Daniel Murray: Welcome to a new special series called The Bathroom Break, that extra 10 minutes, you either have to listen to marketing tips or use the bathroom or both, but I don't recommend. But that's your choice.

Jay Schwedelson: This collab is gonna be super fun. We have Daniel Murray from The Marketing Millennials and me Jay Schwedelson from the Do This, NOT That! podcast and subjectline.com.

Jay Schwedelson: Each episode in this series, we are gonna go over with tips about different marketing topics. And if you want to be in the bathroom, fine, just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out.

Daniel Murray: We are back with another bathroom break and this is a very special episode 'cause Jay. Turn the big five oh on Friday, so everybody again, flood these dms, flood, LinkedIn, flood, Instagram, say Happy Birthday, big five.

Daniel Murray: Oh, but in honor of the big five. Oh, I got Mad Libs. 50 years of Mad Libs. I didn't even know Mad Libs was as old as Jay, but that's, that's cool to know. Um,

Jay Schwedelson: but yeah, first of all, I pre made the effort that you actually went, you went online and you ordered a, a Mad Libs book, the 50th anniversary. 'cause I'm 50 years old because I'm an old loser.

Jay Schwedelson: Very nice of you. I mean, I I appreciate that.

Daniel Murray: And we're gonna read one, 'cause I found one that says advertisement. And we, I asked Jay to fill out these, these words. Shoot, he's not really good at this. He puts like lame words, but. The Mad Libs is advertisement, so we're gonna read it. I didn't even look read it yet,

Jay Schwedelson: so let me just frame what happened before we got on.

Jay Schwedelson: Daniel goes, I got this Mad Libs book for your 50th birthday. I'm like, wow, you went all out? And he goes, I'm not gonna tell you anything. Just answer now and plural now and verb, whatever. So I gave him all these words and I. I'm an idiot, so I can only imagine what's about to come out here. But we're all going to hear.

Jay Schwedelson: This is a very special moment for the episode. Uh, I'm very excited to hear what it is that the Mad Libs turned out here.

Daniel Murray: Okay, this is advertisement that Jay wrote. Look at yourself in the cow. What does your smelly face tell you? Right. It's time to treat your toe to an ocean napping cruise. So do it. Sail and style on a hairy luxury tomato.

Daniel Murray: Whether it's the annoying, spacious of our state rooms or the tall elegance of our salons, everything is fit for a stop sign. Our ships are skippered by Norwegian ears whose ancestors dating back to the ninth doorknob. Were seafaring cheeses. Europe's most foggy chefs prepare your culinary Tic Tacs. Our pastry ships create slimy desserts that melts in your water bottle.

Daniel Murray: Our dashing waiters are at your tissue before you raise your colon. Don't delay. Plant the sale today. Now look in the mirror. And how about that Smiley podcast? You could guess what words, Jay, you did the Tic Tacs of, you get the best words for this, but that was such a good advertisement. Would that, would you?

Daniel Murray: Be sold to go on this

Jay Schwedelson: FF First of all, I don't How did MADD Libs last 50 years? And that is their business model. Like I, I mean that is unbelievable. I, first of all, no podcast has ever done that before. We just broke the internet. That was one of the worst things I've ever heard. But let me ask you a question about that.

Jay Schwedelson: 'cause that was a, an ad I guess for a cruise. I've never been. On a cruise. Have you been on a cruise? No.

Daniel Murray: And I never planned to go on a cruise. I'm scared of being stuck out in sea. And remember that like poop cruise? Um,

Jay Schwedelson: yeah, yeah, yeah,

Daniel Murray: yeah. I, once I saw that, I'm like, I'm out. I'm never that's ever

Jay Schwedelson: happened.

Jay Schwedelson: Oh dude. Everybody out there needs to go and watch. It's a Netflix do documentary called Poop Cruise. It was phenomenal 'cause basically all these people were stuck on the boat. The boat was broken and the toilets were all broken and they were stuck at sea and everybody was like going to the toilet in garbage bags.

Jay Schwedelson: It's the best documentary of all. It is a legit, the best documentary of all time. You did nothing else. Go home and watch it. This can be most useful thing. You got outta this episode. And listen, I'm. 50. So I have a lot of experience. I've seen a lot of bad tv. I'm telling you. This is good.

