Subject Line Tactics You Haven’t Tried Yet | Bathroom Break #96

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. I'm here with the ultimate marketing millennial, Daniel Murray. We're going to be talking about subject line tests you haven't tried. But before we do that, Daniel, speaking about stuff we haven't tried, you got a kid, a little baby. Are you not watching TV these days? And are you watching any reality shows? Are you watching Landman? What is on Daniel's list of non-sports related TV right now? You just reminded me Landman existed again. But right now, pretty much nothing. I did watch tennis like two days ago. That's wrong. I said non-sports, you bro.

1:25But Landman, I've watched Landman. I want the pit. The pit is great. Pit. Here's the problem with the pit. Let me ask you about this. So the pit's the medical drama with Noah Wiley, whatever. And it's like one hour in real time. It's these medical show. It's very intense. So the problem is when I watch that show, it stresses me out. I cannot relax watching that show. Do you watch it and you're like, oh, yeah, this is nice? I don't watch it like this is nice or not. This is not nice. I just watch it because it's just, I think it's, it kind of reminds me of like 24 back in the day. Do you remember the show 24?

1:58Yeah. That was a good show. Bring back the hourly, what's happening in a show. I think that's. Kiefer Sutherland. What happened to that dude? I think he's also, is he brothers with Charlie Sheen? I think he is. Do I have that wrong? I have no idea. I think I'm right. Who cares? Let's get into the topic of the day. The topic of the day is, you know, people say, oh, it doesn't matter if you get a lot of people up in your emails. all by the click. Well, I don't agree. If you don't get your emails opened, who cares what's in your email, whether you're a business market or consumer market or nonprofit.

2:28And there's always new subject line tests to try. And we're always trying the most random, weird stuff. So Daniel, do you want to hit some of your favorite recent ones that you've been trying or you want me to start going down? I could start with one. One thing that I've been trying that has worked really well is all capsing the subject line you're doing that yeah it's working really well it's like kind of scary in the inbox uh but i've been doing all caps and it's actually beating the test of no like no uh guys by like three or four percent percentage points so that's really good i still solely believe that if you have an emoji in every email people recognize who you are um so if you're doing something like a newsletter and you have that and you show up in the inbox every single time and have a recognizable emoji you will show up every single time and that so that's another thing that tests see if it works for your brand i also truly believe in capsing one word in so like not only having like a flat title case thing you capitalize one of the words like this one tip and capitalize one, things like that, I've been testing a lot.

3:46But I know you're the subject line guy. So let's listen. Well, first off, I think it's very important for everyone to hear about the capitalization because it used to be believed that if more than 50 % of your subject line was all capital letters, that it would cause you to go to the junk folder or spam folder, whatever. And that really is not the case anymore. I'm not saying that every email you send out should have every letter should be capitalized. But if you haven't tested, like what Daniel said, all caps for every letter in your subject line. That's a test. Also the reverse, which is no capitalization, not a single word capped.

4:17Because what you really want to think about is what is the type of subject line that AI would never tell you to do? And no capitalization and all capitalization are great examples of that. I'll tell you one that we've been doing a lot that's been working really well, which is this idea of pattern interruption. Pattern interruption, meaning like you're talking to your subject line, regardless of what audience you're marketing to, it would say something like, wait, dot, dot, dot, this worked? Or, okay, dot, this surprised me. And it's this idea when they're doing that social scroll in their inbox, if you can get some sort of pattern interruption moment with your subject line, it really does help to, and that's what you're trying to do, get that millisecond pause, and it could radically change the number of people opening up your emails.

5:00Yeah, I did this when I've done things that like this changed the game, dot, dot, dot, and things like that. I also think, I mean, your tip that you've always talked about adding a number in the beginning works like a charm every single time. If you add like five tips to do this, five this to do this, it might be a little late, but I still think adding 2026 and some of these subject lines, if it's still going, it might have like a month or two more of that. That's another thing to start testing. Um, also I truly believe that we, we talk about this all the time in the pod, but relevancy of doing something like either it's a pop culture moment.

