Welcome to do this, not that, the podcast for marketers.

You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid.

Also, dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday.

I'm Jay Schwedelson.

Let's do this, not that.

We are back for do this, not that.

And today we're going to be talking about some new test ideas that are super easy, that work both on email and social media.

And in general, you always want to be testing.

You want to be testing new things that you're hearing about.

You want to.

You want to test stuff that you tried that didn't work a year ago.

You want to always be tested because you need to fill up your arsenal with lots of new ideas and new things because you want to keep that engagement up and you can't just keep doing the same stuff.

So will all of these ideas work?

Absolutely not.

But that's why we test.

So the first one is about the fact that we all have imposter syndrome in our work lives, in our personal lives.

Do I know everything there is to know about marketing?

Absolutely not.

Is that uncomfortable in certain conversations?

No doubt about it.

Imposter syndrome all day long in my personal life as well.

We all do, but we don't like saying, hey, I don't know about this thing.

Because you're like, you think you're supposed to know about that thing.

So how do we leverage that marketing and how does it really work?

The magic number that you should put in your social posts and in your email marketing is the number one.

101.

101, 1 01.

Why does this matter?

When I say 101 to you, what does it mean?

It means this is the basics.

This is the need to know.

That's what it equals in your mind.

101 means this is the stuff I'm supposed to know.

So, for example, if you start your email subject line with the numbers 101 for both business and consumer, it will increase your email open rate by over 30%.

If you put 101 as the lead copy in your social posts, it'll increase the engagement by over 20%.

Let me give you an example of some of the subject lines that I'm talking about.

So if you got an email and the subject line said skincare 101 or another one that said email privacy 101 or 101 tips how to use ChatGPT or bracelet stacking 101.

I don't even know what that means.

Or payroll 101 for HR managers.

What do these all say?

Whether it's business or consumer, what they're really saying is, hey, we know you don't know everything on this topic and we know you think you're supposed to know.

So what we're going to do as the marketer, we're going to tell you the stuff that you really need to know so that way you don't have to feel uncomfortable and you the recipient like, oh my God, thank God, I'm so happy.

I don't know anything about bracelet stacking.

I don't know anything about how to do payroll.

I don't know anything about anything.

And that's why on social posts the engagement goes up by 20%.

That's why on emails, when it's in the subject line it goes up okay, by 30%.

What an easy test.

Super fun.

101 for the win.

All right.

Another one that's doing really well in the last 90 days.

Putting a testimonial.

That's it.

Putting a testimonial as your subject line.

It is increasing email open rates by over 25%.

Listen, social proof is a no brainer.

We know social proof works in all of marketing.

All we want to know is did somebody else try the thing, buy the thing, subscribe to the thing and was it good or bad?

And we rely on each other's opinions for everything.

But testimonials are underutilized in marketing in general.

What you want to do is take the testimonial and that literally should be your subject line.

And then you put after the testimony, you don't put a person's name, you put who they are.

What do I mean by that?

So these are different types of subject lines.

Transform my business overnight.

CEOs testimonial and you write CEOs testimony.

You don't write a name.

Saved us time and money.

Happy customer.

Revolutionize our workflow.

Satisfied client.

The secret to our success.

Raving review doubled our ROI in weeks.

Client testimonial.

These are the subject lines.

You literally put the testimonial and then you categorize the type of person that it is.

That's how you win.

So putting a testimonial as your subject line is a great way, especially if you're promoting things like a case study.

There's no harder thing that to get consumed than a case study.

And utilizing a testimonial as your subject line works incredibly well, all right, third one.

And this is kind of a sad state of affairs that this one works so well.

It makes me upset.

But this is it.

We are out there, all of us, in all of our marketing, consumer or business marketing, we are captain superlatives.

What do I mean by that?

We say all the time, this is our biggest sale of the year.

This is our best offer ever.

This is our most important webinar.

This is the most critical checklist.

Everything that we say is the most, the best, the least, the worst, everything is a superlative.

And here's the problem.

We are doing this to ourselves because everything that we're marketing, we're saying is the best, the worst, the least, the greatest.

You know what everyone thinks when you get it, whether it's business or consumer, Nobody believes us, as no one believes us because we're constantly saying it's the biggest, the best, the craziest ever.

And that's ridiculous.

And so now recipients, business and consumer recipients, especially on the email side, also on social media, but especially on the email side, we are numb.

