Asynchronous Selling – What Sales Pages Can Learn From Direct Mail

Selling asynchronously is something you can do on a sales page.

When you pitch someone across the counter in a showroom, you are selling synchronously. You can respond to objections as they come up, and modify your communication to suit the moment.

Selling on the Internet is mostly asynchronous. You craft your messaging, field imaginary objections, and inspire action from some point in the past, to somebody unknown in the future.

Selling asynchronously is nothing new. Before the Internet, the masters of asynchronous selling worked in direct mail.

A copywriter would compose a message that would be read weeks, months, or years into the future. This message would convince and persuade people in that future time to buy something.

In the digital world, you can see the descendants of these copywriters in long form sales pages.

According to a study by Marketing Experiments, moving the opt-in form below the fold, and converting the page to a long-form sales page can increase leads by 220%.

CrazyEgg used heat-mapping software to track the eye movements of website visitors, and they found that a page 10x in length corresponded to a 363% increase in sales.

Shorter is not always better.

If you’re running mobile ads, and all you want is an email address, a short page can serve you well. But if you are making an offer, and inviting a financial transaction, you need to have all of the information available for someone to make a buying decision without having to click anywhere else. A long form sales page can address all the perceived objections, demonstrate credibility, and create scarcity and urgency, all in one scroll.

How?

The 21-Step Sales Letter Formula.

I did not come up with this formula. I learned it from Perry Belcher, a copywriter who learned it from David Frey, a copywriter who learned it from someone else, possibly a mail-order copywriter from Madison Avenue.

This technique is not a hot new flame-out. It’s been used and refined over decades, and I’ve had great experience in using this formula on my own sales pages.

I cover all 21 steps in this 5-minute video: