This is a guest article by Palyn Peterson titled ‘Boost Your Sales Copy With One Simple Tweak’ that will teach you, step by step, how to easily personalize sales copy…
Do you want an amazingly simple trick to move far ahead of your competition and increase sales? With this free, no- software little tweak, you will be able to put customized information into a web page that is different for everyone you invite to visit.
It is incredibly simple; seriously, I promise! All that you need is a very basic understanding of HTML, like how to make hyperlinks, and I will teach you everything else. Sound fair?
What can you do with this, you may be wondering? Well, if you have a newsletter, you can create a link to your web site and the page displayed could have your subscribers first name where ever you want it.
It doesn’t have to be their first name either; it could quite literally be any custom variable that your newsletter managing service/script/program has saved for each of your subscribers — their last name, email address, snail mail address, gender, age, favorite color, etc.
But we don’t have to stop there, not at all. You can go on and use as many variables as you want, not just one. We’ll thoroughly cover this…
Why is this HTML tweak useful, you may now be asking? Just imagine this, you email your list of subscribers about a new product you have recently released. In your email, you write a few paragraphs about the product to generate interest and conveniently provide a link for them to click on to go back to your website and read your full sales copy.
Since you have such a trusting reputation with your subscribers, they give your product the benefit of the doubt and click on the link to read more. When they get to your sales copy, lo and behold their name is used throughout the page!
We all learned in Marketing 101 that your sales copy needs to be personal; that when you write it, you need to speak to one person and in everyday language. With this cool HTML tweak, you will be able to reach new levels of personalization.
Yes, the subscriber will be impressed that their name is used in the middle of your sales copy, and yes, they will have more personal interest in what you are saying. It is a whole new experience at that point, because you are talking to them individually. Heck, you just used their name! It won’t just be, “You will get big results!” but, “Fred, you will get big results!”
Now, let’s get on to the code! For this example, we are going to be using an HTML file named “choppers.htm”.
Open up “choppers.htm” in your favorite editor. Now, where ever you want the subscribers first name to appear, put this code: [?php echo "$a"; ?] (replacing the [ and ] with < and >), and wherever you want their last name to appear, put: [?php echo "$b"; ?] (again, replacing the [ and ] with < and >).
Do you see the “$a” in the first bit of code and the “$b” in the second? For every custom variable you want to appear on your web page, just put that little bit of code with a different letter.
To explain it a little more, for every place the subscribers first name should appear, put [?php echo "$a"; ?]. For every place the subscribers last name should appear, put [?php echo "$b"; ?]. For every place the subscribers email address should appear, put [?php echo "$c"; ?]. And so on and so forth.
Yes, you can use each bit of code as often as you want. No, it doesn’t really matter that the first name is using the code with “$a” — it could be “$h”, “$p” or even “$z”, just as long as each custom variable uses a different letter.
Now you will need to rename “choppers.htm” to “choppers.php”. Some HTML editors do not open up .php files, so I suggest only doing a “save as” to a .php file. That way, you will still have “choppers.htm” to edit whenever you need to, then just do another “save as”. Upload the .php file to your web host.
Now we need to create the link the subscribers will click on to get to the newly created “choppers.php” file. For this part, you need to know what codes your newsletter managing service/script/program uses to customize your emails. Just for this example, let’s say two of them are {First-Name} and {Last-Name}.
When you write your email, the address of your sales page in the link you will create to go to it, will look like this: “yourdomain.com/choppers.php?a={First-Name}&b={Last-Name}”.
But when you send out your email to your subscribers, your newsletter managing service/script/program will fill in those codes with the subscribers first and last name. So when the subscriber clicks on the link, the address to your sales page will actually look like this: “yourdomain.com/choppers.php?a=Fred&b=Jones”.
If you only cared to use the subscribers first name, you would only need to use [?php echo "$a"; ?] in “choppers.php”, and the address to that page in the link in your email would look like: “yourdomain.com/choppers.php?a={First-Name}”, and for your subscriber Fred, his link address would end up looking like: “yourdomain.com/choppers.php?a=Fred”.
You have just now taken many steps in front of your competition. You are now able to market much more personally than most people think is even possible…
Copyright © by Palyn Peterson
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Palyn Peterson publishes the acclaimed Advanced Internet Marketing News. A professional newsletter with a refreshing perspective and a strong focus on no-cost techniques. http://www.FutureInternetMarketing.com
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13 responses so far ↓
Bethanny // Dec 26, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Wow, thanks. This looks a lot easier than I thought it would be.
Lynn Terry // Dec 27, 2007 at 10:55 am
I thought the same thing, which is why I decided to share the article here. Just remember to replace the [ and ] with code brackets < and >
Enjoy!
Joseph Ratliff // Dec 27, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Lynn,
Are you sure we shouldn’t call you “Tech Girl” ?
Joseph Ratliff
P.S. Awesome trick by the way.
Lynn Terry // Dec 27, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Not unless republishing an article by Palyn Peterson qualifies me as “techie”
I’ve seen scripts for this over the years, but loved this simple explanation of how to DIY (do it yourself)!
Makingyouricher.com - Best Affiliate Internet Marketing Training Program // Dec 27, 2007 at 1:22 pm
But you’ve always advice that Awebar is a great autoresponder service. Then I know one of the tools or features of Awebar is the ability of a publisher to personalize out-going mail.
Or am I missing something on this article?
Lynn Terry // Dec 27, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Yes, you can personalize emails with Aweber: http://sswt.aweber.com - but this code allows you to personalize your sales copy as well. So if you send your subscribers a link to one of your pages, you can personalize both the email message AND the web page you send them to via a link in that message.
Chris @ ComicHacks.com // Dec 27, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Lynn,
This is a great article but there’s no clickable link to his website. Why not? Isn’t that customary?
Lynn Terry // Dec 27, 2007 at 6:44 pm
I’m glad you pointed that out Chris - it wasnt intentional… I’ve fixed it
Chris @ ComicHacks.com // Dec 27, 2007 at 7:17 pm
You rock, Lynn!
Maria Reyes-McDavis // Dec 28, 2007 at 6:30 pm
Great trick, are there any compatibility issues with using other scripting on the page? Calling variables or such?
Thanks.
Lynn Terry // Dec 29, 2007 at 11:46 am
I’m not sure Maria - that’d be something you’d have to test. I havent tried this yet myself, but it looks simple enough.
Juliette // Feb 5, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Maria,
Just come across this, so sorry if the reply is a little late
There shouldn’t be any problems, as long as you are careful to use variable names that aren’t used anywhere else in the script. The values are passed in the querystring (the bit in the web address after the question mark), so shouldn’t clash with anything else.
Brilliant tip, thanks for sharing it Lynn and Palyn
Ta ra
J
Maria Reyes-McDavis // Feb 7, 2008 at 11:41 pm
Thanks!
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