This one is from early in my career, if I recall the fourth or fifth promotion I wrote.   To have a bit of fun, Marcella Allison -- an in-house copywriter at Schaeffer's Investment Research at the time -- invited me and two other up-and-coming freelance copywriters she met at an AWAI-Boardroom Inc. copywriting seminar to participate in a friendly little contest.  We each submitted an email promotion to be run against a similar promotion written by one of SIR's in-house copywriters.

While the other two freelancers came close, I was the only one who beat the in-house writer I was up against -- and by a pretty significant margin:  30% more sales than the promotion written in-house, which prompted the following pat on the back from Marcella: