Ep. 285- 4️⃣ Subject Line Tests you have NEVER TRIED!🥣WORST Show on TV!+ Octomom, Gypsy Rose| 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 back for do this not that podcast presented by marigold and i want to talk about subject lines there are new things that you can test in your subject line that are moving the dial and you know what everyone's like what no come on that's irrelevant can we talk about something big and here's the thing this is big why is it big because it's one of those things in marketing where there's not that many of them. That takes three seconds to do, costs you nothing, doesn't matter how sophisticated or not sophisticated you are. And it could be a game changer. It can significantly change the number of people that are interacting with your information, your offers, business offers, consumer offers.

1:16It doesn't matter. And so I love subject lines because so often we focus on what's inside the email. But if we don't get the email open, who actually cares what's in the email. So I want to rip through some subject line tests that you have never tried. So let's jump right into it. So the first one is hours versus days. What that means is that if you actually use hours in your subject line versus days, you get a 24 % increase in open rates on average. So for example, instead of saying two days left in your offer, whatever your offer is, consumer or business, you say 48 hours left. 48 hours to us is a shorter period of time, even though it's not.

1:58Days seem longer. Hours seem shorter. So if you haven't tested this head-to-head, super easy test, and hours almost always, and everything that we've seen, and all this data is from subjectline.com, hours almost always beats days. Okay. And by the way, as it relates to days and dates. Never just put today's date in the subject line. Like it is, you know, April 8th, whatever. And this is our seventh edition of our newsletter. Don't do that. That is weird. That is legacy. That is old. Don't do that. All right. But I'll give you a date thing that does really, really well. And that is future dates.

2:38Future dates in your subject line are lifting open rates by over 15 % as compared to regular subject lines. What do I mean by future dates? If you have something that you're announcing, a big sale, a new piece of content, an event, I don't care what it is, okay? Leading into that, you can say, you know, April 8th, something big is happening, dot, dot, dot. You start to build up that excitement. What's it going to be? Maybe it's going to be your keynote. Maybe it's your biggest sale of the year. Maybe it's a new product drop. And you can do this a couple of times leading into it. But future date in the subject line is awesome.

3:15another one with dates that does really really well that i don't think people are doing enough is for reminder stuff so let's say people have signed up for a webinar okay what do you all do you put out their emails that say things like reminder blah blah blah is coming soon wow being reminded of things is the actual worst it's annoying nobody wants to be reminded of anything So how can you tell somebody and remind them without actually saying reminder? So if you say things like this, you're on the list for April 8th, right? And then you put maybe a checkmark emoji. When you say you're on the list for April 8th with an exclamation mark, it feels official.

3:56It feels a little exciting. It feels like you're on the inside. And it's not like you look at that subject line like, oh, yeah, this is awesome. No, but in your subconscious, it makes you feel a little bit good. so what is wrong with that and then this one is totally bonkers weird bizarre whatever but we've been messing around with it and i kind of love it so you may or may not know this but starting a subject line and this is not the bonkers thing starting a subject line with a number of any kind will actually lift the percentage of people opening up your email so you know the three pitfalls to avoid the four hottest fashion trends an actual number as the first character of your subject line because as people are doing that social scroll in their inbox, okay, that number stands out just a little bit and it gets them to pause.

4:41It feels definitive. It feels like you're an authority. They know exactly what they're going to get out of it. So if you're not incorporating starting your subject lines with a number, business or consumer marketing, you're missing the boat. But this one's really random. I love this though. It is, and by the way, when you start with a number or use a number at all in your marketing, you want it to be oddly an odd number. So if you were to say something like, you know, the 10 things you need to know versus saying the 11 things you need to know, for some reason, odd numbers outperform even numbers on anything in marketing.

5:14It's the strangest thing. It feels more real. It doesn't, it feels less generic. That's, that's my take, but it always is the case. But this is super random. When you take an odd number plus a decimal, it does really, really well. So for example, if you had something like this, the 11.5 growth hacks that work, and you actually write the number 11.5 growth hacks that work. And when you put in that decimal, okay, with that 0.5, we're seeing it lift open rates, an extra boost because it's so odd. It's causing that curiosity and it's so rare to be seen. So this idea of odd number plus decimal at the start of your subject line is kind of a fun, crazy test to try.

