Ep. 242- JANUARY will be ROUGH for Marketing!🤕Annnnd People are GROSS!🤢Jay’s SCOOP

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 the do this not that podcast presented by marigold and i know 2025 is going to be your year you're going to crush it i believe that but need to manage your expectations for the marketing you're putting out there and you need to manage expectations internally internally for the marketing efforts that you're putting out there for your team, for yourself, for your company, because the start of the year, the first few weeks of January stank for marketing. It doesn't matter if you're a business marketer or you're a consumer marketer. Why are they so bad? They're so bad because number one, you have no money left.

1:22You bought all the holiday gifts. You're not in the market to buy more stuff. You have no more money to spend, right? And on the business side, the first two weeks of the year, the first few weeks of the year, are you really looking just to onboard like a new CRM system? No, you're epically miserable that the holidays are over and we see it in the data. So before I share with you some things that you can do to get really good engagement at the start of the year, let's talk about the bad stuff. What's going to happen those first few weeks of the year with your marketing, whether you're a business or a consumer marketer.

1:57So for email in the first two weeks of January, if you compare, okay, the click-through rates for the first two weeks of January versus the last two weeks of January, first half of January versus second half of January, the second half of January email click-through rates are 30 % higher for consumer and 40 % higher for business to business marketers than the first half of January. And that's according to subjectline.com. Why? Because the first two weeks were like, I can't do it. I don't even want to look at anything. I don't want to look at an offer of some consumer product. I don't want to look at anything related to business stuff because I don't even want to be working.

2:40I am Ms. Miserable, right? So if you are trying to come out of the gate strong, like we're going to crush it in January and you're starting to send out those emails that first week, that second week of January, and you're seeing really, really bad performance, it's okay. It is okay. That is what everybody sees is really bad performance those first two weeks. But the good news is the second two weeks, everything starts to kick in and we start to see great performance. The other thing to manage your own expectation during that time period, those first few weeks of January, is that you're unsubscribes.

3:17The number of people removing themselves from your list, whether you're a business or a consumer marketer, is over 40 % higher during that period of time than any other normal week. Why? Because people are done with all the offers they got during the holiday season. Like, all right, take me off that list. I don't need that thing anymore. I don't need that special discount anymore. And on the business side, we're trying to get our mind right for the year. We don't want all the clutter. So we're still unsubscribing from so much stuff. So if all of a sudden you see your, you know, your click-through rates on your social media posts, on your email sends that you're doing start to drop significantly in those first two weeks of January, you don't stink as a marketer.

4:00It's just, you need to always try to get into the mindset of who it is that you are communicating with. So what are the things at the start of the year, okay, that people actually do want to engage with. There's a specific content type for business and consumer marketers that gets consumed more now in the start of the year than any other time of the year, and that is list and checklist content. List and checklist content see over a 50 % higher average engagement rate on social media posts for both business and consumer marketing efforts in January than any other time of the year. Okay. And email, we see over 60 % higher click-through rates in January for list and checklist related content, according to World Data Research.

4:50Why is that? We're in this mode of like, okay, I'm going to start the year off. I'm going to do a new me. I'm going to get organized. I'm really going to hit the ground running. I'm going to do all those things I said I was going to do. And these lists and these checklists allow us to organize how we are thinking. So if on the business side, what are like list ideas that you can come out there with? You could have a start fresh bundle that you're sending out that first week and that second week of January, which is going to be these, you know, exclusive January bundle or packages that help customers reset for the year or get ready for the year.

5:26You could have checklists like the tech stack optimization checklist for 2025. Or if you have a tool that people use, right? They subscribe to your tool. It could be four new features you now have access to. Oh, I'm going to check that out. Or the 2025 repurposing content checklist. I would download that. How about 12 metrics to watch closely in 2025? Lists, okay, and checklist content on the business side crushes it. On the consumer side, the first few weeks of January, list and checklist content is amazing. What can you do on the consumer side? How about 12 mindful practices to start the year out calm and focused.

