Jay Schwedelson: If Taco Bell came to you right now and they said, "We want you to go and film this. Go to a Taco Bell and eat a salad at Taco Bell," and they were gonna pay you a significant amount of money, would you do that?

Daniel Murray: We are back with another bathroom break. I am here with the Jay Schwedelson, and I wanted to kick this off because I have a question for you because I know you-- we both live in South Florida, and I know you're, like, starting to get into pickleball. So, like, do you like pickleball? And you play pickleball at a conference. Yeah. Like, are you, like, becoming a full-time pickleball person? Like, what's going on with that?

Jay Schwedelson: No, thanks for asking. I really appreciate it. N-no, I suck at pickleball. Uh, the problem is, is that I took a few lessons, and then everyone keeps saying to me, "Hey, dude, you, you gotta get into a game." And then everybody like-- The... You'll meet up with these people, and you'll play every week. But the problem with that is then I have to meet up with the people, and I have to talk with them, and I don't really like that part of my human experience. So let me ask you a question. Do you do anything on a weekly basis where you have to meet up with a set group of human beings and interact with them?

Daniel Murray: No. Like, even more like tennis, I, like, switch up the people I meet up with. Um-

Jay Schwedelson: Do you think it's weird, like, if you have, like, a g- somebody plays in a golf game or, or, or, or you meet up and, and you do something, like you meet up for the same lunch group every week. Don't you think that's a bit much?

Daniel Murray: No, I, I, I s- I, I s- I see, like, a lot of people who have, like, these little breakfast groups. Yes. Do you see those groups?

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah.

Daniel Murray: I see

Jay Schwedelson: those people. Yes, I do. And I judge them. You're

Daniel Murray: like... Yeah. Every morning they're like, and they're, like, talking about some- the same things every single- Yeah ... yeah, it's like, who does breakfast groups?

Jay Schwedelson: I, no, I, I see the breakfast groups. I know exactly what you're talking about, and I'm always like, "Why are you guys meeting up every morning? You guys are weirdos." I don't know. Maybe it's, maybe you and I are weird, but we probably are. But you know what's not weird are subject lines. Everyone loves subject line tips. Why not? And Daniel and I are always messing around for our brands, for my clients' brands, whatever. What is getting stuff open for business and consumer marketers? So Daniel, let's rip through some subject line tests that people could try right now, super easy. Give us some of your favorites, and I'll give you some of my favorites.

Daniel Murray: I mean, I'm just gonna go on a tried-and-true one. I, I, I, I, I totally believe in emojis. I totally believe they are a way t- in two different ways. One, I think they stand out in, in a, um, subject line, but also if you're trying to be consistent and do something consistent over time, people will start recognizing you for a subject line. So I think one is emojis. I love, um, I love ending, like, uh, having partial sentences, like starting a sentence and not ending it, um, and putting, or putting ellipses at the end of it. I think those always crush, crush for me. Um, another one that also crushes for me is I always, when I put like how to or, like some- something that's, like, very practical like how to or best of or, um, people love like, like tactical things that they could do right now. And another one that I learned from you, which I use all the time is, like, numbering, but not like a clear number, like a, a seven or a nine or an 11 or 13. Um, I use that all the time, and those always crush comparative to all the, the stuff. And I've also been doing something lately. I don't know if you've been in, like, a split testing- If ChatGPT or Claude can come up with a better subject line. So I'll put like a Claude versus me, and most of the time, like, uh, the human wins. Sometimes I get beat out by it, but I think just because I know, like, these little tips that, that if you try to do it in AI, they're not gonna tell you to put an emoji or a seven or a, um, 6.5 or crazy stuff. They'll just try to put like a, a sentence together. So those are s- some... I'll come up with more once you, you rattle through yours.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah. I'll give you the one, speaking of AI, the ones that we were doing a lot are actually the ones that I like to call un-AI. So subject line, uh, formats and things that AI would never give you back. So I'll give you a few examples of what's really doing well, and you're gonna be like, "Well, I'm a boring B to bre- B to B brand. I can't do that." That's not true. Everything, everything is for everybody. First off, super long subject lines. People are always like, "Keep your subject line under 50 characters or 60 characters." It's not about that at all. It's about how do you get somebody to pause doing that, that, you know, millisecond social scroll? And if you actually have subject lines that are like 100 characters, 150 characters, what you wanna be thinking about is space, and if you fill up the entire line, uh, your email will actually stand out, and it will get cut off, but that actually works so well. Incredibly long subject lines do really, really well. Two other ones that are super weird, you know, Daniel talked about ellipses, the, the three dots at the end of the subject line, but actually using them at the start of your subject line, it works really well. It's super weird. Grammatically, it makes no sense, but that lifts open rates by about 15%. Um, and then some of the other ones that I think are off the radar is no capitalization whatsoever. So again, poor grammar, but AI will never tell you to not capitalize the first letter of a word or whatever. But if you capitalize nothing in your subject line, it actually stands out a little bit, and that's what you always wanna be thinking about. What can I do to make my email not feel like AI and stand out a little bit? And those things actually can work.