5:56And that's what I'm all about. Something different. We got to stand out. We got to make our emails open and not everybody else's. All right. Before we get to since you didn't ask, which is the totally ridiculous portion of this podcast, I wanted to let you know this podcast is exclusively everything. It's exclusively presented by Marigold. Why can't I speak? It's exclusively presented by Marigold. Now, Marigold is a great email sending platform. It is. I use it. I send out billions of emails for my agency, business, consumer, small, medium, large brands, doesn't matter. It's awesome. But they have a piece of content that I have just been reading over and over and over again because it's amazing.

6:32It is their consumer trends report. It just came out. They surveyed 21 ,700 people asking about their feelings about different brands, their loyalty, segmentation. Would they spend more on products based on different loyalty factors? all this stuff and you can get it. It's ungated and it's free to access. All you got to do is go to meetmarigold.com slash CTI. So that's meetmarigold.com slash CTI. This thing is wild. It's free. It's ungated. Check it out. I love this thing. All right, let's get into since you didn't ask. Always so ridiculous. So of course, I want to share the nonsense TV that I'm reading, reading.

7:18I'm not reading TV. They're not on TV. I'm watching and some things I'm looking forward to. All right. So I just gave this show a try and it couldn't be worse. It is With Love, Megan. This is Megan Markle's new show. It's on Netflix. And I don't care what anybody thinks about Megan Markle. That's irrelevant to me. But this new show, it popped up there. I'm like, oh, I'm going to give it a try. Okay. And it's where Megan Markle invites famous friends over and they do like cooking and stuff and gardening and kind of get the vibe where she's trying to be like martha stewart and it's just not coming together it's not she should go back to being on suits that was great okay this whole idea where she is now like the pioneer woman or whatever it's i couldn't get through it it was it was unwatchable it was just unwatchable so that's the new megan markle show and hey listen she seems like a fine person whatever the next one that i'm looking forward to that's coming out in a few days, this is going to be great, is I Was Octomom, the Natalie Suleiman story.

8:23Now, maybe some of you don't remember Octomom, but Octomom is the one who ended up having 14 kids, and she was like this tabloid sensation because he had eight kids at once. It was wild. I've not thought about Octomom, not that I ever really thought about Octomom, but I haven't thought about Octomom in a while. So now we get to check in on her life. what is going on we need the update on these 14 human beings i'm very into that we had american idol i still like american idol i like carrie underwood i like lionel richie uh ryan seacrest does not bother me except if he ever says seacrest out that's embarrassing so i like american now see the reason american isle is better than the voice when people go on american idol they actually become famous there's a lot of stars that came out of american idol you cannot find me somebody it went on The Voice.

9:10I don't care what you say. That became a mega star. You can't. And that's why The Voice is a joke, in my opinion. Anyway, and then next week, another one, this is the most random podcast ever. Another one that I'm looking forward to is Gypsy Rose, Life After Lockup. Come on, you're excited. So Gypsy Rose, you remember that show called The Act, where it was based on the true story of Gypsy Rose, where she was like tortured by her mom, and then Gypsy Rose and the boyfriend killed the mom, which is terrible, but the mom was a horrendous person. Well, now, you know, she's a free woman. I think she got married, a boyfriend.

9:44I don't know. I haven't kept up with Gypsy Rose, but I'm going to be all in on Gypsy Rose Life After Lockup. Listen, I don't know how many marketing podcasts talk about life after lockup for Gypsy Rose, the Octomom story. I mean, you really get quality content here. That's a fact. I appreciate you being here. Listen, we are running out of spots of our giant new free event. It is called Eventastic. It is the world's largest event about events. If you care about public speaking, small events, webinars, in-person events, you name it, it's going to be bonkers. Who's speaking there? Andy Cohen's going to be there from Bravo, Amy Porterfield, Ann Hanley, all these big brands.

10:23You got to be there. We're running out of spots. It's free. It's virtual. Eventastic.com. I hope you check it out. You are awesome. And you better watch all of those shows because that would mean that you have horrible tastes just like me. 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.

11:08Guruevents.com. Check it out.