A good unique selling proposition can be the difference between success and failure. And a great one? A great USP can create an industry disrupter in short order. This 102 page "Dirty Dossier" tells you all you'll ever need to know. … [Continue reading]
The Little Black Book is one powerful and universal format. You can deploy it in any market. This 28-page promo was HOT a few short years ago. The concept is as appealing as it is simple. "Forbes Billionaire's Portfolio helps average … [Continue reading]
Here are two magalogs that mailed 20 years apart. The first one just just ahead of Bill Clinton's inauguration. And the second one during Barack Obama's second term. Being the oddball archivist I am, I thought of the "All persons fictitious … [Continue reading]
Have you heard of the UNPAID newsletter, ? As the name suggests, it's not a paid newsletter subscription. … [Continue reading]
John Caples was the great story selling adman of the early 20th Century. Seems like "They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano" has been swiped more times than memory champion Akira Haraguchi can recite π (Pi)... to 111,700 digits in 2015. But … [Continue reading]
Here's a winner from the pages of print from 2010-2011 which had hundreds of insertions. … [Continue reading]
This entry's title is borderline cringe and evokes the kind of buoyant amateurism I had in spades several decades ago. Call it cheesy. Call it crude. But this headline has been pulled, swiped, and reworked across a dozen markets for a … [Continue reading]
STRATEGY is important in direct mail. You can have the the greatest copy LASER targeted to an ideal prospect, yet still SCUTTLE the sale within the first 30 seconds of your prospect opening the envelope. Even for a marketer who's NEVER mailed a … [Continue reading]
Here's a new lead magnet I just discovered on LinkedIn from Fisher Investments, now with $294 billion in funds under management. As you may know, I'm a huge fan of Fisher's lead gen, both in print and online. Since there's little readership in … [Continue reading]
Do you recall when the "Tiny Pill" lead was all the rage 10+ years ago? Newspaper print was also on fire in the States at the same time and entering its last chapter as a dominant advertising channel. … [Continue reading]
Here's how one of the best in the biz sells cosmetic dental procedures. When you're selling services for $10,000 and over, it helps to tell the COMPLETE story. Sometimes it takes 24 pages to do so. … [Continue reading]
Here's the current tabloid sized magalog for this perennially winning title from Bottom Line. … [Continue reading]
Time-Life was once at the summit of continuity selling in the direct response world. Here's one of its evergreen offerings from back in the day. … [Continue reading]
If compound interest is the “8th wonder of the world”… And the quote is variously attributed to a host of heavyweights: … [Continue reading]
The late, great adman and entrepreneur, Joe Sugarman, gave us the maxim about making the complex simple and the simple complex in direct response advertising. What could be more complex for the average layman than Einstein's E=mc2? … [Continue reading]
Show this 1900 John Wanamaker ad to most modern SaaS (Software as a Service) marketers and they’ll probably sneer. But what they don’t realize is this: It took hundreds of thousands of subscription-selling ads and millions of tests to arrive at … [Continue reading]
Over the years I've admired a particular client who sold a variety of products... from information products to supplements... and from gadgets to high ticket health devices. He has a special knack for identifying and marketing winning health … [Continue reading]
This was life before Yelp and Google reviews. 1971 to be precise. Restaurant reviews were an industry onto their own. … [Continue reading]
One of the more surprising things about direct response is this... Success isn't limited to seasoned pros -- kitchen table copywriters can hit it out of the park too. This diet pill promo mailed for over 10 years. It boasts some of the most … [Continue reading]
This tiny bookalog captured HUGE response for well over a half-decade. In this package's case, hand addressing and a personalized lift letter played a big role in keeping this package in the mail for so long. And these supplements sell for … [Continue reading]
Claude Hopkins wrote in My Life in Adverting: "No argument in the world can ever compare with one dramatic demonstration." This 25-page anti aging pitch is like a long form infomercial in print... from a few years back, mind you. And there's … [Continue reading]
You can tell a real copywriting connoisseur must have gotten his hands on this package twenty years or so ago. It's a little weather-beaten and there are some hand-written notes and mark-ups in the letter. Oh, and since this was from the early … [Continue reading]
For many in the direct mail universe, the magalog is the "be all and end all" of formats. But what of the good 'ole envelope package? … [Continue reading]
It's teaser laden carriers like this that helped propel Nightingale-Conant to the top of the self-help heap. … [Continue reading]
Here's a sales letter from the great (now retired) direct response genius, self-publishing dynamo, and early-days member marketing and video marketing expert, Bill Myers. Bill Myers shared the stage with Gary Halbert and Jay Abraham in the '80s … [Continue reading]