1. “On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy.”
– David Ogilvy
2. “It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money…”
– David Ogilvy
3. “I’ve learned that any fool can write a bad ad, but that it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one.”
– Leo Burnett
4. “The good news is that YOU – as an email copywriter – will NOT have to do boatloads of research for your client in order to write stunning, money-drenching emails. You simply have to be able to relax and write a good story.”
– Matt Furey
5. “A copywriter should have ‘an understanding of people, an insight into them, a sympathy toward them.”
– George Gribbin
6. “An ad is finished only when you no longer can find a single element to remove.”
– Robert Fleege
7. “Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you’re doing, but nobody else does.”
– Steuart Henderson Britt
8. “I have always believed that writing advertisements is the second most profitable form of writing. The first, of course, is ransom notes.”
– Philip Dusenberry
9. “The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time.”
– Thomas Jefferson
10. “Nobody reads ads. People read what interests them. Sometimes it’s an ad.”
– Howard Gossage
11. “When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.”
– David Ogilvy
12. “Using someone’s name is good salesmanship. Using it every time you send an email to them is not.”
– Matt Furey
13. “The secret of all effective advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships.”
– Leo Burnett
14. “Believe me; nothing works as well on the web as deadlines.”
– Clayton Makepeace
15. “The best headlines are those that appeal to the reader’s self-interest, that is, headlines based on reader benefits. They offer readers something they want – and get from you.”
– John Caples
16. “An advertising agency is 85 percent confusion and 15 percent commission.”
– Fred Allen
17. “Every product has a unique personality and it is your job to find it.”
– Joe Sugarman
18. “The writer has before him keyed returns on nearly two thousand headlines used on a single product. The story in these ads is nearly identical. But the returns vary enormously, due to the headlines.”
– Claude Hopkins
19. “Advertising is like learning – a little is a dangerous thing. If a man has not the pluck to keep on advertising, all the money he has already spent is lost.”
– P.T. Barnum
20. “Why on earth do I need to see the contents of an email at the top of the email? Instead, why not suck me into your universe with powerful, riveting copy.”
– Matt Furey
21. “Get the big point of your advertisement into your headline. Use your headline as a hook to reach out and catch the special group of people you are trying to interest.”
– John Caples
22. “Sell People What They Want To Buy!”
– Gary Halbert
23. “The most powerful element in advertising is the truth.”
– William Bernbach
24. “If you can’t turn yourself into a consumer, you probably shouldn’t be in the advertising business at all.”
– Leo Burnett
25. “Every copywriter knows what it is to struggle with a copy for hours, for days – fixing it, polishing it, rearranging it. We have all been quilty of leaving the headline until the last and the spending half and hour on it – or perhaps only ten minutes.”
– John Caples
26. “The identical ad run with various headlines differs tremendously in its returns. It is not uncommon for a change in headlines to multiply returns from five or ten times over.”
– Claude Hopkins
27. “After someone reads your subject line and opens your email, you must not take anything for granted. Your first sentence has to be powerful.”
– Matt Furey
28. “We have become so accustomed to hearing everyone claim that his product is the best in the world, or the cheapest, that we take all such statements with a grain of salt.”
– Robert Collier
29. “Advertising is salesmanship mass produced. No one would bother to use advertising if he could talk to all his prospects face-to-face. But he can’t.”
– Morris Hite
30. “Advertising is Salesmanship in Print.”
– John E. Kennedy
31. “The writer of this chapter spends far more time on headlines than on writing. He often spends hours on a single headline. Often scores of headlines are discarded before the right one is selected.”
– Claude Hopkins
32. “Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read.”
– Leo Burnett
33. “The advertiser’s logotype at the bottom of the ad can be considered as part of the headline. After reading the headline, the reader instinctively looks down at the logotype to see the company name.”
– John Caples
34. “Do not try to make your headline so short that it fails to express your idea properly. It’s more important to say what you want to say – even if it takes 20 words to do than make it short and fail to express your idea.”
