Ep. 181 - EMAIL PRE-HEADERS Are Going AWAY? 🍝 Are You a LOSER When the Dinner Check Arrives? 🫠 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 back for Ask Us Anything from the Do This, Not That podcast presented by Marigold. This is our short episode where all week long we get in questions, work questions, and ridiculous questions. We try to tackle one of each. And if you want to submit a question, it's easy. Just go to jschwedelson.com. There's a button that says podcast. You click that, and there's a button that says Ask Us Anything. And we get in some of the weirdest questions you could possibly imagine so let's jump into it let's get into the work question first we got a question in from ethan from denver colorado love colorado i mean colorado in the summer is the is the best skiing i am horrendous at skiing i go um and my family they go off they're really good i am a green machine now i'm on the green hill bunny slopes it's my jam i don't like anything else Who cares?

1:27What's your question, Ethan? All right. He says, Jay, I heard a rumor that email preheaders are going away. Is this true? Well, this is a great question. So first off, what is the preheader? The preheader is when you get your email, right? You got your from address, then you got your subject line, and then you have that little gray line of text right below the subject line that kind of looks like a second subject line. And that is your preheader. And a lot of times people put other offer information in their preheader. People that don't know what they're doing will put stuff like, if you're having trouble viewing this, click here in the browser, something ridiculous like that.

2:05But essentially, it's another piece of real estate within your email marketing toolkit to promote your offer before somebody opens up your message, right? And why is Ethan saying that maybe they're going away? Well, in the new update coming from Apple iOS 18, that's already in beta right now, that's going to be hitting all of our phones in the October to November time period. They're doing a massive update to the mail app, the app, the little blue icon app that we all read our mail on. Now, according to Litmus, 47 % of all email is read, business, consumer. It doesn't matter if you have a Gmail address or what email address you have.

2:46It doesn't matter. 47 % of all email is read by people clicking on that blue app on their iPhone. So with this new update that's happening with iOS 18, that's going to be hitting our phones again in October, November, and the changes to mail app, one of the things that they're going to be doing is they're going to be replacing the area of where the preheader is in the email. So before you open up an email, instead of being able to see the preheader that that marketer put in the email, they're going to be using AI, what they're calling Apple intelligence, but it's AI. And they're going to be scanning the emails automatically.

3:28And they're going to be looking for something really relevant in your emails and where the preheader normally would be. They're going to put an email summary, a line of whatever the AI deems to be the most relevant thing in that spot where the preheader goes. So this is a pretty significant change for marketers because it's going to be very difficult to control what is in that preheader real estate. So we all need to keep an eye out for this as this rolls out. And I think as it does roll out, we're going to learn very quickly what determines what is listed in that summary area instead of whatever it is that you write in your preheader.

4:10Does this mean that you should abandon preheaders and they're going to be nowhere to be found? No, it doesn't. Because as I said before, only 47 % of people only, it's still half the people check their email using the mail app. But only people that have an iPhone 15 and higher, meaning the actual physical phone, don't get confused with iOS 18. That's the operating system. But your physical phone, if you have an iPhone 15 or higher, then you'll be able to get all the AI stuff. But if you don't, if you have like an Apple 12 or something, an Apple 12 Max Pro or who knows what, your phone won't be able to get all the AI stuff.

4:50And because you won't be able to get all the AI stuff, your mail app is not going to change. So it's only going to affect a portion of people that have the iPhone 15 or higher that then also install iOS 18. That's a lot of stuff right there. But anyway, yeah, preheaders are changing come the end of the year and something that we all need to be aware of. So that's a good question. All right. Before we get into the ridiculous question, I want to let you know that this podcast is presented by Marigold. Now, maybe you've heard me talk about Marigold before and you're tuning this out. You're like, oh, this is the boring part of Jay's podcast.

5:27No, this is the most important part of the podcast because this is where I tell you about switching to an email platform that actually doesn't stink. It's awesome. I use Marigold. It is a roll-up of Sailthrough and Emma and Campaign Monitor and Cheetah Digital and all these other awesome platforms. I send out billions of emails every year, consumer and business, and I could not be happier with this platform. If you don't love your email setting platform, which most people don't, you got to check them out at meetmarigold.com. I don't care if you're a small, medium, or large company. They are awesome.

6:00And if you want, you can DM me, and I'll introduce you to them directly. And I'm telling you, meetmarigold.com, incredible platform. Okay, let's get into the ridiculous question. We got a question in from Tyler from Portland, Oregon. Love Portland. Like, you go there, you breathe the air. you're like, oh my God, this is the freshest air I've ever breathed. Is that how you say it? Whatever. The air is very fresh there and I love going there, but it's really far from where I live in South Florida. Anyway, Tyler, what is your question? Jay, when you go out with a group of friends for dinner and you split the check, does everyone just toss in their credit cards and you split it evenly or do you calculate how much each person should pay?

6:45Tyler, I'm going to tell you right now, if you go out with a group of friends and you got, I don't know, five people at the table, and then you calculate how much your meal is specifically, and you only pay for that, you're a loser. Facts. I said it. I don't care. This actually happened to me recently and it drove me bananas. We went out with a group of people and okay, it's the end of the meal. I don't know what you all do, but we're like, all right, check comes and we all toss in our credit card. And we're like, all right, cool. Let's roll with it. Now, some people at the meal, yeah, did they have an extra cocktail maybe?

7:21Or did somebody order something that's a little more expensive than the other person? Yeah, all that happens. And that's called being a human, okay, and dealing with it. So there was this one dude at the table, one of my buddies, who's the most annoying person of all time. He does like accounting stuff for his job. So he's a big nerd when it comes to like money and calculating stuff and whatever. And so he takes the check and he goes, okay, well, this is what I owe. Okay. And he tells the, uh, the waiter charge me for this and then whatever. And then it whacks everything else out. And we're like, dude, what did you do?

7:57You saved$4. You're a clown. So I know that that's not right. I know maybe that's not the way you should manage your money or something else. I don't know, but don't be that person. I don't, am I wrong? I feel like maybe I'm wrong. Am I wrong? I don't know. But if I go out to dinner with you, listen, if it's a one-on-one thing, okay, fine. I could see you doing the calculate your thing one-on-one. But if you're in a group, you whack out the check for everybody else. And then the waiter has a nervous breakdown because it gets too complicated. It's hard enough. It's hard enough when you get it all back.

8:31Whose check is this? Whose credit card is this? It's chaotic. Enough with you calculating. Who are you? Anyway, I don't even know what I'm talking about. Hey, thanks for being here. You need to register for Guru Conference. It's free. It's virtual. I'm not even going to tell you why it's awesome. Just do it. Come on. This is the greatest virtual email free thing on the planet. Be there. Be square. And just split your check. Be normal. All right, 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.

9:09And 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.