Daniel Murray: And you've also seen a lot of email marketing, so we're gonna talk about email marketing.

Daniel Murray: Actually, you were back in the direct mail days. You didn't even see email.

Jay Schwedelson: I did. I I direct mail's my OG jam. I still do direct mail. I love direct mail. But let's talk, um, about some quick win email marketing tips so everyone gets something useful out of this nonsense of a, of an episode. So you want to go first or should I

Daniel Murray: You go first.

Jay Schwedelson: So let me give you a few things that are working really, really well, um, right now that I'm surprised that are working. So, in the world of email newsletters, it used to be in the subject line that, uh, for the last few years you did not wanna put. The addition in your subject line. So the subject line people used to put like in brackets, uh, like the name of my newsletter, scoop, and it would say Scoop number 47.

Jay Schwedelson: And they put that in brackets and then they say whatever the subject line was. But people got away from that because it was actually depressing, uh, performance. So we've been testing this a ton and I don't know why, maybe it stands out, but now starting your subject line for your email newsletters with the actual addition.

Jay Schwedelson: Number, like in my case, scoop, scoop number 42, whatever. And then closing the brackets and then doing your subject line is actually lifting our open rates significantly. And it's just one of those things that goes to show you that, a tactic that you think, okay, nobody should ever do that again. It's a bad idea.

Jay Schwedelson: You constantly need to be retesting them. 'cause there are little things like that that I thought were dead that just come back to life.

Daniel Murray: I also think that like once someone says it's an anti bad practice, then you could start doing it again. 'cause then it's, yeah. Goes the opposite way. So when you say like, don't do this, then people start doing it again.

Daniel Murray: Um, some things that I am I'm seeing is I think now in the age of AI and you do this really well and I think a lot of people do this really well, but I think when you add. Some sort of question or that's very easy in your newsletter, that's personal. Like, not that nothing to do with like your business, but something like, what TV show did you watch this week?

Daniel Murray: Or, um, gimme a tip to help me with back pain, or blah blah, blah. It helps lift reply rates. It makes your newsletter feel personal. It teaches people to reply. It gets deliverability up. Um, and a lot of people just don't. Add that personal note in there and it will make your newsletter and you can pre-do this, but it can make your newsletter feel way more personal than a, a newsletter that has nothing, or even in regular email and outreach email or an add email, whatever you want, just add something personal in that email.Jay Schwedelson: Yeah, and I would, I would double down on that and just say this, whatever platform you're using, I don't care if you're a big market, small market, or B2B, B2C, nonprofit, whatever, one of the things that you should be asking your platform, your email sending platform or your CRM platform for that matter, is, are you able to handle, uh, people replying to our.

Jay Schwedelson: Mass emails. We send out our newsletter, send out our promotional emails. Can we actually get those replies? Can we reply to those replies? That functionality is not in every ESP, but more and more that is what is driving, uh, engagement. So you should be. Leaning into your platforms and asking that. So something else that we're seeing, um, in the pre-header, you know, the pre-header is that second subject line, uh, where it's the gray thing, right under the main subject line.

Jay Schwedelson: A lot of people are making the mistake, they think, because after Apple did their most recent update to our iPhones, the pre-header got a little jacked up on for some people using the mail app. On Apple. So people think the pre-header is not important, and they think that in Gmail something's happening.

Jay Schwedelson: It's not important, it's not true. The pre-header is solving a massive impact on the percentage of people opening up, uh, emails. And what we have found is that there's three magic words in pre headers to use. So you write your subject line and then if your pre-header starts with one of these three words, and but.

Jay Schwedelson: Plus the words and, but, or plus they're continuation words and they actually lift your open rates significantly because what you're trying to do is get the person to read the subject line and then continue on. You say, you know, this is our hot new deal, and then their pre-header says, and blah, blah, blah, or, but blah, blah, blah, or plus blah, blah, blah.

Jay Schwedelson: It will lift your open rates by another 10%. So thinking about the words that you're starting your preheader with are really important.

Daniel Murray: I was always told that like subject line's, first line of your email. Pre-header's like the second line of your email. So it always should continue. And then the, like, it should lead into whatever is in your text because if someone opens it, then they're gonna start reading.

