Swipe Files

Anyone involved in marketing is familiar with "swipe files". These are collections you put together with examples of content to inspire you in the future. These could include headlines, ad copy, print ads, or any other marketing material for that matter.

There will come a day when you are working on a project and need some ideas or inspiration.

Simply refer to the swipe file to see what others have done in the past for similar projects.

Its not for copying word for word, but you are likely to think of new ways to apply things which appealed to you.

An Example of A Marketing Swipe File

If you are not a copywriter or direct marketer for a living, you likely have no idea the amount of time and energy that goes into a project. When you receive something in the mail or come across a magazine ad, its likely dozens, if not hundreds of hours have been poured into a major campaign. Every sentence, headline and closing had likely been painstakenly read and reread.

You (as the consumer) don't give it much thought. You come across their work and it either catches your attention or it doesn't... You either buy or you don't.

Little did you know that a big reason you bought or not has to do with the effectiveness of the ad.

Here is one example of some interesting direct mail pieces. It is from the controlbeaters site.

It is a collection of award winning (and successful) direct marketing campaigns from over the years. You are very likely to recognize some of these. Perhaps you even ordered from a few of them!

For example, you might have been sent a beat up looking envelope similar to this one from their archives:

By the way, the term "control beater" has to do with split testing. They test variations of an ad against the control. If they beat the control, then they use the winning variation to become the new control for testings.

The goal is to find the control beaters...

Banner Ad Swipe File

Even if you aren't into direct marketing, you still may want some examples of other things such as banner ads.

If you've ever tried to come up with a banner ad on your own, you likely looked around for some inspiration.

This might be the answer to your prayers: the banner ad museum

There are hundreds of banner ads sorted by category and topic type. It is definitely a good site to browse through for an idea of the variety of ways to make an ad.

Visitors are able to rank them so you can see the top rated ads for each category.

As you come across other forms of advertising that impress you, save or bookmark it for your swipe file.