The present study deals with effective ways of promoting sales through direct advertising. The main function of the sales letter is persuasive, so it is the seller s interest to capture the attention of the potential customer so as to achieve the desired communicative outcome: the purchase of the offer. The paper falls into two sections. In the first section the sales letter is studied within a genre-based approach (promotional business genre-based) as a communicative event with a communicative purpose. In the second section a representative sample is analysed with respect to the layout, stylistic features, text-structure, emotional appeal and other persuasive features. The insight gained from this kind of analysis can ultimately be of use for pedagogical applications.... [Leer más...]