Ask Us ANYTHING!! INSTANT Performance Boost Secrets! 😳 Dating Advice?😳 | Ep. 478

0:01Welcome to Do This, Not That, the podcast for marketers. We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode. We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out. We are back for Ask Us Anything from the Do This, Not That podcast. This is our short episode. We're all week long. We get in work questions. We get in ridiculous questions. We try to tackle one of each. If you want to submit a question, it's really easy. You just go to jschwedelson.com. There's a button that says podcast. Another one says, ask us anything. That's where we get the questions.

0:35So before we get to the ridiculous question, let's do the work question. We got a question from Jordan from Little Rock, Arkansas. What up, Arkansas? Jordan, what do you got? Jay, we tried putting the top 10 things to know about our industry as a blog post title and as our subject line, and it did okay, not great. I thought numbers do really well when you included in all of your marketing. What did we do wrong? Okay, great topic, and I have a lot of new data to share on this. I'm very excited. Numbers. A lot of you are going to tune out. You're like, numbers, what are we about to talk about? But this works for business marketers, consumer marketers, non-profit marketers.

1:17And these little things I'm about to tell you about how to use numbers are going to blow your mind. So World Data Research was my research group from my agency, where we do thousands of different marketing campaigns. We're always looking at stuff. So that's where this data comes from. So for example, we talk about numbers and I'm going to talk about all sorts of different ways to use them. But let's say I was trying to get you to subscribe to a newsletter and one landing page said, hey, subscribe to our newsletter. Another landing page, the B version of that landing page, instead of saying subscribe to our newsletter, it said, join 57 ,542 other leaders that are reading this amazing newsletter.

1:57which one would you be more likely to respond to? The one that said 57 ,492 other leaders, because it's very, very, very specific. When you are weirdly specific in anything that you are doing, in any of the marketing that you are doing, it does incredibly well. So to give you an idea, let's say you are promoting a newsletter. You can put on that landing page or you could put in the email or on the social post, Join 12 ,847 other marketers who are reading this. Or let's say you have a product, okay? Join 9 ,113 other people that are enjoying these socks. Whatever it is that you are promoting, a newsletter, a webinar, a content piece, a consumer product, the number of donors that are donating to something.

2:45When you are weirdly specific, okay? Believe it or not, specific numbers versus generic numbers like 9 ,122 versus 10 ,000, even though 10 ,000 is higher, specific numbers increase engagement by over 15 % versus generic numbers. Generic numbers make it feel like it's not real. Now, a lot of times when we think about numbers, we're using them at the start of our hook, right? We're using them as a listicle of some kind. The 11 ways this failed, the nine outfits that made people look, the 13 tests that actually worked, the seven things all HR leaders need to know. Here's the secret sauce thing that you always need to know.

3:30Whatever it is you're promoting, that listicle, that thing you want people to download it, that sale, right? The anything, whatever it is, and you're starting it out, that blog post you're starting out, you should start with a number. That subject line, you're starting it out with a number. That podcast title, you're starting out with a number, but do not allow that number to end in a zero or a five. It can't be the number 10. It can't be the number 25. Numbers like nine, 11, that is what you're looking for. Seven, four, anything that doesn't end in a zero or five, believe it or not, we consider those round numbers, zero or five.

4:08Non-round numbers at the start of a subject line, a blog post, a podcast title, any content piece actually increase engagement over 22 % versus those that are a zero or a five. I know this is crazy and ridiculous and all this nonsense, but it actually works. The other one is this actual real psychological thing called the pratfall effect. Okay. The pratfall effect is like a legit psychology term. And what it is, it's all about is that when there are some numbers that show flaws, they're more believable than perfect numbers. What do I mean by this when I say the pratfall effect? All right, if you are going and you're looking at, you're gonna order some in Uber Eats, okay?

4:58You're looking at a restaurant review or Google review, right? You're looking at a Google review for the plumbing company that you wanna hire for your house. If you go on there and you see it as a 5.0 rating, Okay. Or if that same company had a 4.8 rating, believe it or not, the one with the 4.8 rating versus the 5.0 rating will actually do better. We'll actually get more business, more calls. It is more believable when you are not perfect. A lot of people get nervous. Like for example, my podcast, right? If you go on Apple and this is not being a flex or whatever, I have a 4.9 rating out of five on my podcast reviews.

5:41You're probably going to give it a one. Now we'll go down to 4.7, whatever, but I have a 4.9 rating. Okay. For a while, I had a 5.0 rating and it went down to 4.9 and oddly, okay, weirdly, we actually got more sponsors interested in, in sponsoring the podcast when it went down to 4.9. It is more, I didn't have nothing to do with it. I just got some bad reviews, ironically, but it is more believable. Everybody can't love what you're doing. Okay. So actually having reviews and highlighting them that are not perfect does really, really, really well. It's so odd how that works. The other one that people sleep on is negative numbers.

6:22Loss framing actually crushes it. And I'll tell you exactly what I mean, but here's the stat. Negative numbers, for example, in your subject lines and your blog post titles and in your sale titles will actually lead to about a 10 % boost in engagement. So imagine you saw a subject line that says something like this, down 17 % dot, dot, dot, until we fix this, or lost 22 % of clicks overnight. It's almost like, I feel bad saying it this way, it's almost like rubbernecking when you're on the highway and you see an accident, you don't want anything bad to happen, but everyone slows down. That's why traffic occurs because everybody's looking at it like, Ooh, what happened?

