to create
"fake computer letters" that 100k and feel so real that tens of millions of people
(including many DMA members) actually thought they were individually typed. But
wait, That's just for openers. The rest of the article will tell you how to use
"suphane selects" and "A-Pile" direct mail in such a way as to exponential ly

It is my conceit that this is the single most important article on direct
wait, that's just ior openers. "sumane selects" and "A-Pile" direct mail in such a way as to exponential 1)
expand your customer universe and increase your cash with-order response almost
Preview #2:
HOW TO MAKE SURE YOU GET THE SAME RESULTS
WHEN YOU ROLL OUT AS WHEN YOU TESTED! In my opinion these are only six or seven people in the entire United
states who really know how to test a mailing list. And, unless you are one of
those select people, you are wasting huge wads of money. you already know about ninth name samples, zip analysis,
demographic overlays,
merge-purge dupe elimination and all the rest? Sorry,
that's not enough. something else you should know. Something vital! Read this upcoming article and
I can almost guarantee you'll be burning up the phone lines to your list broker
before you even come to the end. Preview #3:
HOW TO WRITE COPY THAT WILL MAKE YOU RICH
I can't wait for inspiration from heaven. I am truly a "streetfighter
inside of me any time I need them! Read this article and learn my tricks. (go to Page 7)
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include specific step-by-step instructions that anybody can follow and I guarantee
they will make you more constructively creative and dramatically increase the
balance in your checkbook. Preview #4:
HOW TO FIND NEW DIRECT MATL
"POCKETS-OF-PROFIT!"
I'll bet I can tell you of at least 15-new pockets of profit you never
dreamed existed.

I an especially sure you will get enormously excited when I
reveal to you a simple inexpensive technique that will, all of a sudden, make many
previously unprofitable lists begin to pull like crazy! Preview #5:
HOW TO OFFER A DOUBLE YOUR MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE
AND INCREASE YOUR RESULTS BY 50%
AND DROP YOUR REFUNDS TO ALMOST ZERO! Everybody knows that a money-back guarantee increases results. However,
what everybody doesn't know is that a DOUBLE your money-back guarantee not only
increases results much more, but also, if it is properly worded, it will dramatically reduce refunds! Preview #6:
INNOCENCE IS NOT ENOUGH:
HOW TO AVOID LEGAL HASSIES
WITH THE U.S. GOVERNMENT
The "federales" are on a rampage and, in my opinion, rightly so. far too many scammers in direct response, and the regulatory agencies are so used
to dealing with them they have lost their ability to separate
the good guys from
In this article I will reveal to you some painful lessons I had to lear
the hard way and, more importantly, how you can avoid these sane sad, hurtful
experiences. Please believe me; this article is mist reading! Preview #7:
HOW A COPYWRITER CAN UNLOCK THE FORTUNE
THAT LIES HIDDEN IN HIS BRAIN
If you write copy or, if you work with someone who does, I urge you to read
I've spent nearly 15-years earing my living with a legal pad and a
felt tip pen and, during that time,
I have developed certain techniques that can
transfons almost any good copywriter into a great in-print salesman!

almost hate to reveal this stuff but, don't worry, I'm going to anyway. other things you're going to learn thy one most important element or good witing
is physical not mental and why the very best aà men are door-to-door salesmer
who've learned how to write and NOT college graduates who think it's all hype. Preview #8:
DOES YOUR HIGH-PRICED AD AGENCY
DO ANY OF THESE 10 STUPID THINGS? want to read a really bold and truly arrogant statement? You do? O.K.,
you asked for it and here it is:
Give me just 30 minutes with any direct mail
control package that was created by any agency in the United States and, I guaran-
elling pots and pans or encyclopedias or anything eise. And therefore, m
friend, they do dumb things. Really dumb. However, the smart ones (those wh
(go to Page 8)

simple: You see, good writing is not the same as good selling and al though most
agency guys know how to write, hardly any of them have ever gone door-to-door
selling pots and pans or encyclopedias or anything eise. And therefore, my
friend, they do dumb things. Really dumb. However, the smart ones (those who
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subscribe to my newsletter) won't do those dumb things anymore after they read
this article. That's because I'm going to list the 10-dumbest things most agencies do and then tell what they should do instead. Preview #9:
HOW TO MAKE YOUR SPACE ADS AND DIRECT MAIL LETTERS
LIVE AND BREATHE AND GRAB PEOPLE RIGHT BY THE JUGULAR
AND FORCE IHEM TO SEND YOU ALL OF THEIR MONEY! My specialty. This isn't the title of any one article. No. This is more
like my theme song. This is the central core of what every issue of my newsletter
is all about. For example, I'm going to reveal:
*
Why, in most cases, you should not use color. What every catalog mailer does wrong. How to "energize" your copy. A 10-second change that will make almost any package pull better. How to test before you test. How to "test" a copywriter before you pay him any money. *
The real way to use those "fake" Federal Express envelopes. How to get Hollywood celebrities to "star" in your ads and how to get
them cheap. * How to mail bulk rate and get (sometimes) first-class delivery. * How to get me to write an ad for you at a suprisingly Iow initial fee!

Enough,
There's a lot more but, if I keep on going, I'll make my printer
rich with just, this one letter. Don't want to do that. No sir. Got to keep that
sucker hungry so he'll continue to take my midnite cal Is whenever I've got a hot
promotion I want to get into the mail. And besides, my hand is getting tired. So, therefore, it is now time for me to ask for the
order. You know, most good
copywriters (in-print salesmen) "choke Up" a little at this point. Not me. What
I have to sell here is worth far more than I'm asking and I can prove it. I've
got a list as long as your arm of people in direct marketing from coast-to-coast
for whom I have made literally millions of dollars. won't you join them? Please. Iet me help you as I have others. Admittedly, my newsletter is not cheap but, then again, there's nothing else like it. I
honestly believe I am the premier in-print salesman of my time. You know, 1 may
have caused more people to put a check in the mail than anyone in history except
maybe the guy who invented the IRS! But that doesn't matter. What does matter is that, I can, if you will let
me, show you how to get a lot more of those checks coming to you. Go for it. Make me prove what I've been saying. If you've got a credit
card, pick up the phone and call me. The number is (213) 273-7053 and, if at all
possible,
I'll take the call personally. Or, if you prefer to order by mail, you
can use the yellow order form that is included with this letter.

Either way, you won't be sorry. I promise. Sincerely
Hary CHallet
Jary T. Halbert
(In-print Salesman)
P. S. If you decide to subscribe for two years, I'll send you an exciting free
gift that will be very inspiring and exciting for you and your staff. You 11 find details in the enclosed "Hot Flash" pink sheet. Thank you.