How long online marketing copy can be?

The question comes up from time to time:

“How long an online sales letter should be?”

People new to direct marketing are a bit reluctant to send long letters for fear of “boring” their prospective customers. And that sounds like a valid point indeed in this day and age of soundbites, short YouTube clips and extreme programming.

However, there are a lot people making money by sending really long sales letters.

Here is one I’ve received from the “The Daily Reckoning” group, a subsidiary of Agora Publishing from Baltimore, MD.

The letter is for selling Steve Sarnoff’s option trading newsletter and it is exactly 7825 words!

Seven thousand eight hundred twenty five words, including not one (P.S.), not two (P.P.S.) but THREE (P.P.P.S.) Post Scripts!!!

So if your message is good, if you have a lot to say to convince your prospects, if you need room to display your wares and advance logical arguments that use a lot of empirical data, feel free to write as long as you want.

More people than you might believe actually do read all that to make up their minds, especially in the financial newsletter sector.