Blow Your “Best” Sales Letters Out of the Water

Dear Reader,

When I started out as a copywriter in the 1980s, I thought I was pretty darn good at it.

Then I met Michael Masterson.

I had written a sales letter for Agora Publishing – a letter I thought was, like most of my letters, extremely strong – or at least not bad.

But in my first critique session with Michael Masterson, he ripped it to shreds… made me rethink the entire promotion… and forced me to rewrite it from scratch.

Yet he did it in a way that left me feeling, not devastated, but eager to do better.

My rewrite followed a unique structure for persuasive writing that Michael now calls (but didn’t then) the Architecture of Persuasion.

To make a long story short, the revised letter, for the investment newsletter Gold Stocks Advisory, became a successful control package for Agora.

“Wow,” I said to myself after all this happened.

“Michael Masterson really does know something about writing powerful sales letters that I apparently don’t – and I can learn a lot just by listening to what he says.”

And now, you can too…

What Michael taught me – more than anything else – was a way to structure sales letters and other long copy-promotions, like magalogs and landing pages.

Coming up with a formula for persuasive writing is not a new idea, and not original to Michael.

Over the decades, there have been a whole bunch of copywriting formulas.

They all have a common purpose: to boost response rates by presenting sales arguments in the optimal order.

You may have already studied some of these formulas: AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action)… the Motivating Sequence… Star, Chain, Hook… the list goes on and on.

In his ground-breaking book, The Architecture of Persuasion: How to Write Well-Constructed Sales Letters, Michael Masterson teaches you his own formula for powerful persuasion.

It’s his unique twist on the most powerful way to organize and write sales letters and online promotions that blow old controls out of the water.

And it has helped him set countless sales records – for both his businesses and his consulting clients.

When he mastered the formula, early in his career, Michael was able to finally write his first breakthrough promotion.

This letter brought in 100,000 new members for the publishing company where Michael worked.

And together with a second letter he wrote using the same formula, generated $20 million in sales.

Essentially, this is the same formula for persuasive writing Michael taught me decades ago when I first started writing copy for Agora.

When he revealed this early version to me during his critique of my first letter for him, I said to him, half-joking:

“Wow, that’s terrific. I really should be paying YOU instead of the other way around.”

“You’re damned right,” he replied in all earnestness, without missing a beat.

And yes, he was right: the Architecture of Persuasion works better than any other copywriting formula out there.

How do I know for sure?

Michael Masterson has, as far as I can see, trained more top copywriters and marketers – staff and freelance – than any other marketing mentor out there today.

In fact, promotions written by copywriters and information marketers he’s trained have generated sales of well over a billion dollars!

For many years, there has existed a closely guarded secret – known only to a small inner circle of copywriters.

The secret is that the surest “fast track” to becoming a master copywriter has been to become one of Michael Masterson’s protégés.

Every year, Michael takes a few new proteges under his wing – and works with them one-on-one or in small groups.

Porter Stansberry, for example, was a novice copywriter working for Agora years ago, struggling to find his niche.

Under Michael’s tutelage, he wrote his famous “There’s a New Railroad” package that launched his multi-million-dollar publishing empire.

Mike Palmer, who earns six figures as Porter’s copy chief, raves: “I can still remember the first time Michael Masterson taught me the secret of the Architecture of Persuasion, years ago. I teach it to all of our in-house copywriters, which is one of the reasons our business is so successful. If you understand and use this secret, you will be better than 90% of the working copywriters out there.”

“I don’t know of anybody who’s found a better way to piece together all the little details of creating the perfect, complete sales letter in one tight lesson,” says John Forde, publisher of The Copywriter’s Roundtable, calling the Architecture of Persuasion formula “extremely useful.”

Now, in his book, The Architecture of Persuasion: How to Write Well-Constructed Sales Letters, Michael shows us how to apply the formula specifically to direct-mail sales letters.