Daniel Murray: I think another thing to add, and I, I know this is, like, a repetitive thing that, uh, we both say, but just, like, calling out your audience in the subject line always crushes it. Always. I, I, every, every single time I've done, like, marketers or social media playbook, like social media or something that pertaining to my audience, my audience marketers, it always crushes 'cause it, it, it shows relevancy in the subject line. I... And I'm never backing away from that one because every time I back away from it, I always- Get screwed. I think another one is, I know this is people-- we-- everything's AI, but I think adding like AI this, AI that, like I do a, like say like if you have the best of AI of this, people are trying to get AI tips right now. Like whether you like it or not, people are. So if you add AI into it, um, it also will b- like boost your subject lines too.

Jay Schwedelson: Oh, 100%. If you say AI prompt inside, forget about it. That'll crush it. You know, uh, but back to what you were saying before, and I think this applies not just to subject lines, but to headlines in your social posts, your blogs, your offers, everything. The sooner you can tell somebody who they are, this applies to all marketing, the faster they want to engage. You know, just for DIYers, for nonprofit executives, for people that live near Omaha, whatever it is, for affluent investors, just for golfers, for people in the manufacturing sector. The sooner somebody can see that in the social posts, on the headline of a landing page, in the headline of your body copy, in your subject line, in a podcast title, they're like, "Oh, this is for me." It's not for everybody. So you always wanna be thinking to yourself, what, uh, uh, what can I do to make the recipient or the person seeing this thinks that it is for them? 'Cause then they will engage immediately. It's the easiest trick in marketing

Daniel Murray: I think one that you, you've said, but I do think it, it works if you start off like this, but it d- if you don't start off like this, it doesn't work anymore, is like if you're doing, like I said, the emoji, if you do seri- serialized sends, um, I used to have another newsletter and I used to do like, um, like one, two, three. Like I'd just g- give someone something consistently to look back, look at, but also like will make people be like, "Where is... Did I miss number two? Did I miss number four? Did I miss number 55?" Like where did, did I miss another one? And they'll go back. I know-- I read a newsletter that does that and I'm like, "Oh, I missed like 79. Uh, we're already at 83." So I'll go back and read, go read 82, 81, 80 'cause I, I, I missed those ones and it made me think of the series. Totally.

Jay Schwedelson: And that's what we do. You know, I've been doing that in my newsletter where we make it, it's an edition thing. We put the edition at the start of each subject line. But the other thing you always wanna be doing with basically all of your emails, but especially any newsletters or business, consumer, doesn't matter, you wanna make sure that those n- newsletters are also living on, on your website. Um, from an SEO perspective, from an AEO, GEO perspective, um, especially with that edition-based stuff 'cause people are gonna wanna go back and look at the other editions of your newsletter. But if you're not making sure that your newsletter, all of the content is also living on your website, you are just not using that content properly at all.

