In a recent email, A-list copywriter David Deutsch included the following P.S.:
P.S. Justin Goff says working with me enabled him to multiply his income 10 times over.
Not saying I’ll do that for you.
But it does show the power of getting the right kind of help improving your copy.
I call this frontloading. Here’s a second example of it, from an email by Ben Settle:
And it contains the exact same methods I used to land high-paying clients who could have easily afforded to hire better and more seasoned writers. But, using my sneaky ways, they not only hired me… they hired only me (often multiple times, plus referring me to their friends), without doing the usual client-copywriter dance around price, without jumping through hoops to sell myself, and without even showing them my portfolio, in most cases.
I used this info during good and bad economic times.
In fact, I got more high paying clients during the bad times (2008-2010) than the good times.
I cannot guarantee you will have the same results.
And the methodology doesn’t work overnight.
But, that’s how it worked out in my case, and this book shows you what I did.
So those are two examples of frontloading. It works like this:
First, you make a powerful, extreme promise. Then you qualify your promise. That way, you create believability… while still leaving the extreme promise ringing in your prospect’s head.
This works well as a way to organize a single sales argument (as in David’s case above). It can also shape your entire message (as in Ben’s email).
I think of it like grabbing a man by the shoulders and shaking him violently. Once his body goes limp and his head starts to swim, then you let him go and even dust off his shoulders and straighten out his rumpled shirt a bit.
In other words, you agitate and agitate your prospect… and then you agitate some more… and then you ask him to be reasonable.
Of course, you can also choose to be more subtle about it. You can only agitate a little bit, and then immediately get more reasonable. This can work well in your subject lines… or even your headlines.
Anyways, in case you want to get on board the most interesting email newsletter in the world, according to several marketers and copywriters who are subscribed to it, here’s where to go.