SPECIAL LIMITED SERIES: ===> 😮NEW TEST ideas B2B & B2C during HOLIDAY SEASON!(➡️NOT BLACK FRIDAY DEAL Offers!) 🚽 <=== | BATHROOM Break #27 (COLLAB: The Marketing Millennials + Do This, Not That)

0:00Welcome to a new special series called The Bathroom Break. That extra 10 minutes, you either have to listen to marketing tips or use the bathroom or both. But I don't recommend both, but that's your choice. This collab is going to be super fun. We have Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials and me, Jay Schwetelson, from the Do This Not That podcast and subjectline.com. Each episode in the series, we are going to go over quick tips about different marketing topics. And if you want to be in the bathroom, fine, just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out. Welcome back to another episode of The Bathroom Breaks.

0:35I'm here with the number one podcaster in marketing, Jay Schwedowson. He hit number one in the charts recently, so now I can call him the number one podcaster. and I'm Daniel Murray and I've never had number one in podcasting for a reason. We are excited, but I want to kick off and say, what are some traditions you have going into November, December? Do you have any holiday traditions that you do? Yeah. So we always do Thanksgiving at my house. The family always comes to my house. And this year for some reason, like all of our families coming in and it falls on me to like get the chairs and get the crap and get everything together.

1:22And no matter what I do, it is always wrong. Like I wind up, I said it all like, Oh, that looks terrible. You're an idiot. And I do it seven more times, but it's always at my house and it's always my fault. So yeah. What about you? I mean, you're, you bring your South African like Thanksgiving cause you're from South Africa. Do you bring like your South African traditions? It was actually crazy because obviously saying Thanksgiving is, isn't in South Africa. So my mom did not know what to do for Thanksgiving. So we really just winged it for a lot of years. Um, so we don't really have many traditions around this time period.

2:01I used to, since my mom was in travel for a long time, usually always during Christmas break we would plan a trip so that's the only tradition we I've kept for years I know it's boring but we've always planned a trip during that time because we have the travel bug and our jeans but probably like invite like giraffes and donkeys and whatever because you know safaris your backyard and they all come over like it's Noah's Ark for your thanksgiving or something oh my goodness oh my goodness okay let's get into this thing okay well listen i want you to kick it off we're going to talk about some holiday tactics you could do that aren't bfcm um that aren't cyber monday um what are some tactics you have that people can do during the holidays all right so let's first talk about our business to business marketing friends because a lot of times business to business marketers turn their brain off like, oh, this time of year is dead.

2:58Nobody's reacting to everything. It's just a mess. And it couldn't be further from the truth. I'll give you a couple of things that are kind of interesting. So from the data that we see, December 1st to December 15th, if you're sending out sales-oriented, text-based emails to contacts that are director level and above, so directors, vice presidents, C-level, from those first two weeks of December, we see a 28 % higher average click-through rate on those emails to that audience than any other time of the year. And the reason being is those executives have a little bit of time for the first time throughout the whole year.

3:36So don't turn off your marketing engine if you're a business marketer, because it's actually a perfect time to reach certain audiences. Daniel, what do you got? Yeah, I think something that B2B marketers don't lean into is actually doing what B2C, D2C marketers are doing during this time. I think leaning into actually doing offers during BFCM end of the year is actually a great tactic because people are in a buying mode. they're used to seeing sales so it's not interruptive anymore to see a sale so if you're a b2b company i would plan around this and you should plan around it ahead of time but if you can throw up a campaign quickly i've seen a lot of success when i've worked in a lot of sas companies because a lot of people have two things going on b2b they have budget they need to spend or they lose it at the end of the year.

4:42And two is that they are looking for deals during that time as well. So if they can find a deal that works for them, that could flip a lot of people over the limit. And also sending it to people who you've closed lost or who have ghosted you. Those are great people to target during this time as well. Yeah. Get them in buying mode. That's what they're in. I'll tell you something good for your personal brand or if you're trying to grow your connections and all that stuff. On LinkedIn, towards the end of the year, it's the perfect time to do open-ended holiday-themed questions that you put out on LinkedIn.