Daniel Murray: And it's also a good way you can like, something you could do is refer back to it and, uh, and, and put the link, and that is really helpful too. Is like you could be, "Hey, you missed this one. Here's this, here's a link to it."

Jay Schwedelson: 100%. And

Daniel Murray: it drives to the website now. So now

Jay Schwedelson: you're getting that far. The easiest kind of content is vault content. You take like some of your best content, you throw it into s- an offer and say, uh, "Unlock the vault. Get access to our d- top, top 10 best, you know, offers, our top 10 best, you know, podcasts," blah, blah, blah. Just make a vault of any of your content and that actually will, will do phenomenal. Um, so let me add back to the beginning thing where people are meeting up for breakfast and all this stuff. If somebody invited you in and say, "Hey, Daniel. Hey, man, I see you just moved here. We got this group that gets together every morning. We'd really love for you to hang out and come meet with us." Are you just like, would you just be like, "No," or would you say, "Sure," and then you go once and you ghost them? Like how do you handle that invitation?

Daniel Murray: I w- I just use the best excuse in the book that I have right now. Sorry, have a kid. Um, kid first. Sorry. Um, oh, the kid's going, napping right at that time, so

Jay Schwedelson: it's not- So no, you're not going. Yeah,

Daniel Murray: but-

Jay Schwedelson: Well, let me ask you, I think it's wildly inappropriate if we don't talk about one topic before this episode ends. Right now, there's a lot going on about Taco Bell, and- Mm ... people going to Taco Bell, having some lettuce by accident, and then running into some bathroom issues. Are you aware of what's going on with this thing that's spreading across the

Daniel Murray: country? Yeah, I, I put it in my newsletter today. I, I'm so thankful that lettuce is not having its day anymore. I'm so thankful that people aren't eating salads anymore. I'm so thankful that I don't have to hear one more person talk about lettuce for... And also, it's funny 'cause I'm laughing is 'cause every time we go out to dinner with my wife's family, we'll order the most unhealthiest things, and they'll be like, "But you forgot a veggie." Now, there's not gonna be f- forgot a veggie 'cause then they're all scared of veggies now.

Jay Schwedelson: Well, let me ask you a question, though. Right. You take influencer deals, right? If Taco Bell came to you right now, and they said, "We want you to go and film this. Go to a Taco Bell and eat a salad

Daniel Murray: at

Jay Schwedelson: Taco Bell," and they were gonna pay you a significant amount of money, would you do that?

Daniel Murray: No. Um, first of all, I'm not, like, the biggest, like, Taco Bell person. M- my, Ari's the biggest Taco Bell person. Like, she's- I love Taco Bell ... trying to convince... Um, I like Taco Bell breakfast, which is probably weird to say. Uh, but- You

Jay Schwedelson: eat Taco Bell breakfast?

Daniel Murray: Yeah, I've had it before. I like it. What do

Jay Schwedelson: you eat, what is that? Like, what do you have? A break- an egg taco? Like,

Daniel Murray: they have, like, breakfast chalupas, breakfast tacos. Like, it's pretty good. You should try it.

Jay Schwedelson: Would you go

Daniel Murray: this week? They need a breakfast club. You gotta do a Taco Bell breakfast

Jay Schwedelson: club. Yeah. That I might do. That I might do. Oh, I'm gonna get you a salad from Taco Bell. I'm gonna do that.

Daniel Murray: No, I mean, it might be a good... I've seen people say they lost, like, 15 to 20 pounds on that, so, uh.

Jay Schwedelson: I know. That's the new joke, right? I mean- Yeah, that's a new joke ... instead of, like, Ozempic, just go to Taco Bell and eat a salad.

Daniel Murray: Yeah, but I don't think I wanna be down and out for five days 'cause I got a parasite in me. No way. I'm, I, there's better ways to do

Jay Schwedelson: it. There's gotta be better ways. Uh, well, there's also gotta be better podcasts, 'cause, you know, what did we just discuss? But appreciate you being here. Go follow the Marketing Millennials. Go follow Do This Not That podcast. Uh, and we'll see you at the next one.