The P.S. might be one of the smallest parts of your email.

It can also be some of the most valuable real estate in it.

And this is where I think the old 80/20 rule becomes interesting.

You’ve probably heard the idea that roughly 80% of the result often comes from 20% of the effort.

With email, I sometimes think the P.S. can be an even more extreme version of that.

Call it the 95/5 rule.

Your P.S. might represent only 5% of the actual content in the email, yet it can be responsible for a hugely disproportionate amount of the engagement, clicks and replies.

I’m not suggesting that 95% is some universal email-marketing statistic. It isn’t.

The point is the imbalance.

You can spend most of your time writing the story, crafting the lesson and getting every sentence just right...

...and then a reader opens the email, scans down the page and lands straight on the tiny section at the bottom.

The 5%.

And that may be the bit that actually gets them to do something.

Why does that happen?

Because people don't always read emails in the nice orderly fashion we imagine when we're writing them.

They scan.

They skim.

They jump around.

And plenty of people do exactly what I admitted to doing in the email that brought you here.

They scroll towards the bottom looking for the point.

What was this about?

Is there something useful here?

What am I supposed to do next?

And very often their eyes land on:

P.S.

So if a small section of your email has a disproportionate chance of being seen by both the people who read everything AND the people who skimmed most of it...

...it probably deserves considerably more thought than we normally give it.

Your P.S. needs a job

One of the mistakes I see is using the P.S. because we feel an email is somehow supposed to have one.

So we finish the email and then add something vaguely related:

"P.S. Hope you're having a great week!"

Perfectly pleasant.

Commercially, not doing very much.

I would rather decide what I want the P.S. to do.

Quite often, its most useful job is getting the reader to take the next step.

Reply to the email.

Read something.

Join the group.

Watch the video.

Register for the training.

Book the call.

Whatever makes sense after the conversation you've just had with them.

If someone has read the entire email, the P.S. gives them one last clear opportunity to act.

And if they skipped straight to the bottom, it can tell them enough to make them curious about what they've missed.

That is why I don't like wasting it on an afterthought.

If this really is the 5% of the email that can produce a disproportionate amount of the action, give it something useful to do.

Don't simply repeat your CTA

There is nothing wrong with repeating the call to action in the P.S.

But I prefer giving it a slightly different reason.

Let's say the email has been about a health coach struggling to get testimonials from happy clients.

The main email might finish by inviting them to a training on collecting better social proof.

The P.S. could simply say:

"Don't forget to register here."

That works.

But we can make it work harder:

P.S. If your clients are getting results but your prospects can't see the evidence, you're making them take a bigger leap of faith than necessary. Come and learn how to close that Proof Gap here.

Same destination.

Different reason to click.

And that matters because somebody who was not quite persuaded by the main body of the email may respond to this final framing instead.

Use the P.S. to bridge a curiosity gap

This is one of my favourite uses.

Sometimes I don't actually want to finish the whole conversation inside the email.

I want the email to create enough interest that the reader wants the next piece.

That is exactly what happened today.

The email told you that I regularly scan down to the P.S.

It showed you why that behaviour makes this tiny piece of email real estate much more important than it looks.

But it deliberately didn't turn into a complete lesson on how to use one.

Instead, the P.S. opened another little loop:

If this small part of the email can have so much influence, what should I actually put in it?

And then it sent you here.

That's the bridge.

The email creates the curiosity.

The P.S. tells you where to satisfy it.


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This works particularly well when you're using email to move people towards longer-form content such as a blog post, video or training.

You don't need to cram the entire lesson into the inbox.

Give them enough to want the next part.

The P.S. can rescue the scanner

Think again about the person who barely read your email.

They opened it.

Something distracted them.

They scrolled down.

Now they're at your P.S.

You may have two or three sentences to give them enough context to understand why they should care.

So a useful P.S. should be able to do a surprising amount of work on its own.

Not recreate the entire email.

Just answer two questions:

What's in this for me?

and

What should I do next?

That's why:

"P.S. Click here."

is rarely as useful as:

"P.S. If you're getting plenty of attention but hardly any sales conversations, I've put together a short lesson on the three places that usually break down. You can read it here."

Now even the scanner has a reason to click.

Don't turn the P.S. into a junk drawer

There is a temptation to treat the P.S. as spare advertising space.

You've already asked them to read the article, so perhaps you should also mention your Facebook group.

And your free guide.

And the event next Tuesday.

Don't.

If the email has one primary job, let the P.S. support that job.

Remember the 95/5 idea.

The value of that little section isn't that you can cram more things into it.

Its value is that a disproportionately large amount of attention may land there.

So make the next step obvious.

A simple way to write your next P.S.

When you've finished your next email, don't immediately type "P.S."

Ask yourself:

What do I most want this person to do next?

Then:

What's one compelling reason they should do it?

Put those together.

That's usually enough.

Your P.S. doesn't need to be clever.

It needs to earn its disproportionately valuable little piece of real estate.

Because somebody might read every single word of your email.

Or they might skim 95% of it and go straight to the 5% at the bottom.

Either way...

make that 5% count.

Dedicated to your success!

Jason "Funnel Jedi" Economides



P.S. And yes, I did realise it would be slightly ridiculous to write an entire article about the importance of the P.S. and then finish without one.

So here’s mine:

If you’d like more practical ideas like this for turning your emails, content and marketing into something that actually creates conversations and sales, come and join us inside the Connecting Pieces: Build. Launch. Grow.
Facebook group!

See? Even the P.S. on an article should have a job. 😉