SPECIAL SERIES ==> Why Your Listicles Are Failing 🛑 (And How to Fix Them) <== | BATHROOM Break #97 COLLAB: The Marketing Millennials + Do This, Not That

0:07Jay Schwedelson:Welcome 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.

0:16Daniel Murray: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 Schwedelson, 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.

0:39Jay Schwedelson:We are back with another bathroom break. I'm here with the Jay Swettelson. And I have a question for you, Jay. Something that I've noticed over the last year is you seem to get food poisoning more than the average person. What are some tips of avoiding not getting food poisoning? Yesterday, Jay got food poisoning. Two months ago, he got food poisoning. Before his trip, he got food poisoning. I don't know how he keeps getting food poisoning.

1:15Daniel Murray:First of all, I want everyone to know I wash my hands because I'm about to get like slammed in comments like I'm disgusting or something like that I do wash my hands I think I need to be more focused when I'm ordering food from somewhere getting food from somewhere because I'll get like weird fish from places that are not known for like

1:37Jay Schwedelson:you know fish or something and so or on a plane oh I had the funniest story about that oh what do was pregnant uh we were saying oh hey let's get you more salmon because it's good it's omega-3 so we ordered salmon from a thai place and why would you order salmon from a thai place it's stupid and it came and it smelled she she was eating it and we're like freaked out because it's like beginning of pregnancy she starts eating it and she after like five bites she's like this tastes disgusting it smells off something's wrong and i'm like why did you keep eating it and i freaked out so we called her dad and said what should we do so we threw away the salmon and he's like no fish it out of the the trash and put in the fridge just in case it was contaminated so you could take it out and go get a test it so we've saved this fish disgusting fish in a fridge for a day to wait and see if Ari got sick.

2:39Jay Schwedelson:It was terrible. So, oring Disgusting Fish is not a good idea.

2:46Daniel Murray:It's terrible. Wow. And saving it is never something I would ever recommend. But maybe saving this episode is worth saving. What a transition. So, what we want to talk about is some small nuances that actually are radical game changers right now in marketing performance that I'm sure everybody's sleeping on because I wasn't even aware of some of this stuff until recently. So I'll drop one first and then we'll go. So forever, listicles have been crushing it, meaning the seven things you need to know about this, the five biggest fashion trends for this, the nine HR rules you need to know. And everyone's also saying listicles are so great because of AI because AI loves picking up listicles.

3:24Daniel Murray:But there's a nuance now that is a little bit different of what AI is looking for to show up in the AI search results. And also it's working to get your emails opened and clicked on and consumed, whether you're a business or a consumer marketer. And that is focusing on the absolute best, meaning that instead of saying the seven whatevers or the nine whatevers, it's saying the top three, the number one, or the best whatever. So the best solution for HR software, the number one option for billing whatever, the top three fashion things you need to know. So as long as it's top three, number one, or the best, that is actually what's pulling exponentially higher on the AI platforms.

4:04Daniel Murray:And that's actually what's working better in email. So it's like listicle within a listicle. And so if you're just playing the old playbook of listicles, you're actually not doing the thing that's actually working better than anything else right now from all the testing that we're doing.

4:18Jay Schwedelson:I'm going to add one about AI, too. I had another one, but I'm going to add this one. One thing that I always was anti is when it comes to writing is using AI to do a lot of the writing, writing part of the writing. And the nuance I want to say is if you're writing an article or a deep article about a topic, what you should be actually doing is going on like perplexity and cloud and chat GPT, looking at what is pulled into the resources and use those resources in your article. So you become a source of what these AI models want to see is that you're helping curate the internet for them. So if you write a good article and add this source, this source, this source, it actually is seen as, okay, this is actually a valuable source.

5:15Jay Schwedelson:This person helped me curate a bunch of links and they came up with a new perspective and actually a great way to write. So when you go into writing, use it as a resource too and find links that Perplexity is pulling up, ChatGPT is pulling up, Claw is pulling up, and put it in your article.

5:32Daniel Murray:So I love that one. And it literally is the smallest thing to make a difference. And even if it's something that you thought was a certain way, I'll give you an example. And then you had almost retested again. And one of those I'm seeing in my newsletter, my email newsletter. So my email newsletter and newsletters across the board forever, I used to even tell people, don't put the addition in your subject line. Don't be like, the name of my newsletter is Scoop. Don't be like Scoop number 22 and then write your subject line because that was like a waste of real estate. It would perform terribly.

6:06Daniel Murray:And just focus on whatever the topic of your newsletter is all about. So what we've done though in the last two months, we've been testing head to head using an addition, saying the addition, like scoop number 12, and then the subject line versus just saying the subject line. And the one where we put it in brackets, we write scoop number 12, we put it in brackets, and then we put the subject line. The one where we're saying the addition with the brackets, the open rate is about 20 % higher than the one that just has the straight up subject line. So that is a tactic I used to tell people to avoid like the plague.

6:40Daniel Murray:And now, now it's working incredibly well.

6:44Jay Schwedelson:I think that's a great one. I think I've tested in the past and I've know people go back and forth on what, if that's actually a good tactic, but I, I like that it's actually working. And I think why it works is people want to go back to certain additions and they can reference certain issues. And then also, and also, I think it works very well if you, if you have something that's very topical or relevant for that time, because if it's, if it's something brand new every single time and it's newsworthy every single time, people want to know, okay, this is number three. This is the fourth tip. This is five and stuff.

7:24Jay Schwedelson:So I like that you're using it and I'm going to test it on another newsletter because my newsletter is not going to be, I don't know how many additions I've done.

7:32Daniel Murray:you're like four billion additions um so wait a minute i'm just curious about something so like do you normally like if you eat something at home and you're like oh that's gross and you throw it out do now customarily just because you did it once do you take stuff out of the garbage

7:47Jay Schwedelson:on a regular basis now and put it in your refrigerator i'll i'll i'll give you a the reason this our our his dad is an environmental lawyer and he's seen some crazy toxic stuff and he is very also risk averse of a lot of things that go to for example i think three times a week i get food recall text messages or email from ari's dad for today i got a cottage cheese recall and me and ari do not eat cottage cheese but i got an email that says cottage cheese been recalled so now i so he is a freak when it comes to that so we when when we told him he said

8:32Daniel Murray:save it so it could get tested by the lab if you do have this to see what bacteria it is and

8:37Jay Schwedelson:that's hardcore it's crazy no i've never saved it again because it was stinking up my fridge for a whole day it was the worst idea i've ever had so all right well that didn't work out well

8:51Daniel Murray:but either did this episode neither things worked out uh but we appreciate you being here listen give daniel follow the marking millennials follow do this not that podcast and put put stinky fish in your fridge. Do it. Why not?

9:05Jay Schwedelson:Daniel, come on, man.

9:06Daniel Murray:I got to get back to work. Get out of there. All right. 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 hope you give it a try. Oh, here's Daniel. He's finally out.

9:22Jay Schwedelson: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.

9:43Daniel Murray:Peace out.

9:44Jay Schwedelson:Later.