Direct mail copywriting has always made me uncomfortable because it's so pushy. But every piece of writing has an intent, and people read it with that intent in mind. Does your writing quickly and authentically convey its intent? You stand to lose much more by obscuring it. If you read the entire article excerpted below (which I recommend), you'll find that visual reminders of a strong brand are much more effective in driving unconscious confidence than are words. Let your words show your intent and let the images build the reader's confidence.

Language Log: Not so gullible after all, 2011-Aug-3, by Julie Sedivy

But more generally, the study highlights the possibility that we're creatures for whom it's very important to quickly identify communicative intent, that we try to do so on the basis of whatever rough-and-ready cues there might be on hand, and that we automatically and unconsciously adjust the ways in which we process and respond to information depending on what we perceive that intent to be.

The study brings to mind arguments made recently by Gergely Csibra, Gyorgy Gergely and Jozsef Topal to the effect that even very young infants can pick up on certain cues from adults about instructional intent, and that they adopt a particular cognitive stance when it seems to be present. In the pragmatics literature, we're used to talking about inferring communicative intent—but perhaps inference is not always necessary in order to identify intent.