Email marketing demands special attention. It is not enough to compose your brillant copy and send it to your list expecting great results. Those results generally never materialize as deposits to our bank accounts.
Affiliate and other web marketers need to “keep the customer in mind”. Sure we know that and may even advise others to do so. Yet, too often the customer is ignored as we keep to a marketing schedule. I think it is often better to miss an artificial deadline writing better copy or including sales success ingredients in our messages.
Perhaps I’m too old school for some. But I believe what worked for Claude Hopkins back in the day works for us in the digital market place.
We only have to know the foundation of advertising and sales then translate that to our digit work place.
A basic rule is consistency – have all your product support elements consistent with each other. A campaign is coordinated. Use the same language, similar graphics, and common product benefit points. That’s SEO 101. Using your email campaings effectively means that they reflect the style, feel, flow of product sites.
Considering you have done that there’s an effective tool creating even more return for your marketing effort. That’s using P.S. and P.P.S. in your email campaigns. Too few people mention that.
A while back Jeanne Hopkins wrote an effective article describing the power of adding P.S. to email marketing. In that article she mentions that “Two paragraphs, a couple of links, and a P.S. to bring it all home has the ability to effectively reinforce message, create urgency, and generate value.”
According to Copyblogger , ask yourself, “What’s first, last, and unusual in my copy?”
The first is always the headline. The unusual is the story or example that helps to differentiate your offer. The last …well, the last is a P.S., the final thought.
Borrowing from Jeanne Hopkins (no relation to Claude I don’t think), here are six awesome ways you can use the P.S. to enhance your email marketing efforts.
1. The Hook
Use your P.S. as bait, and make sure you attach a hook to it (the clickable URL that sends your reader to the landing page). What usually works best is emphasizing the main selling point one more time, but from a different angle. Why the main selling point? There is always a chance that your reader scrolls down to the bottom of the message without taking in all of your glorious copy. On the chance that they did read it all, offering another key benefit makes them really want to bite.
For example, if you have been emphasizing the money-saving aspect of your offer, add something else.
P.S. As a reminder, this product/service will not only save you money, but it will save you time, something almost as valuable. (Insert the URL to the landing page here.)
2. The Final Plea
MarketingSherpa writes in its “12 Top Email Copywriting Tips to Raise Funds” case study that “adopting the direct-mail tactic of putting a ‘p.s.’ at the end of the copy and marrying it to a ‘Donate’ link is a smart move for raising funds.” Asking for donations is never easy, but a well crafted P.S. can be the determining factor. You can either pour on the emotion one more time or you can provide a sense of urgency.
P.S. Don’t forget twice the number of people will benefit from your donation if you give before the matching funds offer ends on Friday, August 15. (Insert URL to the landing page here).
3. The Creation of Urgency
The nice thing about emails is their immediacy. You send them out, and within a couple days you know what your open and click-through rates are. The bad thing about emails is that they have hardly any shelf life. So you want to make sure you give your email all you have to make readers respond either by visiting a landing page or contacting someone directly. Throughout your email, you’ve been doing your best to get them to take action. Your P.S. is often your last chance. Make it count.
P.S. Did I mention that if you are the first of 30 people to contact us for this offer, you will get an additional 20% off? Find out now if you’re one of the lucky ones. (Insert the URL to the landing page in this last sentence.)
4. The Personal Approach
A P.S. is usually part of a personalized email – one that signs off with the name of someone real in your company. The purpose of this kind of email is to make it as personal as possible. The nice thing about a P.S. is that it adds to that “personal” approach, almost as though it’s an aside directed specifically to the email recipient. So take advantage of that inherent benefit.
P.S. I understand that making a decision on this is not easy, but just so you and I are clear, there is no commitment on your end if you go the next step and try our introductory offer. (Embed the URL to the landing page in the phrase ‘try our introductory offer.’)
5. The Bonus
One of my favorite uses for a P.S. is introducing a bonus. Throughout your email copy, you sell the main product or offer. Then in the P.S., you give them more if they act now. This adds to the sense of urgency.
P.S. If you act now, I’ll give you an additional gift (valued at $35) when you make your purchase. But hurry. I have a limited number of these gifts, and I want to make sure you get one. (Insert the URL to the landing page here.)
6. The Testimonial
Not every product or offer needs a testimonial. But in the case of products with longer sales cycles (like many B2B products) where buyers need reassurance before they commit to a large ticket item, testimonials are often most effective. They offer a third-party endorsement and provide a sense of assurance to your prospects – maybe just enough to motivate them toward the next step and contact you.
P.S. One more thing. John Q. Smith from the Acme company had this to say about our solution: “At first I was skeptical about the claims. I mean, where’s the catch? After 23 months of using this solution, not only has our ROI improved dramatically, but it’s had a positive impact on the overall operations of my company.” Find out what others have to say about our solution. (Embed the URL to the landing page in this last sentence.)
These are just six examples of how you can use the P.S. to your advantage. There are many others.
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My Final Thought: Indicators tell us the best email campaign frequency is sixteen to thirty email campaigns a month. Companies that send 16 – 30 campaigns a month see a click rate more than 2X greater than the click rate of companies that send 2 or fewer campaigns a month.
At this frequency, companies enjoy a median open rate of 32.4% and median click rate of 6.5%.
Final Tip: You do not have to send original texts with all emails in a campaign. A couple of days after sending your initial campaign email resend it with a new subject line. Then a couple of days later send the original email with another new subject line and a fresh opening paragraph.
Then continue the sequence of resending original messages with new subject lines and fresh opening lines or full paragraphs. This works for me getting more unique opens along the way.
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