Packed with insider secrets, rules, and wisdom from nearly 200 of the leading authorities on direct marketing, this is the essential tool for techniques that produce results. Experts Denny Hatch and Don Jackson cover all you need to know--from planning to implementation--and from target strategy to all aspects of the creative process.

Every discipline--from brain surgery to auto making to marketing--is based on the work of those who have gone before. You study their tests, capitalize on their successes, and learn from their failures. In short, every art, science, and industry has a set of canons, caveats, codes, constants, considerations, codicils, constraints, criteria, and customs that have been developed over time.

And so it is with direct marketing. To listen to some self-appointed marketing gurus who have recently "discovered" the discipline, you would think direct marketing is relatively new to the marketing scene. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Aside from the fact that direct marketing is more than 400 years old (the first book catalogs were printed in Venice in the 1500s), it has been a hallmark of 20th-century commerce because it is the one knowable way of building a business. Direct marketing is the business of acquiring customers and donors and getting to know them--keeping track of their transactions and then continuing to delight them by serving their current needs, creating new wants, and, above all, persuading them to act . . . to respond to a proposition.

Despite its long and profitable history, no one has assembled a single collection of all the basic secrets (or rules) of direct marketing. Until now. In these pages Denny Hatch and Don Jackson blitz you with the secrets, rules, and wisdom of nearly 200 of the great masters: from Claude Hopkins, David Ogilvy, and Max Sackheim to Jay Abraham, Dick Benson, Malcolm Decker, Bob Doscher, John J. Fleider, Jerry Gould, Bob Hacker, Dick Hodgson, Cecil Hoge Sr., Bill Jayme, Ted Kikoler, Jim Kobs, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Malcolm McCluskey, Don Nicholas, J. Peterman, Max Ross, Jim Rutz, Emily Soell, Lew Smith, Bob Stone, Joan Throckmorton, and John Yeck.

So . . . what is this book's proposition? Simply that you can have, at your fingertips, the individual and collective wisdom of the greatest practitioners of this century about: Creative, Copy, Math, Space Ads, Direct Mail, Production, Management, Strategy, Lists, Testing, Offers, Fulfillment, Back-End Operations, Lead Generation, and (of course!) much, much more!

Packed with insider secrets, rules, and wisdom from nearly 200 of the leading authorities on direct marketing, this is the essential tool for techniques that produce results. Experts Denny Hatch and Don Jackson cover all you need to know--from planning to implementation--and from target strategy to all aspects of the creative process.

Denny Hatch is editor of Target Marketing magazine and the Who's Mailing What? newsletter.

Don Jackson is a direct marketing consultant and editor.