5:44You do that with like pop culture moment or relevancy, putting marketers or marketing tip or brand marketers or brand playbook or something where it signifies like you are the audience is super valuable, um, to add in your subject line. Yeah, I'll give you a few other ones that we've been testing that sounds so random and you're like, really, I'm going to do that? Yeah, that's called marketing. And one of them is this idea of the accidental internal reveal. What do I mean by that? Where it would say something like, let's say you have a consumer sale. It might say something like, we forgot to end this.

6:19And you're basically saying, oh my God, we were supposed to end that. We didn't end it, but you're letting the person in on it. Or the pricing team is going to hate this. Where it's this insider view, which is not real, but it sounds sort of real. And this accidental reveal crushes it in subject lines. And another one that we like a lot is kind of reverse psychology with your target audience, meaning that let's say you are marketing people that think that they are advanced marketers, right? You literally have your subject line say, not for advanced marketers, right? And not for affluent investors.

6:57If things are already working, skip this. Ignore this if your conversions are strong. Basically, it's the reverse. It's like, wait a minute. I'm an advanced marketer. I'm going to check this out. If you can use reverse psychology with the target embedded into it, it's all in the subconscious. But that person gets slightly annoyed. They don't even realize it. And they're opening it up to check it out. Anything with the psychology-driven things are going to work with. And I also like always think about not giving away what my email is about in the subject line. I think so many people give away what their email is about ahead.

7:34Like, I hate saying like, Oh, check out this marketing case study about this. And it's, I don't want to open that. Give them a little peep of something that might be in the email that is in the email that has a cool stat or cool something that at least has that curiosity edge to get them to open. So many people, I see subject lines all the time where I know what your email is about. Why am I going to open this? You're wasting my time with that subject line. If you want me to open it, give me something that I'm curious about or reverse psychology or play the game with numbers or specificity. I think too many people give away.

8:15They also give it away in the preheader too. You can't give away what your email is about. You want them to, you can give a taste of what it is, but not the full serving in the subject line. Yeah. And that's also why I think half-setting subject lines do well. Like literally cut it off in the middle of the thought and go dot, dot, dot. They absolutely crush it because people just want to know what's going to be on, what's going to be in there. Speaking about what's going to be on, let's get back to important TV shows. how do you feel about like reboots of shows like you probably don't care because you probably didn't watch the original one but scrubs the medical show is coming back like this coming week it's coming back whatever how do you or gilmore girls made a redo like a will bob look at you you have an instant negative reaction to the reboot on gilmore girls are you anti-reboots I'm anti-reboots of a show that, like, I think I'm so scared about the Harry Potter reboot of a TV show.

9:12I'm super scared that this is going to go over so badly. Reboots of shows, they sometimes could work, but remember, like, Heroes did a reboot and it was horrible. Heroes was so good and they just stopped. I'm trying to think of a show that actually had a pretty good reboot. that, what show could you think about that actually had a pretty good reboot that came back pretty strong? I can't think of it. I think The Karate Kid, that wasn't, it was more of a reboot. It was really a pull from the movie into a TV show. That was pretty good. I will say the most recent one, The Office, the TV show, The Office had a reboot sort of called The Paper.

9:52The Paper's terrible. It's an unwatchable show. So for the most part, it's hard to go, it's hard to go back again. People are so nostalgic to the first thing that they watch that when you do a reboot, you have to make it so great. Otherwise, we should do a reboot of this podcast. What should we talk about the reboot of the what's after the bathroom? What happens after the bathroom? After the bathroom break is I just threw up. The flush. The flush. Amazing. Well, once again, we've done it all on the show. Leave Daniel a review. He misses getting great reviews from everybody on whatever platform you listen on.

10:31Give the Market Millennial's review and keep it real. Daniel, come on, man. 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 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 Market Millennial. 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.

11:11We'll talk about it. Just give us a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out. Later.