SPECIAL SERIES ==>POWER of ‘3 Min Read’ + Remove NON-ENGAGED! and Beanie Babies? <== | BATHROOM Break #39 (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.

0:40it's time for another bathroom break with jay schwettleson that's me and daniel murray from the walking millennials and before we get into the topic of the day which i think is going to be super useful daniel i have the most random question ever for you did you ever like collect anything as a child or whatever i know you grew up in south africa i don't know if you collected like rocks or something did you ever like baseball cards or something i actually had a lot of collection so i had baseball cards i had pokemon cards um beanie babies wow beanie babies were the thing and the most annoying thing about this is the most annoying is my mom threw all that stuff away when i went to college and i'm still so annoyed because that's worth so much i probably had some valuable things in that those collections because i used to love going to the store and opening that fresh pack of cards or i i really think that i need to make fun of you about the beanie babies thing i mean sports cards great pokemon cards mildly random uh but beanie babies is like you need to be judged in a very bad way for like what does that mean would you go on ebay and like you'd buy stuff when you're like seven years old you just get little stuffed toys and They had cute little names with birthdays.

1:57But I also liked the, you know what? This is a random tangent, but also I love when the Snapple had the fun facts. Those are cool. I liked when Coca-Cola also would have your name on it, although it never said J. I bet you there's like a Daniel Coca-Cola bottle. Oh, no, I did. My cousin once sent me, and I'll share this picture. It had, in a store, it had Daniel on one Coca-Cola and Murray on another Coca-Cola. together on the, and I'm that the chances of that very, that's huge. That's huge. All right. Well, we've really covered a lot already, but we're going to jump into this. This is super tactical.

2:33And this was something I stole from Daniel's newsletters. Really? I stole from Ari, his wife's newsletter, go to millions, which is awesome. If you don't subscribe to it. And that is this idea of, and it works so well telling people how much time they're about to invest in a piece of content. so there would be an email that ari would send out and in the subject line of the email after the topic was discussed it would put in brackets you know three minute read it would say three min read and it would let me know the recipient that hey if i open this thing up it's not going to take a lot of my time and i've been testing that a lot and it crushes it so daniel what's this tactic all about i mean it's exactly how you described it it it gets people expectation up front and also it's better to be more specific with that number so four minute three minute six minute read because people believe specifics even if it isn't a three minute read it's probably a three minute read or four minute read so it just sets expectation up front and people love expectation in front and i i have to tested it and it probably it probably boosts my sends like 15 to 20 percent um for open rate when i do that um so like it could go from a 51 percent open rate to like a 54 percent open rate just by adding that in the preheader um look at you flexing your open rate right there with your over 50 percent open rate look at that he just suddenly drops you know 50 to 54 like everybody has that but you know why i have that is i don't i cut my list so wait let's talk about that let's go into that tangent for a second what do you mean you cut your list people who are not active within the last 90 days i will send them like a win back flow three emails If they don't do that, they're off the list.

4:39I really want to keep people who are invested in the newsletter. Also, it helps be in the inbox when you have a newsletter that has a high open rate and click-through rate. So I try to remove all the people who are not interested, not in my ICP, ideal customer profile for people who don't know ICP. But I try to get the most valuable readers there. And then you actually know who the valuable readers are because they're in your list. So every month we cut people off our list. Okay, so people listening right now are like, well, that's great that you're cutting them off. But one of my metrics that I'm being held accountable for is to grow our newsletter file or to grow our database.

5:24And if I cut people off the way that you do, I'm going to be seen as failing. What do you say to somebody who has this KPI, this key performance indicator about their job role in terms of that kind of garbage growth metric as part of what they're being held accountable for? I would say that you still can have that growth metric because it's net new people added to the list. It should be your growth metric. So we're still growing the news that are even though we're cutting people. So if you can stay above the positive of people subscribing, you're doing a great job that you want to see that growth is higher than churn and is a great way to keep your newsletter really fresh.

