Celebrating 80 Years | Articles from the 1960s
By Clarence T. Hubbard
The cost of letter writing is reaching proportions that suggest more and more recourse to form letters. An insurance agency cannot resort to form letters on the same magnitude as an insurance company but the practice is promising even in its limitations to local agencies.
First you might wish to check some U.S. Government figures on the cost of letter writing. Two thousand, 25-line dictated letters cost $2,969. One thousand would add up to $1,484, and 500 to $61.
Naturally there is a variance in the cost of letter writing. Your locality and the design of your letterhead and the length of your letters all have a bearing on the final expenditure.
If an insurance company was required to write 250,000 letters a year, at a cost of around $200,000, a form letter replacement 25 percent of these letters would drop the corresponding cost 22 percent!
When to Use Form Letters
A form letter, meaning a letter printed and stored in advance, is appropriate if it will serve to handle routine business or to provide information or education. Announcements, rate changes, policyholder requests, advertising, changes in address, are all eligible for the less expensive form letter treatment.
Personal matters, or anything involving grief, should not be attempted via the canned letter treatment.
Here is a little formula recorded from the use of thousands of letters. A form letter is economical if it does not exceed more than five lines and at least 30 such letters a month are used, or a ten-line form letter employed at least 20 times a month. A 20-line form letter pays if the letter sued ten times a month.
The more form letters you use, the better the form needs to be. Here, then, is another valuable little table:
Form letters that register best have sentences never exceeding 21 words in length. The words should be short vocables, not more than a count of 165 syllables to 100 words. Personal references in such letters should not exceed four references to 100 words.
A readable, acceptable form letter substitute should be composed to reflect courtesy, accuracy, logic and style.
Make Them Brief
As a form letter does not employ quite the same reception as a personally dictated letter, don't add to its reader resistance by making it a hard-to-read form letter. Compose the message so that it will radiate good letter writing in all aspects.
All adopted form letters won't be as brief and to-the-point as this one, but it worked for once agency in getting balances due:
Dear Sir:
I owe you a receipt. You owe me a check. Let's swap.
Appreciatively yours,
If you can avoid "fill-ins" on form letters, do so. A plain, untampered form letter does the best job. Of course, there is an expensive "fill-in" service wherein the addressee's name is typed in to a perfect match and you'd swear that it was a specially dictated letter. This is only possible to use in some "sure fire" form letter sales solicitation.
The aligned fill-in is often necessary on form letters used for follow ups, collections, delivery of policies, forms, endorsements, drafts and so on. To save time and money without losing effect, our government agencies, as an illustration, are required to type all "fill-ins" in the left margin. For instance, the form letter begins this way:
November 26, 1957
Mrs. K.T. Martin
114 South Main Street
Canaan, Connecticut
Dear Mrs. Martin:
If any of the paragraphs following this opening of the form letter require a typed fill-in - the letter is arranged so that the fill-in will start at the left margin.
The form letter is designed so that the paragraphs requiring an address, or number, or name "fill-in" can always start from the extreme left margin of the letter. While "fill-ins" are kept down, sometimes there are five or six.
On a form service letter which has to meet variable conditions, a paragraph can be included with this boxed heading:
The following paragraph is applicable in your case only when checked.
Then another small box for a check mark is added to the left of the paragraph.
One insurance company which resorts to form letters on quite a large scale, uses one letter efficiently by printing the following headings about where the second paragraph would fall: Policy Number, Amount of Insurance, Monthly Premium, Date Due.
Under these headings, the only "fill-ins" necessary are all compressed into one space, no hunting around for either the typist or the reader.
Some form letters, especially when used in large quantities, have printed marks to identify fill-in spaces - a bracket [ for the address; a line ---- where the letter is to be folded; blocks for x typings; a period for marginal guidance.
A dot printed 2 1/4 inches from the top of a form letter pages and an inch from the left edge will show a typist where to begin to type the address if the typed in address has to fit into a window envelope.
Seven spaces below are required to keep the salutation from showing up in the envelope window. The common margin for letters mailed in window envelopes is one inch. If a printed salutation is not used, the first line of the form letter must be properly spaced, nine spaces below the address mark, 3 3/4 inches from the top of the page.
Signatures Important
As to signing a form letter, facsimile signatures are usually just as good if not obsolescent due to official changes. On a "dunning" letter of some kind, a hand-written signature, in a colored ink, can be effective.
The standard sizes for letterheads, and memorandum paper, are 8 x 10 1/2 ; 8 x 7; 8 x 5 1/4 ; post cards 3 1/4 x 5 1/2 ; all of which can be cut without waste from 17 x 22 paper sizes.
Even specified graded paper can help you to get all you can out of an adopted form letter, or series of form letters. For letterheads (and file copies) a 40-pound substance chemical wood paper is recommended. For printed messages by offset and letterpress - 32 up to 40 pound chemical wood writing paper is used. File copies can be 18 to 32 chemical wood manifold paper.
If the form letter used as a reply to an incoming letter, no copy is necessary. You merely note the number of the form letter used. But be careful. A railroad sent a masterpiece of a form letter to an irate passenger. It pacified the plaintiff until he found his letter inadvertently attached, bearing a red penciled note - "send this poor boob letter No. 13."
One expects form letters from a large corporation. Insurance agencies representing smaller operations need to be more careful in the preparation of and use of form letters. A stiff, demanding form letter may cause the recipient to think, "Why, that guy isn't so busy that he can't write me a letter!"
Personalize Form Letters
The local agent can personalize his form letters by color, trade-mark, and little special touches. Some may believe an agency should entirely avoid form letters. No. Today, the insurance agent needs all the free time possible for personal contact with his clients and prospects. If a few form letters can release him from the desk, they are worthwhile.
Form letters serve a necessary purpose but they should be composed with much thought - simple yet complete, and designed, if possible, so that the recipient can use them for convenient reply.
The sale form letter is an entirely different venture. Some feel such letters are a total loss. Surely they have much competition today as the average mailbox is overloaded with direct mail appeal. Form sales letters do help in announcing new lines, and new innovations, such as the package policy. They are good "pavers of the way." Or they can be used for informing policyholders of broadened coverages available.
Such form letter adaptation should not produce letter appeals that are "cheap." Insurance always needs an association with quality and reliability. Tinted paper often adds. Borders around the entire letter are most effective. Return prepaid postal cards get quicker results. "Fill-ins" should be expertly done.
A refreshing approach which capitalized the very idea of the form letter was the following:
"Dear Sir:
This is a 'form letter' to be sure. Even the signature is a reproduction. But it is nonetheless as sincere and as important as a personally dictated communication. I am using this method of announcement to tell you about the new Industrial Property Floater."
Then the letter explained the coverage and informed the recipient that it was necessary to use a letter for speedy announcement subject to a follow-up call, or any information desired over the telephone.
Form letters of any kind are a study in communications and of value to insurance agents, and companies, and branch offices. They are not simply "canned letters."