5:25For example, you put a post out there that says something like, what's one lesson from this year that you're taking into next year? Share your biggest takeaway. Or looking back on 2024, what's the project you're most proud of? Give yourself a shout out. And this is the time that we're all kind of reflecting and thinking about next year. And then people will engage. They're going to write about their thoughts for next year, what they did this year. It's a fantastic way to drive a lot of engagement doing these kind of open-ended questions on social. So that's a fun test to try. What else? What else you got?

5:58One thing that also works very well now is actually sending emails the day before or actually on holidays because you'll get a lot of out of office replies from people. So what that could do is, one, give you extra contacts in those companies you're trying to target. So it's a good way to do ABM, but also taking those lists and retargeting them on social or retargeting them on your targeting platforms that you're doing. Because B2B is buying by committee. So the more people you can get in front of and top of mind is always a great move in B2B. People always think that you have to pick this one persona and go after them.

6:57But if the four other personas that are going to make a decision know about you, it's way easier to sell into a company that knows about you. I love that. And it's so true. I mean, leverage those auto replies. get somebody to help you could either use a system or somebody that's clerical to organize all that data it is absolute gold and then the last one i would put out there would be um everybody likes to have a loyalty program but it's really hard to do that right you may not have like a rewards program with stars that you earn points and all this stuff there's a really simple thing whether you're a consumer or business marketer is at the end of the year um all you have to do is send out hey this is for our customers you know vip only for our customers this is a thank you for working with us this year.

7:45There's a thank you for buying from us this year. And you give them a little bonus discount, a little whatever, but acknowledging somebody's loyalty to your brand and then giving them something, it's a loyalty program. It couldn't be easier and everybody can do it and it works incredibly well. So not everything that you do this time of year has to be Black Friday, Cyber Monday. There's a ton of different things that you could do to drive engagement for your personal brand, for your business brand, for whatever it is. um so the biggest question i have for you daniel is thanksgiving what will you eat sweet potatoes with marshmallows or is that disgusting no i i think sweet and savory is an underrated combo i honestly think that people hate on it way too much but sweet and savory but But again, the amount of times I've got exactly the perfect Thanksgiving dishes is zero.

8:43So I probably had that once in my life and it was pretty good. So shout out to my good friend, Benny's mom, Barbara. She's the best. She's the best cook. And I got invited to Thanksgiving there one year and they made some good. What is I know you are very healthy. You have salmon Tuesday, turkey Tuesday. Is your Thanksgiving just healthy? What goes on your Thanksgiving? No, my Thanksgiving is definitely not healthy. And I just want to say something for all of the world that's listening. You should not serve salad at Thanksgiving. That's not normal. This is the time where you wear very comfy clothing.

9:27You get disgusting and you eat an enormous amount of food. And by the way, everyone should DM Daniel because clearly he's a little sad, a little down. He doesn't get invited to Thanksgiving. I don't know why. I'm not inviting him. That's for sure. So DM him and invite him to your Thanksgiving because he's lonely. It's just the way it is. You know what? I could be a really good chair carrier and help set up the tables. It's actually upsetting I didn't get invited to the Schwedelsen family party. But it's all good. All good. All good. Thank you, everybody, for listening. Go subscribe to Do This, Do That, Not That podcast.

10:10Why I can't say that in a sentence? I don't know why. It's such a good name. But it has a comma, so I should pause. Do this, Not That podcast. Subscribe. Thank you. Daniel, come on, man. I got to get back to work. Get out of there. While he's still in there, this is Jay. Check out my podcast. Do This, Not That for marketers. Each week, we share really quick tips on stuff that can improve your marketing. And I hope you give it a try. Oh, here's Daniel. He's finally out. Back from my bathroom break. This is Daniel. Go follow the Market Millennials podcast, but also tune into this series. It's once a week, the bathroom break.

10:49We talk about marketing tips that we just spew out. And it could be anything from email, subject line, to any marketing tips in the world. We'll talk about it. Just give us a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out. Later.