A New Email Metric to Track in 2026 | Bathroom Break #83

0:08Welcome 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.

0:42I'm Jay Schwetelson from Do This, Not That. I'm here with the marketing millennial, Daniel Murray. And we're going to talk about some really important marketing stuff or not. But before that, Thanksgiving is right here. So Daniel, I want to know something you know you you were born in africa that's not a joke you were you moved here when you were seven and so for like thanksgiving do you like eat like giraffe and stuff before you before you say i used to tell people growing up that that i lived in a hut number six in the and my my like like the hut name was akuna matata and like i used to like get to my hut and there was a bunch of huts in this village and i used to ride elephants and and people would straight up believe me for i believe it right now and no it's a civilized place it's um in south africa but i didn't really thanksgiving was never really huge in my family uh so we never really had a tradition about ronda now i wish i had a tradition around it uh but i do not i'm not a fan of dried turkey.

1:50I just think it's... Yeah, I'm not a fan of it. Will you eat the sweet potatoes with marshmallows on it, or are you not on that team? No, I think that's good. The big question is, do you think Thanksgiving should have mac and cheese or not? 100 % should have mac and cheese. The only thing that Thanksgiving shouldn't have is salad. If somebody's like, we need a salad at Thanksgiving, you missed the memo. This is the one day of the year we could get stretchy pants, get out of control. We don't need salad. I also don't like when you go to a place where you're ordering good food and someone says, can we add a veggie?

2:25And it's like, we're ready. What is that going to do to this meal of pizza, pasta and stuff? What does it make you feel better? Yeah, it makes you feel better. Oh, this episode is going to make everyone feel better. We're talking about something I think is going to really explode more in 2026, which is the idea of when you're sending out your campaigns, newsletter campaigns, promotional email campaigns, whatever the email marketing that you're doing, people actually replying to those emails and thinking they're interacting with you or your brand or your company. And it's going to explode because AI is allowing us to kind of react to these replies faster.

3:04And there's a lot that we could be doing there. And I don't think enough people realize that this kind of reply rate on promotional emails is going to be a game changer. So Daniel, what do you think about kind of this idea of replying to promotional emails? Yeah, so Jay says that AI is going to be able to track it better, but I think the reason why you should track this metric is showing that your content is resonating with humans and humans are actually interacting with you. And that means you're writing content that is above what's going out in the market of all this AI only email. So a couple of ways you can think about it is a couple of ways I do it personally.

3:45And I'll tell what I do is I always have like a personalized question because people you you're talking to humans here that have lives. So I always make the question something like, what is your favorite hobby? I'm looking for new hobbies right now. Or what is your favorite dish on Thanksgiving or send me recipes for something like that? Something that just lightens the mood of the email. another thing i like to do is add easter eggs into like the the email so i'll be like if you see this reply this like in the middle of the email reply a word and um i will send you something or something like that like just it just shows that they're reading your email if you add an easter egg in the middle of your email that says if you see this like one time i did this i had a picture of these two like people from the 1980s or something no no 1880s like and i said reply this and me you should me and ari should dress up like this and and people i got a bunch of replies but it showed that people were reading to the middle of my email which was a good sign for me that people are reading so adding things into your email where you could add replies and also show that people are making it to the bottom of your email making it to the middle of your email are really good signs.

5:07First of all, I've never done the Easter egg thing in the middle of my email. So I'm definitely going to do that. I think that's a really interesting thing to test. But if you're out there and it's not even your newsletter, let's say you're trying to get a piece of content downloaded or you're trying to get a discount code utilized. What is such an underrated tactic, which can exponentially increase your response rate is let's say you have the 2026 guide to HR law changes, whatever boring thing that you're in that you think you can't promote right. If you send it out and you say, all you have to do, you're not sending people to a link to click to a form, whatever you're sending people.

5:39And you say, if you want the guide, just reply to this email and write the word guide. Okay. You're going to get flooded with people replying and saying the word guide. You're going to get a much, much higher number of people doing that than going to fill out your form. And you could also do this with discount code. Say, hey, you want the 20 % off? Just reply back to this and say, discount. And then what's going to happen is you're going to get flooded with that. And here's the great benefit of that. Not only is your response rate going to go up, but when you get the number one signal to stay in somebody's inbox in email marketing, the way that you don't go to the spam or junk folder is getting them to actually reply to an email that you sent.

