Swipe file
A tagged collection of strong copy examples kept for inspiration, so you can borrow the structure without copying the words.
See it
What it is
A swipe file is a curated collection of copy worth studying: headlines, emails, sales pages, calls to action, ads, and even single turns of phrase. Before bookmark apps, advertising writers kept physical folders of clipped ads and mailed sales letters for the same reason. Public collections do the same job now: Really Good Emails is a searchable archive of shipped marketing emails, and most copywriters keep a private folder beside it.
Reach for it when the blank page is making every idea look generic. Save examples with the audience, goal, channel, and reason they work, then borrow the underlying structure: proof before claim, objection before offer, or outcome before mechanism.
Gotcha: a folder of screenshots is a scrapbook, and copied wording is plagiarism. The useful unit is the pattern plus your note about why it worked. Strip away brand nouns and phrasing until only the reusable move remains.
Ask AI for it
Turn these copy examples into a reusable swipe file. For each example record channel, audience, goal, hook, proof, call to action, and the structural pattern. Label any AIDA or PAS sequence you find. Then write one fill-in-the-blank template that preserves the structure without reusing distinctive wording. Return a CSV I can import into Airtable, one row per example, followed by the templates, grouped by channel.