7 NEW Subject Line Tests (you've NEVER tried!) + Guys Trip Update! 📬 Jay’s SCOOP | Ep. 356

0:01What up? Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast for marketers. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's dig into some tips and some randomness. We are back for Do This Not That podcast presented by Marigold. And today I wanted to rip through completely ridiculous A-B tests that you could be doing in the subject line, stuff that you probably have never tried. And in my organization, in my agency, we're always testing different tactics because so often marketers are focused on what's inside the email. What's the email say? Did it get approved? Are the images nice? Who cares? And if we don't get the email open, then what is the difference what's inside the email?

0:42So what can you be doing in the subject line that will allow your emails to stand out and not everybody else's? So these are a series of tests that we've been running recently that I call opposite tests. And basically we take a concept and we run an AB test and we make sure the subject lines are the exact opposite of each other to see which one's going to work. And we got some really cool results here for each one of these. I know this is a horrible episode because you're outside walking, you're driving, you're doing. You can't capture all this information, but maybe you'll go back to it or maybe you'll just ignore this and tell me I'm a doofus.

1:15It's okay. All right. So let me go through these different tests and what worked and what didn't work. So this is kind of cool. The first one, and these are all A, B subject line tests. You take your email database, you chop it in half, you do a subject line A, subject line B, you keep everything else the same. The first one is the reverse reverse psychology test. So one subject line says, you don't need this email. The other subject line says, you absolutely need this email. That's it. That's all the subject lines say. Which one do you think did better? Believe it or not, the one that says, you don't need this email, had a 17 % higher average open rate on the test that we ran.

1:53People get turned on when they are told you actually don't need something or don't check this out. So that was a cool one. We ran this A-B test in this reverse psychology. That's what I mean by opposites. All of these are running the exact opposite of each other. Okay. The next one is AI versus human. So one subject line was AI wrote this subject line. The other B version of this test was a human with three cups of coffee wrote this. So what do you think would do better in this battle, this AI versus human battle in the subject line. Would it be AI wrote the subject line? And that's it. That's the whole subject line.

2:33Or a human or three cups of coffee wrote this. Believe it or not, the one that said AI wrote this subject line did not do well, had a 14 % lower average open rate. This idea of humanity and inserting that into our testing is working really, really well. And we saw that over and over again. We reran that test a bunch of times. And these are so all over the place, I know. But this is the type of stuff where little things can add up and it's just about testing stuff. And you want to have little fun tests that you can be trying all the time. All right. This other subject line test was kind of wild.

3:07It's called the sound effect test. All right. And this is where you put the noise of a sound into your subject line. So one subject line said, and this is where we ran the same subject line across a bunch of clients. One subject line said, boom, period, offer inside. the other one said psst you know the p s s s t it said psst dot dot dot over here two very different sounds one more of like wow boom the other one more kind of like a low-key psst so i know how silly this sounds but what do you think did better the boom offer inside or psst over here believe it or not the psst uh had a 22 higher average open rate across all the different tests that we ran.

3:48Again, if you think about how ridiculous this is, just by doing that, you can see a radical different engagement. Now, the next one we did was the vague threat test. So the subject line, all it said was, we need to talk versus the B version said, you left us no choice. This is what we ran across all these different brands, business and consumer. And what we found, which we thought was kind of interesting, we need to talk, had a 19 % higher average open rate. I would open that. Now you may say this is gimmicky, this is cheesy, whatever. But it's this idea of when you're doing your AB test and your subject line, what are you really testing?

4:31You want to go in the opposite direction. You need subject line tests. And this is for any testing in any marketing that is different enough. If your subject line tests are too similar or any marketing test is too similar, you're not going to get a relevant result that you could do anything with. All right. So another one, these are also wild. Another one that we ran was the passive aggressive guilt trip test. And the subject line A was still ignoring us question mark. And then subject line B was, we noticed you didn't open last time. And again, this is kind of that passive aggressive thing. And this works on me all the time.

