After studying Barton's letters, books, private memos, speeches, and advertising campaigns, I've discovered Barton's method. I've used his technique to write my own letters and I've been astonished at results. One letter got a 20% response. Another nailed a 10% response. Still another is approaching a 97% response (ninety-seven per cent!)! (It, too, is in The Seven Lost Secrets Of Success.)

I will now reveal technique I've been using: Bruce Barton's "Secret Formula."

Barton said that good advertising copy (and letters are advertisements) had to be three things: (1) Brief. (2) Simple. (3). Sincere. In an eye-opening essay he wrote back in 1925, Barton said following:

About Brevity:

"About sixty years ago two men spoke at Gettysburg; one man spoke for two hours. I suppose there is not any one who could quote a single word of that oration. The other man spoke about three hundred words, and that address has become a part of school training of almost every child."

About Simplicity:

"I think it might be said, no advertisement is great that has anything that can't be understood by a child of intelligence. Certainly all great things in life are one-syllable things -- child, home, wife, fear, faith, love, God."

About Sincerity:

Let's briefly take a different view of sales copy. Perhaps you take view that sales copy is meant to talk people into purchasing your product/service. For a moment, let's take a different view that it is actually there to talk people OUT of purchasing your product/service. In many ways, this latter view is more accurate.

Think about prospect as she reads your ad copy. They read a sentence and like what it says. They feel good; they feel hope that this will be answer to one of their problems. They read another sentence. It affirms first and they feel more excited. They are ready to buy, but there is more ad copy. They read on. The third sentence doesn't really apply to their specific problem. Perhaps they start to lose a bit of that excitement. Then fourth sentence completely alienates them. They aren't part of THAT group of people (perhaps you were selling a fitness product and fourth sentence was related to weight-loss). They turn page or click BACK button or close browser. You've lost them.

If your ad copy stopped after first two lines, you would have made sale. Start reading your ad copy in this way. Normally, each sentence is viewed as sentence potentially "sells" them. In reality, usually your prospect is reading each sentence looking for a reason NOT to buy. Start editing your ad copy to eliminate all of those potential reasons. In general, strive to make your ad copy as short as possible.

Not a believer yet? Let me give you some real-life examples that lead me to this conclusion. In early days, I would test click-thru rates using a variety of sales copy. I would try a paragraph against another paragraph. This is where I fist noticed that shorter is better. The shorter paragraphs almost always outperformed longer paragraphs. This is true for both click-thru rate and overall amount of revenue generated over a period of time.