Grabber Letters Can Boost Your Response

As a copywriter, I've learned firsthand about the effectiveness of grabbers. What is a grabber? It's simply an item that you attach to the top of a sales letter that "grabs" your reader's immediate attention. It may be a dollar bill or a bill of higher denomination. It could be an "admit one" ticket of some sort, a penny, a foreign coin, a photograph, or just about anything. The key is to make sure it ties in to your letter or offer. It usually replaces the headline (or sometimes supplements it), and it's purpose is the same as the headline: to get your sales letter read.

Don't confuse a grabber with dimensional mail, or "lumpy mail," as it is sometimes called. A lumpy object inside your package is designed to get your package opened, although a lumpy grabber can be affixed to the top of your sales letter to get your letter both opened and read.

If you do any type of direct mail (or write direct mail pieces for your clients), I highly recommend testing both lumpy mail and grabbers, as they can significantly boost response.

To learn more about grabbers, check out this issue of the Gary Halbert Letter:

http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/newsletters/zakk_grabbers.htm

In one of the first direct mail letters I wrote for a client, I used a dollar bill as a grabber. The letter began like this:

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Dear Mr./Ms. LASTNAME,

As you can see, I have attached a crisp $1 bill to the top of this letter. Why have I done this? Actually, there are two reasons:

1. This letter is very important, and I needed some way to make sure it would catch your attention.

2. Since this letter is about making money, I thought using a $1 bill as an “eye-catcher” was a good idea.
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Note how I explained the reason for the grabber in the lead, and tied it into the theme of my letter. You don't want them to have to guess why it's there. It's designed to get them to read your letter and advance the sale. Now is not the time to be vague or mention it as an afterthought.

Now compare that to a letter I just received last week, reprinted here (the red circle is my addition):

The small token of appreciation was a crisp dollar bill.

Now aside from the copy used and the offer, I have to give them credit for mailing a dollar letter. But there are a few things that they could have done that wouldn't have added significantly to their costs, but would have likely boosted their response by a decent margin.

• 1) The grabber would have better served them if it was affixed to the top of the letter where it could be seen. As it was, when I opened the letter I didn't see the dollar. It wasn't attached to the letter. It was stuck in the envelope almost as an afterthought. In fact, if I didn't read that last line and know what to look for, I would have probably thrown the bill away with the envelope. The fact that they didn't mention it until the end of the letter is probably not helping them.
  
  
• 2) The dollar was not tied into the offer or theme of the letter in any way. In fact, they don't even mention the fact that the "token of appreciation" is a dollar. While still better than nothing, I have to wonder how many prospects threw the dollar away without realizing it. Or of those that did find the dollar, how many just pocketed it and threw the letter away without even reading it? This has the effect of raising the cost of their mailing, while at the same time lowering their potential response rate.
  
  
• 3) Similar to the first point above, the dollar was not used to entice their prospect to read their letter. That means I'd wager a lot of their prospects opened the letter and simply threw the whole thing--letter, envelope, dollar and all--in the trash. You need a very compelling headline to do the same work as an effective grabber. I don't think their headline qualifies.

The bottom line is grabbers can boost response tremendously if done right. But if they're thrown together haphazardly, they can also cost you a lot in your mailing with little to show for it in return.