Latest / The Copywriting Podcast with Fexingo: Sales Letters, Headlines, and Persuasive Writing
How a Handwritten Margin Note Beat a Form Letter
Lucas and Luna dissect a legendary direct-mail test from Ogilvy & Mather. In the early 1990s, a credit card issuer sent two versions of a solicitation: a polished form letter and the exact same letter with a handwritten margin note that read 'Jim, what about this?' The margin note version pulled a 47% higher response rate. Lucas explains why that scrawled line worked—because it simulated personal urgency and broke through the reader's 'ad blindness' filter. Luna connects it to a modern cold-email test where a single bracketed personalization like [name] in the subject…
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