Ep. 169 - THIS Makes No SENSE! Big Discounts = Bad Performance? 4.3 Stars BETTER 5 Stars? 🤮 WEIRD Food Combos! People are GROSS 🤮 | Ask Us ANYTHING

0:08Welcome 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. We'll also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwetelson. Let's do this, not that.

0:40We are here for Ask Us Anything from the Do This, Not That podcast. This is the episode where all week long we get in work questions and we get in ridiculous questions. We try to tackle one of each. And if you want to submit a question, it's really easy. You just go to jschwedelson.com and you look for the podcast button. And there's another button that says Ask Us Anything. And you could submit, I mean, anything. We get wild stuff in. So let's jump into it. First, let's do the work question. We got a question from Dale from Forks, Washington. I know Forks, Washington because I'm a big loser because that is the setting for the Twilight Saga movies, which has got to be so annoying.

1:19So if you live there, right, and before the Twilight vampire movies all came out, you're like, oh, I like where I live. It's pretty chill. It's pretty cool. And then the movie hits, and now everybody, that's all they know. I don't know anything else about Forks, Washington except the Twilight movies. And, yeah, that stinks. But anyway, Dale, what's your question? Okay, Jay, we just changed our marketing offer from 30 % off to 50 % off, and the campaign actually did worse. Why do you think that is? Well, that's a super interesting question, interesting topic, and it really gets to counterintuitive findings and offers and review data and data in general.

2:01So I got some super interesting stats to share in this one. So sometimes when your discount on your offer is too large, the value, we perceive it to be kind of garbage, right? If you're in the mall and you see, okay, these shoes are 25 % off and these shoes are 60 % off. When you see the 60 % off, you're like, yeah, I don't know about that. Maybe nobody else liked it. I don't think I want to check it out. So World Data Research had some cool data on this related to offers within emails. So emails offering discounts of 20 to 35 % had a 30 % higher average click-through rate than offers with discounts over 50%.

2:43Totally counterintuitive. And you're like, wait a minute, but of course you want the bigger discount. But no, we think sometimes that the bigger discount means it's garbage. It's not as good of quality. Nobody else wanted it. So just by upping your discount does not mean you're going to up the amount of people that are responding to it. Now, the other area of data that is even crazier to me has to do with reviews, when people leave reviews and whatnot. So the first thing is how do we all interact with reviews when we're on sites? And this is important because you need to understand this as people are giving you reviews, whether you're a business marketer or a consumer marketer.

3:21First off, I don't know if you do what I do, but I always look at negative reviews first. If there's 500 reviews, I want to look at the one star. I want to know what people didn't like about the thing. I don't need to hear everyone telling me how great the thing is, but that has nothing to do with anything. But here's some data I thought was interesting. According to online reviews, that's their name, 70 % of people use rating filters when searching for different businesses. A rating filter is when you click on a certain level of the ratings and you want to see what people are saying. The most common filter applied, of course, is to see companies with four-star ratings and above.

4:00So if you don't at least have four stars on whatever it is, your product, your service, whatever, you're in trouble. But what's super wild is that only 10 % of consumers check the five-star rating. People don't really look at that five-star rating. They almost don't believe it's true. but even more important than that, forget about that. According to research by Northwestern, the university, this is wild. Purchases are most influenced by reviews with an average rating of 4.2 to 4.5 out of five stars. This is actually the ideal average star rating to drive purchases because what they're saying here is that consumers perceive ratings that are five stars.

4:45They're too good to be true. And this is totally counterintuitive. So if you have 300 reviews and they're all five stars, people are going to buy your product less than if you had 300 reviews and your rating was somewhere between 4.2 to 4.5 stars because it is more believable. It's not some sort of things where people just think it's a bunch of fake reviews. So that's pretty mind-blowing data because if all you have is five-star reviews, it doesn't mean you want to go out there and get people to hate your product, but it actually could be holding you back. Another interesting thing about pricing is this data that was put out there by Jonah Berger, who's a marketing professor and has a best-selling book about pricing.

5:30He created something called The Rule of 100, which is pretty wild. For products over$100, if your product costs over $100, business or consumer, a dollar discount is more effective. But if your product is under$100, then a percentage discount is more effective. So 10 % off of a$50 bathing suit sounds better to buyers than that being$5 off, even though it's the same thing. Or a dollar off discount works better for items priced over$100. So on a$1 ,000 computer, people are more likely to buy that when they receive$200 off rather than a 20 % discount. So you really have to think about how you are articulating your discounts depending on the cost of your product or your service.

6:25Now, it's not one size fits all. All right, before we get to the ridiculous question, I want to let you know that this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold. I send out a lot of emails, 6 billion emails a year, my agency, business and consumer, and we use Marigold. If you don't know them and you're looking for a platform, you got to go to meetmarigold.com. I've been using them for years, super happy, but they have a new piece of content, the complete guide to zero party data. And we're all collecting data from people, business data, consumer data, but we're not using it right into personalizing and targeting and doing all sorts of stuff.

6:59So if you go to jschwedelson.com slash Marigold, it is free. You can download the complete guide to zero party data. It's a brand new piece of content. My team is using it for all of our marketing efforts. I cannot recommend it enough at jschwedelson.com slash Marigold. All right, let's get into the ridiculous question. We got a question in from Ryan from Las Vegas. Vegas. I like Vegas. Although the buffet is there. I don't go to a buffet. I almost don't go to buffets, period, because they're kind of gross. I think this one, like it was actually recent. A few months ago, I was at a buffet and I saw this dude sneeze and it was completely disgusting.

7:40And I'm like, well, what if I didn't see him sneeze? I would have eaten that food. And I'm like, I don't know. The whole buffet thing, we got to do something about it. But anyway, Ryan, what's your quote? It's a food question. Okay, cool. So, Jay, which of these food combos do you eat? Okay, there's a bunch of them. Here we go. Fries and milkshake. Oh, of course. If you don't dip your fries in milkshake, then you're a big loser. That's like my favorite thing. Fries and milkshake all day. Peanut butter and pickles. That's disgusting. I don't even know what that means. What do you put peanut butter on a pickle?

8:13That's absolutely disgusting. No. Pizza and ranch dressing. Of course. Who doesn't eat pizza and ranch dressing? That's a no-brainer. All right. Mac and cheese with applesauce. That's a thing. People eat mac and cheese and applesauce. That's gross. That's actually disgusting. All right. Next. Ice cream and balsamic vinegar. Is this made up? What planet is somebody eating ice cream, balsamic vinegar? Why would you even try that? That's terrible. Next one's good. Watermelon and feta. I do that all the time. watermelon feta cheese that's a win that's acceptable hot sauce and popcorn of course i actually don't think i've made popcorn at home and not put hot sauce on it in years that is the best move and the last one grape jelly and scrambled eggs no that that's straight up disgusting like you have a problem don't ever tell anybody you eat grape jelly and scrambled eggs because they will judge you i'm judging you totally disgusting all right i hope you check out our longer tips episode at the end of the week, leave us a review, please.

9:17It helps. And if you didn't register for Guru Conference, you're probably not going to be able to go. You got to go and register. It's free. It's virtual. The world's largest two-day email event, guruconference.com. Sarah Jessica Parker is going to be there. I'm going to be there. Amy Porterfield is going to be there. The founder of Morning Brew is going to be there. It's going to be great. Guruconference.com. Don't eat grape, jelly, and scrambled eggs. 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.

9:53And 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. Check it out.