We are numb to the way things are being marketed.

So what can we do as marketers to stand out in this world that we've created of superlatives that mean nothing?

We have to say the opposite.

So here's what we say.

When you put these words in the subject line now of your emails, and it is lifting email open rates over 20% for consumer and business offers, here are the words, true, truth, actual, real.

This is such a sad state of affairs, but this is how.

Let me give you examples.

So if you got an email subject line that said the true cost of 15 remodeling projects, or what's the real cost of corporate gifting?

Right.

Or real traveler POV inside, this is how we are responding now.

We're looking for that thing that says, oh, that other one that said it was the best.

That was garbage.

This one says the truth behind whatever the true cost of whatever the actual reasons, blah, blah, blah.

So true truth, actual real in your email subject lines are lifting open rates by over 20% because it is the 180.

It is the opposite of us being captain superlative.

And so this works for business and consumer marketers.

It's an easy test.

And this is the type of stuff you're like, really?

That's what I'm going to test.

Yeah, because that's called marketing.

You have to react to whatever the temperature is of whoever it is that you're marketing to at that moment.

All right, before we get into since you didn't ask, which is the portion of this podcast that just goes sideways.

It really does.

But before we get there, I want you know that this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold.

I send out a lot of emails.

My agency, okay.

Business and consumer, and I use the Marigold platform to send it out.

It is amazing.

They have 40,000 customers.

They are an awesome email sending platform, but they're great for other stuff.

And they have a new piece of content that's all about SMS.

And I need to know more about SMS.

It is called email versus SMS in 2024.

If you want to download this amazing piece of content, you go to jschwettleson.com SMS and you could download Marigold's email versus SMS in 2024.

I strongly recommend that you do.

I'm loving this piece of content.

And if you want to know more about Marigold in general and their email platforms, you go to meet maral.com.

that is my platform.

I strongly encourage you to do that.

All right, let's get into.

Since you didn't ask, you know what?

I saw this made me upset.

Made me upset.

I saw that Tori Spelling is filing for divorce from Dean McDermott.

That's not cool.

I feel bad for them.

You know Tori Spelling.

We all know Tori Spelling and she was on 9020 and she was married to Dean McDermott.

I used to watch the reality show they had the taurian Dean, Home sweet Hollywood.

And you may not know this.

Did you know that Dean McDermott, because I watched ridiculous TV.

He was the host.

This is Tori Spelling's husband or ex husband.

He was the host of Chop Canada.

Did you know that Chop's a weird show?

I can't even imagine what Chop Canada is like.

Do they have just like even weirder stuff on Chop Canada?

I don't know.

I like Chop though.

I like every food show.

And of course Tori spelling was on 9020 and if you didn't watch 902, I mean, what is actually wrong with you?

All of those shows back then were phenomenal.

Now I watch every reality show, but there was no reality TV back then.

So what?

I was knee deep in.

I know you don't care.

I get it.

But I'm telling you anyway.

90210 all day long.

And then Melrose Place.

That was just phenomenal show.

I watched every episode of Melrose Place.

My so called life with the dude with the red car and what's her face.

Oh, man.

Now I can't remember her name.

But my so Called Life was great.

Now that's going to bother me all day long.

Saved by the Bell.

I don't even know why I like that show.

That show is weird, but I liked it.

Tiffany, Amber Thiessen was cool.

And you had Slater and you had everybody.

I like that one.

The OC underrated show.

It was kind of a ripoff of Nano 2.0.

I watched them all.

I mean, you name it.

If it was horrible, I was watching it.

And I know that's really important for you all to hear about.

Anyway, drop me a note.

Let me know all the shows you watch that were horrible.

So a few things.

First of all, give this thing a review.

Come on, hook it up.

Say it was terrible.

Awesome.

In between, I don't know, say it was mid.

But it does help to circulate the show and I appreciate it if you do that.

Number two, if you haven't signed up for Guru Conference, my giant free virtual email marketing event, you're going to lose your spot because that would stink.

It is free.

It is virtual.

It's going to be wild.

All you got to do is go to guru conference.com I will be there.

20,000 marketers.

Come on, keep it real.

Register.

You are awesome.

Go watch repeats of 90210.

I feel bad about Tori Spelling.

See you later.

You did it.

You made it to the end.

Nice.

But the party's not over.

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