Subject Line Tips That Are Working | Bathroom Break #117

0:00If Taco Bell came to you right now and they said, we want you to go and film this, go to a Taco Bell and eat a salad at Taco Bell. And they were going to pay you a significant amount of money. Would you do that?

0:19Welcome 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 with another bathroom break.

0:53I am here with DJ Schwetlsen, and I wanted to kick this off because I have a question for you, because I know we both live in South Florida, and I know you're, like, starting to get into pickleball. So, like, do you like pickleball? And you play pickleball at a conference. Like, are you, like, becoming a full-time pickleball person? Like, what's going on with that? No, thanks for asking. I really appreciate it. No, I suck at pickleball. The problem is that I took a few lessons, and then everyone keeps saying to me, hey, dude, you got to get into a game. And then everybody, like, you'll meet up with these people and you'll play every week.

1:32But the problem with that is then I have to meet up with the people and I have to talk with them. And I don't really like that part of my human experience. So let me ask you a question. Do you do anything on a weekly basis where you have to meet up with a set group of human beings and interact with them? No. Like even more like tennis, I like switch up the people I meet up with. Do you think it's weird? Like if you have like somebody plays at a golf game or you meet up and you do something, like you meet up for a same lunch group every week. Don't you think that's a bit worse? No, I see like a lot of people who have like these little breakfast groups.

2:07Yes. I see those people. Yes, I do. And I judge them. Yeah. Every morning they're like talking about some of the same things. Yeah, it's like, who does breakfast groups? I see the breakfast groups. I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm always like, why are you guys meeting up every morning? You guys are weirdos. I don't know. Maybe you and I are weird, but we probably are. But you know what's not weird are subject lines. Everyone loves subject line tips. Why not? And Daniel and I are always messing around for our brands, for my clients' brands, whatever. What is getting stuff open for business and consumer marketers?

2:44So, Daniel, let's rip through some subject line tests that people could try right now. Super easy. Give us some of your favorites and I'll give you some of my favorites. I mean, I'm just going to go on a tried and true one. I totally believe in emojis. I totally believe they are in two different ways. One, I think they stand out in a subject line. But also, if you're trying to be consistent and do something consistent over time, people or start recognizing you for a subject line. So I think one is emojis. I love having partial sentences, like starting a sentence and not ending it or putting ellipses at the end of it.

3:33I think those always crush for me. Another one that also crushes for me is I always when I put like how to or like some something that's like very practical like how to or best of or um people love like like tactical things that they could do right now and I know one that I learned from you which I use all the time is like numbering but not like a clear number like a seven or a nine or eleven or thirteen um I use that all the time and those always cross comparative to all the stuff and i've also been doing something lately i don't know if you've been like a split testing if chat gbt or claude can come up with a better subject line so i'll put like a claude versus me and most of the time like the human when sometimes i get beat out by it but i think just because i know like these little tips that if you try to do it in ai they're not going to tell you to put an emoji or a seven or a 6.5 or crazy stuff.

4:44They'll just try to put like a sentence together. So those are some, I'll come up with more once you, you write off of yours. Yeah. I'll give you the one, speaking of AI, the ones that we were doing a lot are actually the ones that I like to call on AI. So subject line formats and things that AI would never give you back. So I'll give you a few examples of what's really doing well. And you're gonna be like, well, I'm a boring B2B brand. I can't do that. That's not true. Everything, everything is for everybody. First off, super long subject lines. People was like, keep your subject line under 50 characters or 60 characters.

5:15It's not about that at all. It's about how do you get somebody to pause doing that, that, you know, millisecond social scroll. And if you actually have subject lines that are like a hundred characters, 150 characters, what you want to be thinking about is space. And if you fill up the entire line, uh, your email actually stand out and it will get cut off, but that actually works so well. Incredibly long subject lines do really, really well. Two other ones that are super weird. You know, Daniel talked about ellipses, the three dots at the end of the subject line, but actually using them at the start of your subject line, it works really well.

5:49It's super weird. Grammatically, it makes no sense, but that lifts open rates by about 15%. And then some of the other ones that I think are off the radar is no capitalization whatsoever. So again, poor grammar, but AI will never tell you to not capitalize the first letter of a word or whatever. But if you capitalize nothing in your subject line, it actually stands out a little bit. And that's what you always want to be thinking about. What can I do to make my email not feel like AI and stand out a little bit? And those things actually can work. I think another thing to add, and I know this is like a repetitive thing that we both say, but just like calling out your audience and the subject line always crushes it.

6:33Always. Every single time I've done like marketers or social media playbook, like social media or something that pertaining to my audience, my audience marketers, it always crushes because it shows relevancy in the subject line. And I'm never backing away from that one because every time I back away from it, I always get screwed. I think another one is, I know this is people, everything's AI, but I think adding like AI this, AI that, like I do say like if you have the best of AI of this, people are trying to get AI tips right now. Like whether you like it or not, people are. So if you add AI into it, it also will like boost your subject lines too.

