“Direct mail doesn’t work.” I have heard this more than once by different people. If asked why direct mail is feckless the boilerplate response is: bad response rates, laws of large numbers, people don’t read that stuff, etc. As much as I consider myself an in-bound marketer, and loathe the... Continue reading

“Let me show you how much money I can save you,” does not constitute a reason for anyone to buy from you. I’ve heard the shopworn mantra of how customers are looking to save. I don’t believe any of it. The monomania of showing the customer how much money they... Continue reading

JumpstartMD has a great print ad in San Francisco magazine this month. Their web copy hits the right need - permanent weight loss - without the hucksterism of mail order food subscriptions. Continue reading

Can you tell a story on your homepage in under ten words? Heath Ceramics does it in five with: “Handcrafted tile and tableware since 1948.” They got their story right because they did not lead off with anything about the physical nature of the product or the manufacturing process. I... Continue reading

You could be totally clueless about the meaning of the four parentheses around an “&” in that New Yorker poem, and still get what 37signals does. They don’t create ROI-hypertrophic response through cohesive efficacy. At least I didn’t get that interpretation. Since my computer didn’t take ten minutes to load... Continue reading