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The headline that appears over the salutation in a fundraising letter is known as the overline. Overlines have one goal: to persuade your donor to read your letter.

According to dir

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

ect mail copywriter and author Hershell Gordon Lewis, the best kind of overline to use in a one-to-one piece of communication like a fundraising letter is a hand-written overline, o

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

e that looks like a spontaneous burst of enthusiasm. Hand-written overlines, says Lewis, should not look “produced.” I agree.

Your goal, then, if you decide to use an overline, is t

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

work up more enthusiasm in your readers than your letter can generate without the overline. Here are some guidelines to follow.

Don’t give too much away
The g

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

al of your overline, like the goal of your envelope teaser copy, is to arrest attention and arouse curiosity. The quickest way to depress enthusiasm in your readers is to ask them fo

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

a gift right up front in your overline. Or to say that you will be asking them for a gift later on in the letter. Don’t give too much away.

So instead of writing this:

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

uote>Your gift today will help us stop gun violence.

Write this:

How do you keep a pistol out of the hands of a 12 year old?

Make

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

the reader want to continue reading
You want to intrigue your reader, tease your reader into reading your opening sentence, then your second sentence, right on through

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

o the end. So your overline, if you choose to use one, should set up a predicament, or pose a question, or suggest a paradox, or in another creative way compel the donor to read on.

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

Think about signing the overline
A handwritten overline is a little like a P.S. It serves as an afterthought, a spontaneous thought that the writer had just bef

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

re dropping the letter in the mail. One way to emphasize the one-to-one tone of a fundraising letter is to have the person who signs the letter also sign the overline with his or her

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

initials. Your overline would look like this (handwritten, of course):

Please be sure to read the important update I’ve enclosed. A.J.S.

Consider

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

3M Post-it Note
Recent advances in printing and mailing machines let you attach a yellow Post-it Note to the top of your letters. To make these notes even more powerfu

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

, write them in the same color ink that you use for your signature, and address them to each donor by name.

Tie your overline into your envelope teaser copy
On

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

way to use overlines is to make them answer a question or riddle that you created on your mailing envelope. But be careful here. Your letterhead overline is really the beginning of

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

our letter and not the conclusion of your outer envelope teaser copy.

Your overline must work on its own after the envelope is discarded. Your readers, once they have read your oute

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

r envelope teaser copy, opened your envelope and started reading your letter, will not likely read your outer envelope teaser copy again. If they pick up your letter a week from now

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

nd start reading, they will not return to the outer envelope teaser copy and start reading there.

For this reason, your outer envelope teaser copy and your letter overline copy must

.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de

work on their own as two grammatical thoughts. When your outer envelope teaser copy ends with ellipses, for example, your letterhead overline must begin with a capital letter, even t

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

ough the overline may be completing the thought that you started on the outer envelope. Make each letter overline a complete thought on its own, one that begins with a capital letter

tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

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