The benefit of coming into demand generation from a direct mail background is that I can use decades-old tricks to give me an edge when I’m planning campaigns. One of those old-school tricks is the P.S.
What’s a P.S? It stands for postscript which comes from the Latin “post scriptum” that means “written after”. It’s that little one or two sentence blurb at the bottom of a letter that looks like an afterthought.
The reason a P.S. is important is that prospects don’t read emails start to finish. If they open your email at all, they glance through what you write, stopping on a bullet here, a bold headline here, a link there. But before they respond, their eyes often rest on the P.S. Which means any email that doesn’t have one is missing a valuable opportunity to gain a conversion.
So how do you use a P.S. in an email?
- First, set your email up properly. That means keep your email as short as you can while still having meaningful copy. Don’t forget to use bold headlines, bullet points and links to get attention. Then add your P.S. at the end.
- In the P.S., repeat your call to action and your offer
- If you can, add a special gift or sweetener for response.
- Use the P.S. to close on a strong note – the strongest appeal you have.
- Use it for your hook – put in a URL and emphasize your call to action or main selling point and tell your reader how to respond.
- Put a testimonial in to really drive home your point.
That’s it!
P.S. According to Bob Stone (author of the direct marketing bible, “Successful Direct Marketing Methods”), the P.S. is one of the most effective parts of any communication. If you don’t know how to set one up, contact me at [email protected]. I’ll show you how to test set one up and test it – and I bet the results will prove me right!