What’s Up THIS WEEK?! Instagram CHANGES! 😳 GMAIL Big Change? 🎁 34 Hallmark Movies? 📧 Your First 200 Characters Decide EVERYTHING | Ep. 567

0:01Welcome to Do This, Not That, the podcast for marketers. We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode. We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out. We are back for what's up this week from the Do This, Not That podcast. This is where we break down what's going on in business and marketing and life. And this week, there's a lot of stuff going on. There's Instagram news, there's big email news, there's Google Ads news. So let's jump right into it. So first off on Instagram. So now Meta has launched something, of course, Meta owns Instagram.

0:36Meta has launched something called Meta One, and they launched it this past week for both creators and businesses and individuals, where now Meta can automatically send follow invitations to people who engage with your content. And if you are part of Meta One, it will give a bolder follow button directly on reels. Then you're like, really? Who cares? No, this is a big deal because you're now able to, within Meta, not using some third-party tool to actually automatically send follow invitations. And having a bolder follow button will increase your company pages, your business pages, your personal pages, follow count significantly.

1:19So I think this is pretty cool. Meta 1 just came out. It's 15 bucks a month. So it's, and what they do is when they come out with these new tools and new things, new things you can pay for, they radically over deliver. So meaning like they help you circulate your stuff more if you participate in it. So I think meta one is something worth checking out. Now what's going on in the world of email that I think is a really, really big deal. So Gmail, and now this will be coming to all the other platforms, Outlook, Yahoo, whatever, but Gmail has now fully turned on for everybody that is a paid user, okay, of anything in the, you know, Google Workspace, Gmail universe, whatever, the totally searchable stuff, meaning that what you're now able to do in that search bar on the top of your emails is search for anything because Google has expanded its AI overviews into Gmail search globally.

2:18Now, what does that actually mean? That means now, and we kind of felt this already, your inbox is becoming your own personal search engine. So instead of saying into your search and into your Gmail search bar, you know, Marriott Boston, you would say, what hotel did I book for my Boston trip? The natural language aspect of being able to search in your email is going to radically change everything. And we all feel it. I mean, I don't erase emails anymore because we want to have all those vendors, all those things that we sign up for in there. So we go back and search for it. It's there. What this is doing is, and this is by the way, going back now to all old email.

3:04So now your AI kind of search summaries, your AI summaries within emails, and now we're going to be scanned all of the email that you have in your inbox historically. So what we need to be thinking about is there's going to be two things going to happen. One is there's going to be a much longer tail for when you send out your email campaigns, your newsletters, your promotions, business, consumer, nonprofit, the click-throughs that you get, the engagement that you get on the emails that you're sending out is going to go well past 90 days, well past even six months. You need to be thinking about where this traffic is going.

3:36You can't just have to go to these pages of the 404 error. But the other thing that you must be thinking about now, which is absolutely the number one most critical thing in the world of email is the way that AI overviews, these AI summaries are pulling information. What they're really looking at is the first 200 characters of live text in your emails. So basically the first 200 characters of live text in your emails, not text that's embedded in an image, but that first 200 characters, if you are including the action, the product, and the deadline in those first 200 characters, we're already seeing that lift click-through rates by 19%.

4:13What does that mean? So for example, if it was a consumer email, it would say shop our 40 % off summer styles before midnight tonight. Your favorites are selling fast and free shipping ends when the sale does. The action is shop. The product is 40 % off summer sales and the deadline is midnight tonight. On the business side, it would be something like register for our 2027 Marketing Trends webinar by Friday at 4 p.m. to get the benchmark report and live Q &A. The action is register. The product is 2027 Marketing Trends webinar, and the deadline is Friday at 4 p.m. We need to be thinking about specifically now in the first 200 characters of all of our emails, business, consumer, nonprofit, having the action, the product and the deadline in those first 200 characters of live text because now email is radically changing forever that this is what the AI summaries are scanning for first.

