Sales Letter Research Articles

Business English Writing (BEW) Training for Students of SMK PGRI Sukoharjo Majoring in OTKP (Automation and Office Governance)

This training aims to equip class X students majoring in OTKP at SMK PGRI Sukoharjo with the ability to write business letters in English. The training participants were class X OTKP students at SMK PGRI Sukoharjo. Training was carried out using three meetings. Training is carried out online using Google Meet (first meeting) and face to face in class (second and third meetings). The first meeting includes a pre-test and material related to Parts of Business Letters in English. The second meeting is the Sales Letter. The third meeting was Order Letter and post-test material. The average of the pre-test is 20 while the average of the post-test is 85. Based on the pre and post test scores, there is a significant increase in the average score. This shows that this training can improve students' abilities in writing business letters.

Genre Analysis of a Pakistani Footwear Brand Website: An Investigation of Content and Structure

The purpose of this research is to undertake a genre analysis of a Pakistani shoe brand website to evaluate the strategic arrangement of its structure and content. Since the advent of online shopping, content like product descriptions and webpage orientation have become increasingly important. The primary goal of this research is to evaluate the website's structure, content, and alignment to explain how it is made convenient for online buyers. Bhatia's moves analysis of the sales letter is employed to identify the strategic approach that drives buyers to shop online. In this study, the seven moves are as follows: establishing credentials, introducing the offer, giving incentives, referring to the enclosed document, requesting additional conversation, applying pressure tactics, and concluding politely. For this purpose, the qualitative interpretative technique is utilized to assess the website's content and structure. Screenshots of the website have been used to examine the contents and how it is organized on the page. Finally, it is deduced that the website appears to be managed logically; nonetheless, it is required to provide detailed descriptions of products to make it more user-friendly.

Contrastive Rhetorical Analysis of Business Undergraduates’ Sales Email Structure

Understanding the differences in communication styles is becoming increasingly important in business communication as more companies expand their operations to include local and international operations. The purpose of this article is to compare the structural moves employed in the Singaporean and Malaysian promotional genres from the standpoint of moves analysis and comparison. Argument arises on the similarity and dissimilarity of business discourses involving the features of genres between these two neighbouring countries. As a result, a structural linguistics analysis was conducted in order to investigate the variations in communicative purposes as well as the lexical frequency of the sales emails that were written. The comparison between Singaporean sales promotional letter and Malaysian sales emails moves is based on Bhatia's (1993) Singaporean sales promotional letter moves. According to Bhatia's sales letter framework, there are seven moves, whereas in this study, seven moves were identified in Sales Inquiry Emails and nine moves were identified in Sales Reply Emails. Furthermore, Bhatia (1993) classified the moves into two categories: those that were required and those that were optional, based on their frequency of appearance in the text. In terms of communicative patterns, the similarities and differences between the two texts and their respective contexts were discovered. The difference between Singaporean and Malaysian languages, for example, can be explained by the fact that the distribution and sequence of moves differ between the two languages.

Analysing Generical Moves in Pedagogical Sales Reply Emails

This study aimed to investigate the generic features in the business emails written by the undergraduates of Universiti Malaysia Kelantan (UMK). Besides that, this study intended to propose a standard generic structure in writing a business email. The emails were gathered from the respondents' assignment that comprised of two email-based questions; however, this study analysed the generic structure of sales reply emails. The emails were compared with Bhatia's promotional sales letter moves. The methodology of this study was computer-assisted corpus analysis (CACA) by Manvender (2011). The data were analysed using a genre-based technique by Bhatia (1993). The particular moves and steps in both types of texts were recognised and categorised individually. The rhetorical structure of sales reply emails consists of three major moves: introducing product, product details, offering incentives. Although the respondents showed similarities in their moves, there were some differences such as the number and content of the moves as well as the contextual patterns.