6:20It is a signal that they like your stuff. So getting them reply will get you more interaction but also allows your future emails to stay in the inbox i want to add another thing it's on the reply rate but it isn't for email things on social like instagram stories if you get people to reply to instagram stories it will show your instagram story to more and more people because they say think that's an interactive story and they want more and more people to do that so if you do the same thing like I do this for events, I do this for guides, I do this for anything. I'll put, hey, I'm giving away this free thing, reply guide to, and we'll send you in the DMs the guide or the link to a private event or a link to this or a link to that.

7:10It excellently gets you more in the story feed on Instagram as well. So like reply rate is going to get even more better because people want to interact with you as a brand, interact with you as a human. But it also helps you get more attention in the email inbox and on social as well. It's so true. It was so funny. So I was just doing, this is not a flex, but I was giving a speech at this conference this past week. And this dude comes up to me after the session. And we got stuff running on Instagram all the time. We use ManyChat, where somebody comments a word and then instantly sends them a link to whatever the content piece is that we're pushing out there, whatever.

7:48He goes, oh, while you were speaking, I saw one of your social posts and I commented and you DM me instantly the thing. He goes, how did you do that while you were on stage? I'm like, are you kidding me, bro? I didn't do that. Okay. It wasn't me. It wasn't like a magic trick. Wait, it's not you? I thought you do magic tricks. But I think I do, I do think that, I mean, another, I also think you do something really cool. If you're, if you are going to events and you're trying to be, get yourself in front of brands where you do the reply technique to your, your, to get all my, my stuff at the end.

8:30I think what we're trying to say is getting people to reply in your inbox in 20 is one will get you more deliverability, but it also will get you human-human interaction. The amount of first-party data I get from replies and insights about my audience from reply rate is astronomical. And now I know, like, you talking about, like, if you weren't talking about reality TV and nobody replied, I think you would stop talking. But you know your audience loves reality TV, so you keep doing it because people are replying and showing your interest that they like that topic. So marketing doesn't always have to be about your thing.

9:11You can integrate like pop culture and stuff and understand your audience at a deeper level where you can integrate these two obsolete things and make your marketing more fun and interesting because you know, your audience likes reality TV and this, and they're interested in your offer as well. So well, along those lines that leads into the end of this whole thing, which is on my last newsletter or whatever I sent out, I said, I need a new holiday movies or whatever. Reply back and let me know your favorite holiday movies. So, Daniel, right now, for all of humanity, what are Daniel Murray's favorite holiday movies?

9:50My goodness, you're putting me on the spot right now. Well, I'll give you some examples, like Die Hard, obviously, a holiday movie. Yeah, I mean, that's like the biggest debate in history. Die Hard, a holiday movie. I love Die Hard. I think Die Hard. I like Home Alone. I think that's a great holiday movie. I think The Grinch. I love The Grinch. The Grinch? What about Love Actually or The Holiday? Oh, The Holiday is great. But the thing is, if I recommend it to Ari, we just go down a rabbit hole of all rom-coms. What's wrong with that? Rom-coms are great. I watch Hallmark channels where magic happens.

10:33And there was a Netflix movie that came out last year called Noel Christmas or something. That was really good. Actually, I think Hallmark is one of the most underrated movie channels in the world. And they're so badly promoted, how they promote their movies. But some of the movies are just so good. And they get lost in the ether because they don't get distributed well. You have to be on Hallmark Channel to know that. They also release a new movie every day. I know. It's hard to keep up. I mean, but that's a good lesson that you have one hit if you launch. Something around the stick. Right. They're a volume game.

11:14Well, everybody, have an amazing Thanksgiving. Eat an enormous amount. This is the day. Because here's what I believe. If you go into the end of the year and you just eat as much as possible and your New Year's resolution is to lose some weight, you want to start out high. And that way, it's easier to lose weight. So crush it now. get really high yeah i mean go gain five pounds on thanksgiving and then lose it and then you've lost five pounds a hundred percent the great man you're back where you started but it's like the five pounds uh all right follow our shows i don't know have a good thanksgiving later 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.

11:57Check 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 Millet 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 marking 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.