6:05I need that. I'm never calm and I'm really never focused. How about your morning routine checklist for a healthier you? I would download that. How about declutter and organize your checklist? Great. I'm a disaster. This is where you're at. You need to get into the mindset of everybody that you're marketing to and realize your performance might be a little lower to start the year. That's okay. And you want to get in the place and send out the content of what people want to consume at the start of the year. Okay, so before we get into Since You Didn't Ask, the ridiculous portion of this podcast, I want to let you know that this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold.

6:45Marigold is my email marketing sending platform. My agency, Outcome Media, sends out billions of emails, consumer and B2B emails, and I'm telling you they're awesome. They're a roll-up of Sale Through, Campaign Monitor, MyEmma, Cheetah Digital, Live Clicker, and they have a piece of content that just came out with that is free. It is this loyalty marketing guide. And if you're not doing loyalty marketing, this is the year to do it. It is exploding. It is driving massive engagement. And you need to at least understand the basics if you're not doing it. If you want this guide, all you got to do is go to jschwedelson.com slash Marigold.

7:21It is free. It is awesome. I am telling you Marigold is the way Jay Schwettlson.com slash Marigold. Learn all about the loyalty marketing world. It is where it is at. All right, let's get into since you didn't ask, which is the ridiculous portion of this podcast. I don't even know why I'm going to talk about this, but I just had the weirdest encounter yesterday with some dude I bumped into. So I was out. I was out of the sporting event. Okay. And I bump into this guy who I've known for years, but I haven't seen him in a long time. And we were like buddies and stuff. So I bump into him and he comes over to me and right as he's walking up to me, we're both like, look at each other in the eye.

8:06Like we were excited to see each other as we were walking towards each other. And then right as he's about to like shake my hand, he wipes his nose, but like aggressively, Like he got up in there and then he puts his hand out with that hand to shake my hand. And I go, Oh, he goes, what, what? I go, you just, you see a little something over there with the, with your nose. I go, let's go with the old, just wave. And the guy was so offended. He's like, what are you talking about, man? I was like, you just rubbed your nose with your finger. I don't want to shake your hand. And I was very direct about it.

8:41And he goes, wow, you've really, what's wrong with you? I don't remember you like this. I'm like, you don't remember like this? What, me not wanting to have my finger shoved up your nose? Now, I'm not like a germaphobe or whatever. It was just disgusting. And I didn't know what to do. I was going to go with the fist pump, which maybe in retrospect, I should have just gone with the fist pump because I don't think then I would have interacted with his nose finger thing. But I didn't. And this is part of my new way. I'm trying to be more direct with people. And it's not going particularly well. then I'm just trying to actually share like what I'm thinking as opposed to just trying to be like nice or whatever and I know most people probably just shook his hand and then go wash your hands which is another very very good move but I didn't do either of those and and you know what I think I'm fine with it because this dude got so angry at me he I then said to hey man so who cares about that what's going on with you and he was very cold he goes I'm fine dude I'm fine you know We'll catch up another point.

9:39He just left and he walked away. I was like, did I do something wrong? I go, I don't think so. I replayed it back in my head. I go, I think I'd do the same thing all over again. This is the type of really important content that you get on this podcast. You're getting my innermost thoughts. But you know what? If you run into that same situation, I really hope you do what I did or at least give me some advice on what I should be doing. I don't know what I'm talking about. anyway listen i hope you check out certified guru.com that is our free email certification program it is awesome we are opening up spots in january if you're on the wait list now you'll get a spot and then we close it down really fast so check out certified guru.com and also check out our new giant event eventastic.com free and virtual it's gonna be the world's largest event about all things events webinars in-person events virtual events that is eventastic.com and don't shake hands with anybody that wipes their nose.

10:37Later. 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 guru events.com so you can hear from the world's top marketers like Damon John Martha Stewart and me guru events.com check it out