Latest / The Copywriting Podcast with Fexingo: Sales Letters, Headlines, and Persuasive Writing / How a Typewriter Changed Direct Mail Copywriting
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this direct mail campaign from 1928, a letter selling a book on how to build a successful small business. The headline was just three words: 'Do You Fail?' And it pulled a 12 percent response rate — which in direct mail terms is almost unheard of. But here's the detail that sticks with me: the copywriter typed that letter on a manual typewriter, and he claimed the rhythm of the keys helped him find the cadence. Luna: Wait — he's saying the typewriter itself made the copy better? Not just his skill? Lucas: That's exactly what he said. Robert Collier — maybe you've heard of him, he wrote 'The Secret of the Ages' — he was a huge believer in writing his sales letters on a Remington Noiseless. He said the click-clack, the resistance of the keys, it forced him to think before he typed. No backspace. No delete. You had to be deliberate. Luna: And look, it's funny — I remember reading somewhere that Collier's letters were unusually short for the time. Like, most direct mail in the 1920s ran four to six pages. He often kept it to two. Lucas: Right. And that brevity was partly economic — paper and postage cost real money — but partly psychological. He believed a shorter letter showed respect for the reader's time. And the typewriter was his tool for enforcing that discipline. You couldn't just ramble. Luna: If these conversations about marketing history have sparked something you've actually used in your own writing — a trick, a framing, a specific technique — I'll be honest, there's a reason we can keep doing these deep dives ad-free. Lucas: Yeah, a small group of listeners chips in monthly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, and that's literally what funds making this many of these. It's not a big ask — just that if you've gotten value, that's the mechanism. Luna: And it keeps us independent. So, back to the typewriter — you mentioned a campaign that got a boost just from typing in all lowercase? Lucas: Yes. This is one of my favorite oddball case studies. In the early 1920s, a copywriter named John Caples — who worked at the Ruthrauff & Ryan agency — tested a letter for a correspondence course. One version was typed normally, with capital letters where you'd expect them. The other version was typed entirely in lowercase — no capitals at all. The lowercase version pulled 37 percent more responses. Luna: Thirty-seven percent — just from removing capital letters? That seems almost too clean. Lucas: It does, but Caples documented it in his book 'Tested Advertising Methods'. And the theory was that the all-lowercase looked like a handwritten note from a friend. It felt personal, less corporate. The typewriter made it look informal — but in a good way. Luna: So the machine itself was part of the message. It signaled something about the sender. Lucas: Exactly. Now, obviously, we're not going back to typewriters. But I think there's a lesson here about constraints. When you have a tool that limits your options — no fonts, no bold, no italics, no emoji — you have to rely on the strength of your words. And that forces clarity. Luna: I've heard modern copywriters talk about 'writing in plain text' for the same reason. No formatting crutches. Lucas: Right. Seth Godin writes his blog posts in a plain text editor. Joanna Wiebe at Copyhackers often drafts in a stripped-down environment. It's the same principle: remove the visual variables and focus on the message. Luna: So if I'm hearing this right, the typewriter era wasn't just a quaint old-timey thing. It actually shaped the copy. Lucas: Absolutely. And here's another example. Claude Hopkins, the man who wrote 'Scientific Advertising', used to dictate his copy to a stenographer. But he insisted the stenographer type it on a typewriter — he'd then mark it up with a pen. He said seeing the words in type gave him a different perspective than hearing them aloud. Luna: Interesting — so it's about changing the sensory channel. Hearing vs. seeing. Lucas: Yeah. And the typewriter gave him that. I think there's a practical takeaway here for anyone listening. Next time you're stuck on a headline or a call to action, try writing it by hand. Or type it on a typewriter if you have access to one. The physical resistance, the slower pace — it changes how your brain processes the words. Luna: Or even just open a text editor that doesn't have spell-check or formatting. Like a plain.txt file. Lucas: Exactly. The tool matters. Now, there's one more story I want to share. It's about a letter that was typed on a typewriter but had one deliberate mistake — a misspelling. And that misspelling made the letter more believable. Luna: Okay, you have to explain that. Lucas: So this is from a 1950s campaign for a financial newsletter. The copywriter intentionally typed the word 'guarantee' as 'guaranty' — a common misspelling at the time. And the theory was that a perfectly typed letter looked like it came from a big corporation. A minor typo made it look like it was written by a real person, quickly, in a small office. Luna: And I'm guessing they tested it against a perfectly typed version? Lucas: They did. The letter with the misspelling outperformed the clean version by 24 percent. Now, I'm not saying you should intentionally add typos to your emails — but it shows how much the physical presentation signals authenticity. Luna: And that's something we've lost in the digital age. Everyone's email looks the same. Same font, same alignment, same signature block. Lucas: Right. Which is why some direct mail still works today — because it's physical. It has weight. It has texture. The typewriter was the original way to add that texture. Luna: So what's the one thing you'd want listeners to take away from this? If they're writing a sales page today, should they go buy a typewriter? Lucas: No, I don't think so. But I'd say: impose a constraint. Write your next headline in 140 characters. Or write it without using any adjectives. Or write it in all lowercase. Find a way to limit your options so that you're forced to be more creative and more precise. Luna: Constraints breed creativity. It's a classic principle. Lucas: Yeah. And the typewriter is just a powerful historical reminder of that. It wasn't a limitation — it was a discipline. And the best copywriters of that era used it to their advantage. Luna: I'm actually going to try the all-lowercase thing on my next landing page. Just to see. Lucas: Let us know how it goes. And if you do, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. We'd love to hear if it worked.