6:59That's not good, right? When you see negative numbers and it's framed as a negative way in that podcast title, in that subject line, in that whatever, it gets us to that millisecond pause and it works. It's really strange. The other one that is the weirdest one that we're testing right now a lot of, which is the strangest thing in the world, is using things like 3.5 subject line tricks, like in the subject line, as a subject line. We're doing that in our marketing, right? Or 4.8 things you should know. It is ridiculous. It makes no sense. What do you mean 4.8 things I should know? Three and a half subject lines, tricks to try.

7:42It makes no sense, but it gets the person to pause. And we're still testing through this, but we're actually seeing it lift open rates a lot on a lot of the email marketing that we're doing. So I'm not advocating for doing this whole decimal thing yet, but it is pretty, pretty wild. All right, before we get into the ridiculous question, I want to let you know that this podcast is sponsored by a company called Knack, K-N-A-K. Listen, we have all spent a zillion hours designing email campaigns and landing pages, and we're trying to find the person in our company that knows how to code stuff, and they're busy, they're out to lunch, they're out sick.

8:16Oh no, our email is going to take three more weeks to get done. It takes forever. So my company switched over to Knack's platform. Their platform is, you don't need to know how to code anything. You could design all your emails, your landing pages. They have this collaboration tool. They now have this AI thing. You could even just talk to it and say what you want your email to look like. And Knack spits it out. Some of the biggest brands on the planet use Knack. I am telling you, it has radically changed how fast we can get our emails done, what they look like. It is incredible. If you don't know Knack, go to knack.com slash demo.

8:55That's knack.com slash demo. I love what they're doing. All right, let's get into the ridiculous question. So over time, I don't know why people submit dating advice questions, but on the form on my website on jschwellson.com, we get a lot of people submitting questions that they want me to answer about dating advice. advice. First off, I know I'm going to answer them right now. We have a series of them. We group them together. I've not read them. So I'm going to read them for the first time. Now my team grabbed them together, but I will tell you, you should not listen to me about dating advice because first of all, I'm an old nerd.

9:29Second of all, I've been married. I have the greatest marriage. My wife is the greatest human being of all time. I'm married for 22 years. I don't know anything about dating. And my teenage kids that are 18 and 20, not teenage, when they talk about dating. I don't know what they're talking about. I'm clueless, but I will give you my advice because here we are, but take it with a grain of salt because I don't know what I'm talking about. All right. Here are the questions that have come in over the last few weeks about dating. Jay, if he still likes his ex's photos on social media, is that normal or am I supposed to pretend I don't notice that?

10:06Okay. That's not normal. First of all, I think that's very bad sign. I don't even think, I mean, maybe they could still be connected, but I don't think the person should be, your ex should be viewing their stories in my opinion. I definitely don't think they should be liking their posts. If they're liking the person's post, that's it. That is a massive red flag. Anything other than that, get out of that. Bad situation. That's my take on that. Okay, next. Jay, if she never asked me anything about myself, is that just how she is? Or is that the whole answer? I don't really know what that means. But if she doesn't ask you anything about yourself, then that sucks.

10:47That's not a relationship. It's not going to get a lot better. And even if you say to her, hey, you don't ever ask me anything about myself. She'll do it for a little bit, but then she'll go back to the way that she is a narcissist and get out of that. That person seems like a loser. That's my opinion. Okay. Jay, if they cancel and then I see them out somewhere else, is that really a deal breaker? A billion percent. What type of question is that? You're telling me if you have a date with somebody and they go, sorry, I can't go. And then you go out and you see them at the bar with their friends.

11:20Guess what? They would rather be doing that than be with you. It's the instant deal breaker. If it was me, I would go up to the person and say, hey, you clown. Hey, you loser. Hey, you tool. You blew me off to be here. Guess what? We're never going to do again. We're never hanging out again. Later. Smell you later. That's what I think. Anyway, last one. Jay, if he disappears for a day or two and then comes back like nothing happened, what am I supposed to do with that? You're supposed to be, where the hell were you? Are we dating? Are we together? Like, hello, this ain't it. You know, it's not like you, you, unless you give somebody the heads up, right?

11:59Hey, I'm going to go and hike this mountain. They're not going to have cell service. But in the world that we live in now, constant communication and I don't like these games. Oh, they're not going to talk for two days because they're trying to seem like they're not that into it. Screw that. I think that's weird. I don't like it. All right. Listen, two things. I want to work with you. Go to jschwedelson.com. There's a form there. We should work together. I have an agency. I do demand gen. I do database growth. I do all this stuff. I do a lot of brand partnerships. I want to promote your brand.

12:27Just go there. There's a partner form on the top right. Click it. Leave this thing a review. Leave a comment. That's how it circulates. You are awesome. Submit your questions and be cool. Later. Wait, the party is not over. Go to jayschwedelson.com because I want to do stuff with you. I want to partner with you. When you click on the button partner with Jay, you let me know what you going on. Work with my agency. Work with me directly. Get access to all of my free resources at jschwedelson.com. And I got a book coming out this April. It's called Stupider People Have Done It. And all of the net proceeds are going to the V Foundation for Cancer Research.

13:10Go on Amazon, buy Stupider People Have Done It. That way you can help kick cancer's butt with me. And if this podcast wasn't the worst podcast you've ever listened to, it might have been, leave it a review, follow the show. You are awesome. Go out there and crush it.