Perancangan Aplikasi Transaksi Jual Beli Perhiasan Emas berbasis Android

Gold Shop is a business of buying and selling gold, both in the form of jewelry and in the form of bars. Transactions carried outsell and buy gold jewelry, with different buying and selling prices. In a gold shop, to sell jewelry a clerk needs to write down the weight, and draw the model in a sales letter or memorandum. The problem that occurs is the ability to draw from employees who are not the same, some can draw jewelry similar to the original, some are unclear. Jewelry letters are also sometimes lost in the hands of customers so when selling must first ascertain whether the jewelry originates from this store. Therefore, it is necessary to make an information system to facilitate the process of buying and selling gold jewelry. The system is made based on Android because it can utilize the mobile phones of each employee. The system is made using the Rapid Application Development method, to get the final result of an android-based application. This method consists of 3 stages, namely the needs plan, the system design process, and implementation. This gold jewelry sale and purchase application consists of 2 users namely shop owners and employees. The function of the owner application is to see the number of items sold jewelry purchased, daily, weekly and monthly financial statements. The application has the advantage of updating the price of gold, both selling and buying in realtime. Using this application can speed up transactions, create reports, and reduce errors in recording transactions.

Analysing Generical Moves in Pedagogical Sales Reply Emails

This study aimed to investigate the generic features in the business emails written by the undergraduates of Universiti Malaysia Kelantan (UMK). Besides that, this study intended to propose a standard generic structure in writing a business email. The emails were gathered from the respondents' assignment that comprised of two email-based questions; however, this study analysed the generic structure of sales reply emails. The emails were compared with Bhatia's promotional sales letter moves. The methodology of this study was computer-assisted corpus analysis (CACA) by Manvender (2011). The data were analysed using a genre-based technique by Bhatia (1993). The particular moves and steps in both types of texts were recognised and categorised individually. The rhetorical structure of sales reply emails consists of three major moves: introducing product, product details, offering incentives. Although the respondents showed similarities in their moves, there were some differences such as the number and content of the moves as well as the contextual patterns.

"Wir laden Sie ein!" - "Jetzt anmelden!" Zur Spannweite von Instruktionen in Werbebriefen

Instructive texts are an inclusive term for a wide range of action initiating texts, i.e. texts where the action is being initiated through the text (e.g. in a sales letter, Nielsen 2003a: 66), and action commanding texts, i.e. texts where an action which the receiver wanted to execute anyway is being instructed (e.g. instructions, Reiß 1983: 17). Since sales letters are action-initiating and thus as a text genre constituting feature contain directive speech acts (Searle 1969, 1976, Wagner 2001, Nielsen 2006), they are per definition face-threatening (Brown/ Levinson 1978, Nielsen 2006). The communication configuration is asymmetric and the power relationship skewed: On the one hand, the sender wants something from the receiver although not entitled to claim that because of the power relations. On the other hand, the action that the receiver is requested to do might very well be in the interest of the receiver. On that background it seems natural that there is a wide range in the realization of instructions in sales letters: from the euphemistic „We invite you!“ to the completely unhidden, almost rude „Register now!“ This article sets out to describe and explore this range on the basis of authentic Danish and German sales letters and to make an attempt at a first tentative classification of politeness strategies that soften the face-threatening speech acts of those instructions.

Visual Form, Ethics, and a Typology of Purpose

Stallworth Williams introduces concepts of visual rhetoric and ethics for a classroom exercise in the analysis and revision of a sales letter. This article revisits Stallworth Williams’s proposed teaching strategies, suggesting that not only do students need to be instructed in elements of visual design, but they must also be taught to link those elements to specific decorative, indicative, or informative purposes. This method teaches students to design documents that meet shared goals (designer and recipient) and to recognize where designs fail in purpose, so revisions can be made using deliberate choice, based on a systematic framework.

Teaching Written Communication Skills in Professional Selling: The Cover Letter

The selling process steps have been an integral part of professional selling courses and textbooks for years. Although slight changes have been made in their wording and format, most textbooks are consistent in the recommended process for an effective sales interaction. In an effort to combine teaching the selling process with the increased demand from employers and accrediting institutions to improve written communication skills, this article introduces the cover (sales) letter as an assignment for marketing instructors. This cover letter assignment has been very well received by students and employers, highlighting how universities can engage students in an active learning environment, teaching both theory and specific skills.

