What would you say if I suggested there are certain cases where you should not use a headline on your sales letter?

Most copywriters I know would say I’m nuts.

I mean, not using a headline is the greatest “sin” of copywriting, isn’t it?

And 99.9% of the time I would agree.

Except…

There are many examples of successful letters — including a couple of my own — that pulled better without a headline.

The most obvious and well-known example would be Gary Halbert’s coat-of-arms letter — one of the most-mailed sales letters in history.

I’ve seen two different versions of that letter. One with typos and one without. And I didn’t see a headline on either of them.

Instead, it looks like a personal letter individually typed on a typewriter, written to one person — and not something mass mailed to everyone in the United States.

You can see it yourself here: Gary Halbert coat-of-arms letter

Do you think that letter, to that audience, selling that product, would have pulled better with a big, bold headline at the top of the page? If it didn’t have that “from the kitchen table of Aunt Martha” look?

Maybe, maybe not.

But that letter mailed to hundreds of millions of people without a headline for years.

Another example of a no-headline control letter is this pitch I get every few months from a company called “Biotech Research.”

And guess what?

No headline.

Here’s a scan of the first page so you can see yourself: Biotech air purifier sales letter

And if that’s not “contrarian” enough… this letter also has no subheads, no p.s. and looks like your garden variety piece of corporate “junk” mail.

Interestingly enough, I actually have several different direct mail letters from these guys. And they all have the exact same layout as the one on the link above — with the company’s corporate officers on the left hand side with no headline at the top.

Anyway, I have more than a few sales letters like this with no headlines in my files. All controls, and all proven money-makers.

Now, with all that said… I’m not saying to not use headlines.

But letting yourself get enslaved by a bunch of “rules” can sometimes be counterproductive.

And when you really, really, really want to hide the fact your letter is actually a “pitch” at first glance… you may want to at least think about testing not using a headline.

For example:

A couple years ago — when I first saw the above letters — my curiosity got the better of me. And I wrote two different versions of a joint venture letter to sell some people on running a product to their lists.

The only difference between the two was one had a headline and the other didn’t.

What happened?

Out of the 100 or so I sent out, all the responses (I think there were 6 or 7) came from the letter without the headline.

The letter with the headline didn’t do anything.

Why?

Who knows?

Could be any number of reasons.

All I know for sure is the headline letter didn’t work, while the headline-less letter did.

With the letter that worked, I carefully re-tooled the headline I used in the letter that didn’t pull any responses as the opening paragraph to make it look more personal (while still compelling) — as if it was written for just one person to read. And not something going to 100 other people.

Of course, this was not a “scientific” test by any means.

But I did find the results kind of interesting.

And I’m going to test a variation of this same “headline-less” JV letter in the near future just to see what happens.

Here’s another example:

The first time I offered my copywriting critiquing service to my list I decided, just for kicks, to try the headline-less approach again. Just to see if the JV letter thing was a fluke or not.

I didn’t expect much response.

In fact, I half expected a deluge of emails from people asking, “where’s the headline, jackass?”

But you know what?

I got twice as many orders than I wanted or could even handle. Something like a 3% response when I was overloaded with half that. It was crazy.

Of course, an argument could be made people were buying “me” and had already made their decision to buy without reading the letter — headline or no headline.

But the funny thing is, none of the versions of this critique letter I’ve used since (all of which had headlines) has pulled as well as that first one without the headline.

And that’s despite my list size growing with each offer… and despite word-of-mouth advertising helping fuel my response.

But, like the JV letter, this is not by any means a scientific analysis.

And I’m the first to admit both the JV letter and the critique letter could be flukes. If I could go back in time, I’d split-test everything.

One day I’ll do a real test of this with a completely different product, to a completely different market, and carefully analyze the results.

Anyway, let me “bottom line” this:

As I said before, I’m NOT saying to not use headlines.

The reality is doing a letter without a headline will probably murder your results just about every single time.

What I am saying is look at your unique situation, consider who you’re writing to, figure out exactly what you want the reader to think and feel and do when they read it, and take it from there.

If, for example, you’re writing a “from Aunt Martha” sales letter (like the coat-of-arms pitch), then maybe kick around the idea of carefully testing it without a headline to a small portion of your list.

Who knows?

You may be surprised (as I was) at what happens.