Daniel Murray: 'cause if it's, you put something that's so unrelated and you're like, intro and stuff like that, people are gonna tune out. Uh, or it's something not, not close to the front that you're, you're talking about. Like if you say like five tips, and those five tips are in the bottom of the email, someone like you just.

Daniel Murray: Spam me. You didn't say the right thing, so,

Jay Schwedelson: yeah. Well, the way you think about any marketing, but especially email marketing, it's like a chain, right? And anywhere, any link in the chain that's broken, you lose the person and it's, every link of the chain has to be connected. So you have the from name that has to be compelling, then the subject line, okay, great.

Jay Schwedelson: They like that. They continue with the preheader, then they continue with the headline, then the body copy. But if any part of that along the way is bad, the chain breaks and you lose the person. And so you really wanna get. The most important thing, keep going up top. Um, 'cause that's, uh. That's how it works.

Jay Schwedelson: So let me ask you a question, Daniel, before we wrap up here. So, Ari Daniel's wife's birthday is now in the rear view. They do the birth month or whatever.

Daniel Murray: Mm-hmm.

Jay Schwedelson: Like are you, I forgot when that, when is your birthday? Like what's the next big event in your home? Is your son's birthday the next big event?

Daniel Murray: Yeah. Son's birthday is the next big event. Oh, that's huge. 1-year-old. That's 1-year-old. Uh, that, but that's in a couple months. Uh, I, I get a little break for a little bit. Uh,

Jay Schwedelson: do you have a 1-year-old birthday party?

Daniel Murray: No. No, I'm anti 1-year-old birthday parties. I know that's mean, but it's like, it's, it's always for the parents, not for anybody

Jay Schwedelson: else.

Jay Schwedelson: Of course.

Daniel Murray: Uh, we're gonna probably like take him on like a. A trip somewhere. Like, I wanna create the condition because he's a summer baby. So like, he's not gonna be able to get birthday parties with like his friends in school. So I wanna do something fun in summer.

Jay Schwedelson: I feel like you're projecting, did you have birthday parties and nobody came?

Jay Schwedelson: 'cause you had no friends in school. Is that, is that

Daniel Murray: really what happened? You got me. I was bullied so hard. So you just released a bunch of childhood trauma on this podcast.

Jay Schwedelson: Wait, wait. Daniel's a really a, like a really tall dude and he was like a, a, a, a lineman. He played college football, Division 1. Um. Did you bully people?

Jay Schwedelson: I feel like you took their lunch 'cause you were probably hungry.

Daniel Murray: You know what I used to do? I was actually thinking about this. I used to like eat my lunch before lunch and I used to be so sad that I had like no more lunch and I was just like the saddest moment because I was like so hungry as a kid. I was just so bad.

Daniel Murray: I just was thinking about that the other day that I used to preet my land and my mom used to do this terrible thing. So parents, please don't do this. She used to put like a banana in my lunch and my whole lunch tasted like banana the whole day. And it was like the worst thing in the world where you buy into a sandwich and it's just banana tasting sandwich.

Daniel Murray: Uh, it was not.

Jay Schwedelson: Wow. We're unlocking so many childhood moments for Daniel. I

find

Jay Schwedelson: a

Daniel Murray: therapist exactly. Um, this was a great episode. Also. Happy birthday to Jay. Everybody flood his comments. He's in the next century, next half century. Um,

Jay Schwedelson: let's go,

Daniel Murray: which is good. He, he's living life, you know, he's just living life and here

Jay Schwedelson: I am.

Daniel Murray: Yeah.

Jay Schwedelson: Alright dude, everybody later.

Daniel Murray: ByeJay Schwedelson: Daniel. Come on man. I gotta get back to work. Get out of there. Alright, while he's still in there, this is Jay. Check out my podcast. Do This, NOT That! for marketers. Each week we share. Really quick tips on stuff that can improve your marketing, and I hope you give it a try. Oh, here's Daniel. He's finally out

Daniel Murray: back from my bathroom break.

Daniel Murray: This is Daniel. Go follow The Marketing Millennials podcast, but also tune into this series. It's once a week, the bathroom break. We talk about marketing tips that we just spew out, and it could be anything from email subject line to any marketing tips in the world. We'll talk about it. Just give us a, a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear.

Daniel Murray: Peace out later.