5:10That's what they're going to pull into the summaries. That's what they're searching for. And that's how you're going to win an email marketing. All right, what else is going on? So in the world of Google ads, something cool just got turned on by Google ads that you may not be aware of. So they now have appearing in your Google ads account. And if you haven't seen the ad, it's rolling out slowly, but they have something called spend benchmarks. Okay. Spend benchmarks. And what this means is that they're actually now showing you what your weekly ad spend is, what your weekly clicks are, and they then categorize other organizations, businesses it considers similar to yours.

5:49Okay. it factors in your industry and when and where you advertise. And it's showing you how you are comparing in terms of spend and in terms of clicks for other companies that are your size, your category, or whatever. And it's pretty cool. So all you have to do is go to your Google ads, your overview, and look for spend benchmarks, which is pretty cool. I said pretty cool four times. All right. Ridiculous things going on that matter to me. First of all, this matters to everybody. Did you know that Spotify just announced that you can now delete your kids related music or nonsense related music from your Spotify rap?

6:26This just came out. They just announced it. I know this means nothing to you. Okay. But you can actually go into your settings now and exclude kids and family listening from your taste profile. Why do you want to do this? Because if you're a total embarrassment like me, you have not so much kids and family music that shows up my Spotify rap, but because a lot of people last year, like Baby Shark is my number one song. Well, that's embarrassing, but you can now turn it off. What I need them to do is not just make it for kids and family. I need them to have things. They turn off cheesy 80s music so that it doesn't show up in your Spotify rap so people don't think I'm obsessed with Rick Astley because that's what happens to me every year and I need to get a life.

7:05I'll tell you what is exciting. Speaking about having no life, the Hallmark Channel just announced this week that their Christmas countdown is going to begin okay and it's going to start on October 16th and they're coming out with 34 original movies 34 original movies that is 10 more movies than last year that is why I love Hallmark movies nothing bad ever happens there how many movies do you think Lacey Chabert has been in if you don't know her she's from Party of Five she is the Hallmark queen or whatever how many movies think she's been she's been over 40 Hallmark movies and I cannot wait they come out with the most ridiculous titles I was looking at some of the titles.

7:44Do you know there's one called Never Kiss a Man in a Christmas Sweater? There's another one called A Shoe Addict's Christmas. What is going on, people? This is ridiculous. Speaking of ridiculous, I saw this came out. Big push, big marketing push from Capri Sun. You know, all the nostalgia stuff that's out there. So Capri Sun are those pouches of like fake juice that you could drink that have like an enormous amount of sugar. And you're like, oh, yeah, I got a Capri Sun in my lunch bag or whatever. Well, with all the nostalgia push, Capri Sun is now, you can buy it at Walmart. Their normal amount is six ounces of that weird juice.

8:19They're coming out with a 24-ounce pouch, this giant pouch that you're going to be able to buy of Capri Sun. Who needs this? What are we doing? Could you imagine getting a four times the size of a regular Capri Sun and be like, oh, yeah, I'm going to drink that with my lunch. I'd be bouncing off the walls. This is not good. Anyway, that's what's going on. Hey, I would appreciate if you left this podcast a review or leave me a comment on Spotify or do something. You're awesome and we'll see you at the next one. Later. Wait, don't go anywhere. There's two really important things I wanna tell you.

8:54First off, my book is out. Stupider people have done it. And I don't know how, but this book has made it to the USA Today bestseller list, one of the top books in the entire country. Now, all net author proceeds are going to the V Foundation for Cancer Research. And between this book and things that we're doing, we've now donated$130 ,000 in the fight against cancer. If you buy this book, if you buy the Kindle, the audio on Amazon, on Barnes & Noble, anywhere, money is going to fight cancer. We need your help. Please grab a copy of Stupider People Have Done It. The second thing is I want to work with you.

9:31I want to amplify your brand. I want my agency to help you get more customers, more subscribers, more whatever. I want to partner with you in so many different ways. All you got to do is go to jschwedelson.com. jschwedelson.com. And then there's a button in the upper right-hand corner that says partner. Fill out that form. Let's work together. Let's do stuff. And if this wasn't the worst podcast you've ever heard, it would be amazing if you follow the show, if you leave a comment, if you tell your friends about it. I appreciate you and go out there and crush it. Thank you.