– John Caples
35. “If what you’re writing isn’t fun, then throw it out and write something that is fun. It should never feel like a chore if you do it right.”
– Ben Settle
36. “The most powerful element in advertising is the truth.”
– William Bernbach
37. “Everyone wants to climb the mountain, but the big difference between those at the top and those still on the bottom is simply a matter of showing up tomorrow to give it just one more shot.”
– Gary Halbert
38. “The headlines are critically important. The majority of the public reads little else when deciding whether or not they are interested.”
– John Caples
39. “I actually use the letter as a guide for the creation of the product. I pretty much get it ready. I won’t market it yet, I’ll just get the whole sales letter ready. It basically serves as almost a table of contents. It says, “Here’s what you’re gonna learn.”
– Matt Furey
40. “Every business man receives a large number of circular letters. Most of them go directly to the waste basket. But he acts on others, and others are filed for reference. Analyze those letters. The ones you act on or the ones you keep have a headline which attracted your interest.”
– Claude Hopkins
41. “Every single element in an advertisement – headline, subhead, photo, and copy – must be put there not because it looks good, not because it sounds good, but because testing has shown that it works best!”
– John Caples
42. “Nothing is impossible for a man who refuses to listen to reason.”
– Gary Halbert
43. “You write an ad to make money. You’re not writing your ad just to write an ad.”
– Matt Furey
44. “Remember that the reader’s attention is yours for only a single instant. They will not use up their valuable time trying to figure out what you mean.”
– John Caples
45. “The headline of an advertisement accounts for 60% of the pull of that ad. In the same way, the start of a letter makes or breaks the letter, because if the start does not interest your reader, he never gets down to the rest of your letter.”
– Robert Collier
46. “Get yourself a collection of good ads and DM pieces and read them aloud and copy them in your own handwriting.”
– Gary Halbert
47. “Sit with a pen and paper before you write the ad and get clarity on how much money you want this ad to make and how well you want your writing to do. Have a vision or picture in your mind of that … then you write the ad.”
– Matt Furey
48. “The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything.”
– David Ogilvy
49. “The success of an entire advertising campaign may stand or fall on what is said in the headlines of the individual advertisements.”
– John Caples
50. “Copy is a direct conversation with the consumer.”
– Shirley Polykoff
51. “Make your advertising too valuable to throw away.”
– Sonia Simone
52. “It’s just a matter of knowing what you’re talking about, knowing the product and having a story, having a hook, having a great headline and lead, a strong close, bullets, testimonials … it’s always the same.”
– Matt Furey
53. “Decide the effect you want to produce in your reader.”
– Robert Collier
54. “You Must Always Find A Market First… And Then Concentrate On A Product!”
– Gary Halbert
55. “The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time.”
– Thomas Jefferson
56. “Fears about money inhibit your wealth attraction powers. Absence of fears about money releases your full wealth attraction power.”
– Dan S. Kennedy
57. “You must make the product interesting, not just make the ad different. And that’s what too many of the copywriters in the U.S. today don’t yet understand.”
– Rosser Reeves
58. “You have to be a writer who is down-to-earth, who speaks and writes in the language of the common people, who doesn’t use highfalutin language or show-off language.”
– Matt Furey
59. “The way to deduce what people want to buy is to simply observe what they DO buy!”
– Gary Halbert
60. “Poor copy cannot overcome faults or gaps in dealer distribution; it cannot even cash in on the finest dealer setups. But good copy can, and does, surmount many dealer difficulties, making them secondary, and selling in spite of them.”
– Victor Schwab
61. “Instead of all the wealth buried in any gold mine I’ll settle for just one profitable sales letter. It’s far more valuable!”
– Gary Halbert
62. “73% of the buying decision is made at the point of the headline.”
– Ted Nicholas
63. “Always enter the conversation already occurring in the customer’s mind.”
– Dan S. Kennedy
64. “Consumers do not buy products. They buy product benefits.”
– David Ogilvy