5:14It works on me all the time. Guilt sells. Still ignoring us, question mark, actually at a 21 % higher average open rate in these tests. And these are great, especially for win back campaigns. These work so well. This next one, which we call this internally, the parent text energy test. This is so funny. So one subject line version said, call me when you see this, because that's like what a parent would text their kid. Another subject line said, not mad, period, just disappointed. Come on. You have to love that. And this is more of those win back strategies. And the one that said not mad, just disappointed, actually at a 12 % average higher open rate.

5:58I love that one. That test was so funny to me. when we put it out the door. I'm like, I can't wait to see what happens. Call me when you see this versus not mad, just disappointed. I love it. All right. The last one was this idea of the inner monologue test. This was so crazy. So the first subject line said, oh, not another promo email. And the second B version said, fine, period, I'll open it. Where it's basically what you're actually saying in your head, this inner monologue. That's why we call it the inner monologue test. And the one that said, fine, I'll open it, crushed it, had a 26 % higher average open rate.

6:35So again, I know that these tests, this is all over the place and borderline ridiculous. But when you're thinking about your marketing and you're doing A-B tests, first of all, you should always be doing A-B tests, but make your tests different enough so that way you can get a winner and try to be a little creative, be a little bit different. The only way you're going to break through this tidal wave of generic garbage that's out there in AI land is to be a human. Be a human. All right, let's get into the ridiculous portion of this podcast, which is called Since You Didn't Ask. I'm in it right now.

7:10So every year, I go on a guy's trip with my six buddies from college, my best friends from school. We go every year, and my guy's trip is coming up in a few weeks. And the way that we do it is every year on the guys trip, we've been going, you know, we've been friends for a zillion years on the guys trip. We pick out of a hat. We pick out one name and whoever's name gets picked out of the hat. That person is in charge of running the guys trip. They pick the location, the restaurants, whatever we're doing and all that stuff every year. So my buddy picked Vegas, which I could do without. I don't really like going to Vegas.

7:43No offense to people from Vegas. It's just too much for me. I'm a very boring dude. But anyway, on the guys trip, But what we do is, I don't know why we do this, but we do this. We all bring gag gifts for each other. And we have to like wear the stuff that we bring each other. And they're completely out of control, ridiculous. And the whole time we're together, we have to be using the gag gifts that we bring each other. And it just, I mean, we lose it every time. So I'm right now trying to pull together these ridiculous things that I'm going to have my buddies wear or whatever. I'm going to give you some examples of last year, which was kind of funny.

8:23So one of my buddies got me a shirt. Where were we last year? We're in Arizona. I don't remember where we were. And we were at this very cool pool. It was like a big pool party, whatever. And he got me a swim shirt because I like wearing swim shirts. My wife's a dermatologist. and the swim shirt he had it made uh said i pee in pools and i had to wear this swim shirt the entire time that we were at the pool party which was just unbelievable i don't i mean just imagine me walking around with some people i pee in pools it was great um another one of my buddies got my other buddy a shirt that he had to wear all day which was just a giant picture of his ex-girlfriend from college which was so random because nobody except for us knew who that was and it was just on it was fantastic i lost it the whole time and then another one was um uh i had to wear a hat and a shirt that said the carly ray japson fan club member she's the one that says call me maybe and everywhere i walked around i had a shirt and a hat that said carly Ray Japson fan club member.

9:37No offense to her. I mean, but I'm not in her fan club and it's super weird. So anyway, right now I'm in the process of figuring out what stupidity I'm going to bring for everybody to wear and whatever. And this is what's going on in my life right now. Um, so yeah. And if, by the way, if you don't do a trip with your old friends from college or high school or some other part of your life, I recommend doing it once you're, it's very hard to pull together. It's very annoying to find one weekend. It's literally impossible. We all live all around the country and we argue all the time about this trip, but every year we do it and I hate it.

10:16And yet after it's over, I love it. So I encourage it. And yeah, thanks for checking out the show. See you later. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over. Subscribe to make sure you get the latest episode each week for more actionable tips and a little chaos from today's top marketers. And hook us up with a five-star review if this wasn't the worst podcast of all time. Lastly, if you want access to the best virtual marketing events that are also 100 % free, visit guruevents.com so you can hear from the world's top marketers like Damon John, Martha Stewart, and me. Guruevents.com.

10:58Check it out.

11:02Thank you.