6:10If you start dipping into your newsletter, stuff your newsletter. That's one thing I would say. Second of all, I would go flip the script and talk to your leadership and say, hey, this is how much all my customers are opening this email. And this is how much I'm growing of those customers opening emails and clicking emails and engaging of emails. So that should really be the important metric is how many net new people add to the list and are engaging and how are you retaining those people over time? because we noticed with our newsletter is if you keep someone on your newsletter for over six months, they become like really loyal lifetime members of that newsletter and will do other stuff with you, like attend your events and ultimately maybe buy from you.

7:03So if you can keep people for through six to nine months, that should be more of a metric you're looking at than growth. I know some people are going to still have that growth metric, which is just, it's arbitrary because if people aren't opening, if you look at your numbers going up and your open rate going down, it's not a good sign as well. So, yeah, I think that there's all these metrics that are kind of like vanity metrics that just take people down a rabbit hole and waste their time, energy, and money. And one of those is just the size of your database. If your company has an ego about the size of their database, you are on a loser path because that's irrelevant.

7:43Also, it's not like I'm cutting them from my – I'm not removing them from the database. But I still can remarket to those people on paid social, on other platforms. I just don't keep them in the list because they're not interested. They're not engaging. There's no point of keeping them in the list. But you can still use those people. So I'm not removing them from my database, but it's no point of keeping people who are not doing anything with your list. So it's that misconception. Unless they tell me that they want to be out of the list, then I'm deleting them off my database. But I'm not deleting them from the database.

8:20I'm just deleting them from receiving a newsletter. Yeah. And before we wrap up, I just want to take back to the original tactic of different areas that you could use it in. this idea of putting in like three min read literally the number three and then min read you could put that at the end of your subject line you absolutely should test putting this in your preheader which is that gray text under your subject line uh letting people know hey three min read so when they open it up they'll know how long it is and then if you have blocks of text and this is for business or consumer marketers you have blocks of text that you're trying to get people to click through and then go to a page to read further whatever it is it could be a blog or whatever, you put the three lines of text leading into that topic.

9:01And then at the end of that three lines of text, you put three min read within your newsletter, letting them know if they click through how long it's going to be once they get there to read it. These are three great tactics that really ramp up engagement in a big, big way. I had one more added to your landing page. If you're trying to capture someone for a newsletter or on that blog post that you're doing already. Like if you say this is five minutes to get the best tips for email marketing, you're like, it'll only take you five minutes to get smarter at email marketing today. People were willing to invest five minutes to get better of email marketing every day.

9:41So add it to those landing page to the conversion will skyrocket on landing pages. If you add that to a landing page. All right. So before we wrap up, are you collecting anything weird now? no i'll tell you i'm decluttering because our oh actually i do have i do do something um but ari is a very doesn't like hoard hoarding stuff like doesn't it's not sentimental with items she gets rid of things easily but i have been doing this since we have been dating is every time we go to a hotel i keep the hotel the card because i want to like make a piece of art of all like the hotels we stayed at and what are you collecting you haven't told me anything you collect hair products yeah hair products first of all um the reason you want to keep those hotel cards is not because of some sort of weird art project that is the strangest art project ever heard of but you're not supposed to just throw those things out because they have like all of your i your data is on your hotel card and so the thing is you can't just throw them out you have to like really chop them up and get rid of them whatever because there are scanners that could to like pull your contact info or something off of that i read that somewhere i don't know if that's true but that's scary well i've been doing the secret way of doing that but i keep every hotel car key because i i just want to like that's something we like to do so which is i steal pens at every hotel i go to oh i used to do i used to do that too only if it's a good pen i'll steal it oh no no pens pencils i'm on now i don't take like pillows or towels i'm not a super weirdo yeah you take the you walk out with the robe yeah in the robe um all right well we've definitely covered a lot today i have no idea what we talked about but follow the marketing millennials podcast and leave it a review do it a solid leave daniel review tell him how awesome he is and if you're really bored you can check out do this not that and uh we'll see you at the next one right yeah see ya daniel come on man i gotta get back to work get out of there all right While he's still in there, this is Jay.

11:46Check 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 the Light podcast. But also tune into this series. It's once a week, the bathroom break. We talk about marking 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.