7:21Oh, 100%. If you say AI prompt inside, forget about it. That'll crush it. You know, but back to what you were saying before, and I think this applies not just to subject lines, but to headlines in your social posts, your blogs, your offers, everything. The sooner you could tell somebody who they are, this applies to all marketing, the faster they want to engage. You know, just for DIYers, for nonprofit executives, for people that live near Omaha, whatever it is, for affluent investors, just for golfers, for people in the manufacturing sector. The sooner somebody could see that in the social posts, on the headline of a landing page, in the headline of your body copy, in your subject line, in a podcast title, they're like, oh, this is for me.

8:00It's not for everybody. So you always want to be thinking to yourself, what can I do to make the recipient or the person seeing this thinks that it is for them because then they will engage immediately. It's the easiest trick in marketing. I think one that you've said, but I do think it works if you start off like this, but if you don't start off like this, it doesn't work anymore. If you're doing, like I said, the emoji, if you do serialized sends, I used to have another newsletter and I used to do like one, two, three. I just give someone something consistently to look back, look at, but also like, well, maybe we'll be like, where is, did I miss number two?

8:47Did I miss number four? Did I miss number 55? Like, where did I miss another one? And they'll go back. I know I read a newsletter that does that. And I'm like, oh, I missed like 79. We're already at 83. So I'll go back and go read 82, 81, 80. Because I missed those ones. and it made me think it's serious. And that's what we do. You know, I've been doing that on my newsletter where we make it, it's an addition thing. We put the addition at the start of each subject line. But the other thing you always want to be doing with basically all of your emails, but especially any newsletters or a business consumer doesn't matter.

9:21You want to make sure that those newsletters are also living on your website. From an SEO perspective, from an AEO, GEO perspective, especially with that addition-based stuff, because people want to go back and look at the other editions of your newsletter. but if you're not making sure that your newsletter all of the content is also living on your website you are just not using that content properly at all and it's also a good way you can like something you could do is refer back to it and uh and put the link and that is really helpful too is like you could be hey you missed this one here's this here's a link to it and drive to the website now so now easiest kind of content is vault content you take like some of your best content, you throw it into an offer and say, uh, unlock the vault, get access to our top 10 best, you know, offers our top 10 best, you know, podcasts, blah, blah, blah.

10:13Just make a vault of any of your content. And that actually will, will do phenomenal. Um, so let me add back to the beginning thing where people are meeting up for breakfast and all this stuff. If somebody invited you in and say, Hey Daniel, Hey man, I see you just moved here. We got this group that gets together every morning. We'd really love for you to hang out and come meet with us. Are you just Like, would you just be like, no? Or would you say, sure, and then you go once and you ghost them? Like, how do you handle that invitation? I just use the best excuse in the book that I have right now.

10:45Sorry, have a kid. Kid first. Sorry. Oh, the kid's going good napping at that time. No, you're not going. I think it's wildly inappropriate if we don't talk about one topic before this episode ends. right now there's a lot going on about taco bell and people going to taco bell having some lettuce by accident and then running into some bathroom issues are you aware of what's going on with this thing that's spreading across yeah i put in my newsletter today i i'm so thankful that lettuce is not having its day anymore i'm so thankful that people aren't eating salads anymore i'm so thankful that I don't have to hear one more person talk about lettuce.

11:30And also, it's funny, because I'm laughing, because every time we go out to dinner with my wife's family, we'll order the most unhealthiest things, and they'll be like, but you forgot a veggie. Now, there's not going to be forgot a veggie, because they're all scared of veggies now. Well, let me ask you a question. You take influencer deals, right? If Taco Bell came to you right now, and they said, we want you to go and film this, go to a Taco Bell and eat a salad, at Taco Bell, and they were going to pay you a significant amount of money, would you do that? No. First of all, I'm not, like, the biggest, like, Taco Bell person.

12:08Ari's the biggest Taco Bell person. I love Taco Bell. She's trying to convince me. I like Taco Bell breakfast, which is probably weird to say. You eat Taco Bell breakfast? Yeah, I've had it before. What do you eat? What is that? Like, what do you eat? Egg Taco Bell? They have, like, breakfast chalupas, breakfast tacos. I was like, it's pretty good. You should try it. Would you go this week? You're going to do a Taco Bell breakfast club. Yeah, that I might do. That I might do. I'm going to get you a salad from Taco Bell. I'm going to do that. No, I mean, it might be a good. I've seen people say they lost like 15 to 20 pounds on this.

12:44I know. That's the new joke, right? I mean, instead of like a Zempick, just go to Taco Bell and eat a salad. Yeah, but I don't think I want to be down and out for five days because I got a parasite. I mean, no way. I'm I there's better ways to do it there's gotta be better ways uh well it's also gotta be better podcast because you know what did we just discuss but appreciate you being here go follow the marketing millennials go follow do this not that podcast uh and we'll see you at the next one

13:16Daniel come on man I gotta 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 Mark and Millet 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.

13:50We'll talk about it. Just give us a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out. Later.