Your sales letter guarantee.

It’s really important.  I never really understood how important it was until I studied Jay Abraham’s concept of “risk reversal.”   Your guarantee is essentially the way you remove the risk of ordering for you customer.  And while there are other ways to do that, your guarantee is certainly one of the most important ones.

Here are a few tips for writing effective guarantees:

1.  Use language the makes your guarantee sound BOLD.

People read guarantees all the time.  You need to find a way to use words to make yours stand out.  Use words like “iron clad” “you can’t lose” and similar verbiage.

2.  Explain why you’re offering a crazy guarantee.

Usually, this reason boils down to how confidence you are in the offer. But if you offer a guarantee out of the ordinary, you have to explain WHY you’re willing to offer it.

3.  Offer something in addition to the guarantee.

The typical thing is to allow the customer to keep several bonuses “in the unlikely event” the customers wants their money back.

Now, one of the big issues in marketing is how long or short should a guarantee be?  And that’s a very good question.  I’ve seen some letters with short, to-the-point guarantees that did the trick.

I’ve seen others with triple guarantees that were elongated and flowery.  There is no right or wrong method. But sometimes stacking two or three guarantees together can give you an extra boost of credibility.

The big concept here is you want to take the risk away from the customer and put it on you.  You don’t want them feeling like they can lose by buying your product or service.

I’ve even used triple your money back guarantees before. These can be risky and your merchant account won’t like it.  So I’d be cautious about it.  But I have done it.

Another consideration is how long your guarantee should be.  Should it be 30 days?  60 days?  Longer?  One school of thought says the longer the guarantee, the fewer the refunds and the more the sales.  The other school of thought says that actually refunds do go up with a longer time span.

I’ve certainly had friends burned by offering 3 year or longer guarantees.  The market turned against them or something bad happened and a lot of refunds poured in.

So I’d be cautious about that.  I’ll never forget.  One of my friends offered a very long guarantee.  I think it may have been a lifetime one.  And for some reason, people got scared.  I think it was when we had a war.  Man, his refunds started flying in like a fleet of war planes.  He got products back from two and three years before.

It was crazy and cost him a lot of money.

Your merchant account is going to want you to offer a shorter guarantee like 30 or maybe 60 days.  If you offer longer than that, you need to confirm it with them.

Having said that, overall a strong guarantee normally boosts sales.