For anyone who’s read Robert Persig’s novel “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, (and there’s no excuse if you haven’t. It’s freely available on the Internet), the debate between bloggers and marketers (nicely summarised here) looks very much like the split between Classical and Romantic ways of thinking.

Classical thinking is associated with words like logical, scientific, reason - ‘left brain’
while Romantic thinking is defined by terms like emotional, creative, artistic. Most
people use both forms of thinking at different times.

It’s been said that people buy based on emotion, then justify with logic.

So how does this relate to “spammy sales letters”? Perhaps bloggers as a class are more
inclined to technical or analytical thinking, while marketers are more likely to be swayed
by emotional “hypnotic” writing? A number of copywriters, in particular, have commented on
their vulnerability to a good sales letter.

Are sales letters dead? Or, less apocalyptically, are we at the stage where bold red headlines will be disappearing soon? I mentioned in a previous post that Maria Velosa strongly advocates that don’t make the page look like a sales letter, and I agree - or at least my left brain agrees. But the only way to find out what works for your audience is by testing.

Much more about this on Michel Fortin’s blog.