Generating Goodwill with Direct Mail and Specialty Advertising

This study reports findings from the application of a specialty advertising and direct mail promotion to the problem of generating goodwill among potential customers in a business-to- business setting. Specifically, this study examines whether the use of direct mail alone or direct mail coupled with a specialty advertising gift can elicit differential goodwill responses from college and uni- versity professors, the target market for textbooks. A field experiment was conducted using four treatments: three direct mail treatmentsane with a sales letter alone. one with an inex- pensive gift, and one with a more expensive g i f t ' ~ h e fourth group, the control group, received no mailing but was subsequently con- tacted and asked to fill out a questionnaire using the Goodwill Scale. The results show that offering a specialty advertising gift to busi- ness prospects affected respondents' attitudes toward company sales representatives and general feelings about the publishing company. It was also shown that goodwill is related to whether customers will recommend the product to friends and whether they will remain loyal to that "brand" of textbook.

The long versus the short letter: A large sample study of a direct-mail campaign

Many authorities on direct marketing strongly advocate longer sales letters over shorter ones. Clearly, letter length can affect response rates, as well as a campaign's production costs. We report results of a successful direct-mail campaign that tested one- and two-page versions of a sales letter. For mailings totaling over 1.15 million pieces, the response rates showed no significant difference between the two letters. But considering production costs, the shorter letter was superior.

The Relationship Between Gender and Writing Style in Business Communications

The study investigated the differences in writing styles between males and females in an undergraduate business communications class. The samples included a per suasive request letter, a sales letter, and a collection letter. Twenty dimensions of style were evaluated: number of words, number of sentences, number of passive verbs, use of the direct/indirect plan, number of abbreviations, number of contractions, number of specific references, number of courtesy words, action demanded /requested, number of jargon and slang words, number of intensifiers, number of qualifiers and disclaimers, number of superlatives, number of negative words, number of extravagant adjectives, number of sports and military-related words, number of hostile verbs, tag questions, average sentence length, and percent of passive verbs.Analysis of Variance tests showed significant differences by letter but not by gender, with no significant interaction between letter and gender. Discriminate Analysis produced a signiftcant linear equation with eight style dimensions; however, the eight variables accounted for only 14.9 percent of the variance.

Miscommunication across cultures: the case of marketing in Indian English

ABSTRACT: Successful communication requires that messages achieve their intent. If the explicit purpose of the message is to generate sales, yet the originator's implicit intent (persuasion) is not achieved, marketing strategies can be said to have failed. This paper focuses on the contents of a direct‐response sales letter written in English, which offers a product marketed by an Indian firm to an American audience. It contends that in marketing situations where success is highly dependent on the way English is used by non‐native speakers, communicative failure may be related to differences in usage which have the effect of preserving semantic meaning at the expense of conveying pragmatic intent. Using two differing pragmatic approaches as a framework, portions of the letter are analyzed in detail, then compared to findings made from similar examination of two comparable texts, representing the efforts of American and British copywriters, presumed to be native‐English‐speaking. Based on the limited data, I tentatively conclude that native‐speaking recipients of such sales material will be unpersuaded by discourse which does not conform to expected shared norms of understanding. Further, the results suggest that a commonly shared language is insufficient ground to predict success in achieving cross‐cultural marketing objectives.

Executives' and Academics' Perceptions on the Need for Instruction in Written Persuasion

Picture a new hire. Sh's put in two weeks on her first job after raduation. In business college she wrote one sales letter, one collection letter, one favor request letter, and one job application letter—and another application when she graduated and applied for work. Her new boss says, Write an inter-branch memo that'll speed up my counterpart in the Dayton office. We've called him and called him, but I'm getting the idea he doesn't believe what he doesn't see on paper. Dayton is holding up our Air Force contract on superwide radials. If they mess around much longer our competitor's going to get that business, but it'll be OUR fault, not theirs. Oh, and put my name on the memo, Don't get em mad, though. Here's the file. By three today, okay?A problem in persuasion. It isn't sales . Nor a favor request. Nora collection. Nor a job application—though she might get to write another of those if she doesn't solve problems like these effectively.Do business communication classes prepare students adequately fo...

Increasing the role of direct mail marketing in industrial marketing strategy

Direct marketing has long been a dominant factor in the distribution strategy of industrial goods and services. Yet frameworks for strategy formulation in this area are nearly nonexistent in the literature. Much that has been written focuses on successful techniques, such as how to use a specific type of sales letter to improve results. This article outlines a set of key perspectives that industrial marketers may use to evaluate the potential effectiveness of direct marketing strategies.