Such introductions have undoubtedly proved exceedingly effective at times, but like many other good things, the idea has been overworked. The catch-line of itself sells no goods and to be effective it must be followed by trip-hammer arguments. Interest created in this way is hard to keep up.
The correspondent may use a catch-line, just as the barker at a side show uses a megaphone—the noise attracts a crowd but it does not sell the tickets. It is the "spiel" the barker gives that packs the tent. And so the average man is not influenced so much by a bold catch-line in his letters as by the paragraphs that follow. Some correspondents even run a catch-line in red ink at the top of the page, but these yellow journal "scare-heads" fall short with the average business proposition.
Then attention may be secured, not by a startling sentence but by the graphic way in which a proposition is stated. Here is an opening that starts out with a clear-cut swing:
"If we were to offer you a hundred-dollar bill as a gift we take it for granted that you would be interested. If, then, our goods will mean to you many times that sum every year isn't the proposition still more interesting? Do you not want us to demonstrate what we say? Are you not willing to invest a little of your time watching this demonstration?"
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This reference to a hundred-dollar bill creates a concrete image in the mind of the reader. The letters that first used this attention-getter proved so effective that the idea has been worked over in many forms. Here is the effective way one correspondent starts out:
"If this letter were printed on ten-dollar bills it could scarcely be more valuable to you than the offer it now contains. You want money; we want your business. Let's go into partnership."
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Here is a letter sent out by a manufacturer of printing presses:
"If your press feeders always showed up on Monday morning; if they were never late, never got tired, never became careless, never grumbled about working overtime, you would increase the output of your plant, have less trouble, make more money—that is why you will be interested in the Speedwell Automatic feeding attachment."