SPECIAL SERIES ==> Are You Accidentally Killing Your Brand? 😬 Stop Sending That Email <== | BATHROOM Break #55 COLLAB: The Marketing Millennials + Do This, Not That

0:07Welcome 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. We are back for the bathroom break.

0:41This is Jay Schwedelson from Do This Not That podcast. I'm here with the great Daniel Murray from the Marking Millennials podcast. And before we get into our episode today, which is going to be about negative signal, which is going to be very interesting, useful, boring. I'm not sure what. Right now, it's like prom season. My kids are in high school, and so they're all in on prom. When I was going to prom, I didn't know anything about this promposal stuff, stuff where people have to be very creative and ask their boyfriend girlfriend whatever they're doing to go to prom in a very interesting way so Daniel I'm a billion times older than you did you did you have a promposal situation when you were in high school I this is so lame but I got like a fish tank a fish and then I put like a note in the fish tank that was said you're the only fish in the sea where you go to prom with me did you take the fish home i don't know what happened with the fish after that but she said yes um no do not name the fish i just thought it was like i was trying to be creative but uh she seemed to like it people thought it was cute back then but that's special it'd be cool if like you like you know you're all football you took the fish you just swallowed it and just like yeah that would be dramatic um but what are we talking about today because this is, I don't want to go back to prom memories.

1:59We're talking about negative signal. This is something that really, I really learned a lot from you. And I want to get into some tactics to avoid right now to not allow your brand to be running into negative signal. But I don't think enough marketers are really thinking about this. So can you explain kind of what it means? So everybody thinks that like putting out content and giving content in the world is a positive thing to to the world like just doing marketing is a net positive but negative signal is when you're putting out below average below par not on brand things that actually hurt your brand's reputation your brand's expertise so for example i always say to people that yeah like posting on social consistently you win on that but if you're gonna do below average posts you're just turning off your audience and actually turning off followers and i i have this theory that nobody really tracks in marketing i don't know how to track and if you can learn how to track this will be good but everybody thinks of LTV of a customer, but nobody thinks of LTV for an audience.

3:13And there is an audience of people who are lurking at your brand, lurking to, that want to buy from your brand. And every time you do something negative or send them a spammy email or send them an extra text that is, or double text them, you actually are turning off people that could have bought from you in a month or two or three. So negative signal is that where you are putting out negative things into the world that are actually turning off future buyers that would buy from you or future people who read your news that are future people who would do X. Yeah, they're basically silent killers.

3:51I'm going to rattle off some specific ones that a lot of us are doing that we may not realize. And a lot of it has to do with some of that has to do with trigger based email communications. For example, if you're not going through, a lot of us are using marketing automation tools. Somebody goes to a particular page on your site, it fires off an email, abandoned cart, fires off an email, hasn't opened or clicked on an email in this period of time, fires off an email, all of these different triggers. If you're not going through and auditing that and looking what's in there, I cannot tell you how many times we look at our clients' automations and they're firing off something from literally a year ago and they didn't realize it was in there or a piece of content that makes no sense.

4:31A great example of content right now that's a negative signal that not enough people realize is we're sitting here right now in May, not to date the episode, but it's May, and so many marketers are still sending out the 2025 outlook for whatever, content that was made probably sometime in November, December. The world has changed in the last 60 days. If you're sending out 2025 outlook now as your content piece, you're an idiot. I mean, it's just a negative signal on what you're doing. And then the last one would be to think about the long tail of your content, right? So let's say you have a webinar that you put out there or you have some sort of sale.

5:09And somebody goes and they click on that email or that promotion 60 days after the webinar has passed or 60 days after that sale is over. And they click on that email because they're still interested. And then they go to a page and the page is, I'm sorry, there's nothing here for you to see, which we all have seen. Or they take you to a sale page that has nothing to do with the original product. that is a negative signal that you're not organized, you don't know what you're doing, and that is a fail. Yeah, I mean, there's waste in your business right now that you can look if you're doing negative signal things, and Jay said a couple, but first, are you over-communicating in an irrelevant way?

5:49I think you always talk about it's good to send a lot of emails but if you send a lot of irrelevant uninspired boring and doesn't your customers don't care because you can always send a lot of emails if they're relevant to your customer if they are irrelevant that's number one number two is like are you targeting the wrong audience that is negative signal too like are you like sending this piece of content to this part of your audience versus this this ad to this that's negative signaling too because people are like what are you doing this this content is doesn't have anything to me i think the biggest one that i see is generic boring content meaning like clickbait headlines like a clickbait just to get a high open rate with content that doesn't match immediate negative signal or a clickbait ad that doesn't match in a landing page clear negative signal these things are the stuff that you are hurting your brand over time and you want as marketers to do actions that are so i rather my ass is like i rather do the your test internally and say is this going to is this gonna hurt or would my audience care about this is this better than the average in the market if it's not then don't send that email i know or don't make that post that's why i think focus is so important in marketing because we get so inundated of so many channels that if we just focus on a few channels and win on them, we actually win in the long run.

7:20Yeah. And, you know, before we wrap up, I, I learned really the, in regular life, how you could have a negative signal in your social life. I didn't really understand it that much because like, I'll say to my kids who are teenagers, they'll be like, Oh, I messaged so-and-so on snap or whatever they say. And they didn't, they didn't open it or they didn't do whatever. I'm like, I would just message them again or snap them again like what no if you do that then this horrible thing happens but like what is the protocol so you don't have a negative signal when you're trying to like you know uh get with somebody or whatever how does that work that's not something you should ask me that's that's what you should we should bring we should bring your kids on the podcast and talk about negative signals of communication in this era because yeah a double snap or double text but some people are very double texters like some people like a double texer so i don't know the rules of communication anymore but that that that seems like bad advice to double send a picture to someone right right but even it's like you could like open it but not open it or what i don't know it's just too too complicated now i don't get it too come people like playing mind games now oh when i was young because i'm such an old loser you know we had our regular phones like no cell phones and then we would put somebody on the party they had a party line and you tell them to be quiet and then you would call up the person that they either liked or didn't like or whatever and then you'd say to them hey what do you think of uh jen and uh the person like oh i really like them then all of a sudden jen would be on the line and chime in like i'm here and it was amazing that was like that's modern you're a matchmaker back then that's right but what if they said no that would be a horrible experience horrendous it was terrible it was went sideways another very important episode of the bathroom break we really crushed it today listen everybody uh if you go ahead on instagram and you tag the market millennials or me about this show we will reshare it to our stories daniel's got like a billion followers and um yeah check out the market millennials do this not that podcast and keep it real one one thing i'm going to say is congrats to jay he went viral on his um on instagram recently so go to jay swears and look you're going viral like three million views like crazy yeah it's so by the way going viral doesn't do anything for you i learned i got like all these people following me that are like i have like hi i own a donkey farm i'm like congratulations like what do i do with that well that was great talk to y 'all later later daniel come on man i gotta get back to work Get out of there.

9:51While 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 Mark and Millie podcast. But also, tune into this series. It's once a week, the bathroom break. We 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.

10:26Peace out. Later.