Try This Email Tactic That Works Every Time | Bathroom Break #82

0:07Daniel Harmon: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.

0:16Jay Kingley: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. I'm here with Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials. I'm Jay Schwettlson from Do This, Not That. And this is a big week for Daniel because Daniel is moving.

0:49Jay Kingley:He texted me, goes, I'm moving, which is always a subtle opening of like, hey do you want to help me move because we live sort of near each other and i i literally texted

0:58Daniel Harmon:back i would help you but i don't want to he did it's a little i have proof he texted me that and then i said i replied back that um when people ask someone to ask over 30 years old to move it's like hey here's a free lunch but also you get back surgery as your present as well so i

1:19Jay Kingley:would never ask jay to oh no way no nothing with boxes anything with boxes is a hard no are you a

1:25Daniel Harmon:good packer are you good at packing no horrible ari is a horrible packer too we're like horrible at doing it um so it's gonna be a mess it's gonna be a mess i want to know a period of time will

1:38Jay Kingley:there be a box that remains stuff within a box for at least six months after you move um no but It'll take like two weeks to get everything out of a box. Oh, my God. I moved 17 years ago. I think I still have like two boxes that we haven't touched.

1:55Daniel Harmon:Well, we're moving from like an apartment to like a small house. So we'll have like one extra room, baby life. But we've never had this much space in our life. I think our house is going to feel empty. You're going to get lost.

2:10Jay Kingley:Speaking of getting lost, you're going to get lost with this episode. I don't even know what transition that was. It makes no sense. What we're going to talk about, though, is a tactic in email marketing that B2B should be doing, B2C definitely should be doing, nonprofit, doesn't matter the sector, but everybody sleeps on it. But this time of year, from basically November through end of December, for some reason, this crushes it. We're talking about animated GIFs in email. So, Daniel, why do animated GIFs work? What are we talking about? What are we not talking about?

2:39Daniel Harmon:Well, I think the first thing we should talk about that nobody has time to read boring, long emails. And if you are writing long emails, which I think you can write long emails and there's a space for long emails, but you need to be able to break up text with GIFs, things to stop the scroll. Also, when you open an email, the first thing you will look at is that gift. And if it can make you smile or give you a reaction, it helps you stop somebody stopping in their place. And not many people do it. It's kind of a lost art. So it works for everything from newsletter to offer emails to cold prospecting to warm prospecting.

3:27You can use it in any type of email and it will help you stand out in an email inbox. Yeah.

3:33Jay Kingley:And in general, it actually lifts click-through rates by about 20%. We use an animated GIF. And let's just talk about what we are talking about, what we're not talking about. And for those of you out there in some sort of boring B2B industry, like I can't do this. Yes, you can. Listen, we are a simple-minded species. We are. The shiny object is where we draw, you know, follow the light. This is what we do. Okay. And animated GIFs, what they're not, they're not videos. You really cannot embed a video in an email. Some people say you can, you can mess around, screw that. It doesn't work. It's a mess.

4:03Jay Kingley:But an animated GIF is just two or three images that are stitched together that move around a little bit. Your call to action button can be an animated GIF that kind of moves around a little bit or lights up. It could be a dog. It could be your logo. It could be anything. And you're like, well, I don't know how to do that. Here's the deal. AI is your new best friend. It's my best friend for sure. All you need to do is go to your favorite AI platform and you go to it and you say, hey, I use MailChimp. I use Constant Contact. I use Klaviyo. I use HubSpot. I use whatever to send my emails. I want to create a simple animated GIF.

4:37Jay Kingley:Can you walk me through the steps on what free tool I can use to create it, how I stick it in my email, and whatever else?

4:44Daniel Harmon:That's it. I want to add something you said really important, but I think you scrolled over it a little bit, is that if you have a video you want them to click out to, a demo you want them to click out to, or something to click out to, you can make something that's animated says Watch Now on there, or have a play button for a YouTube video with some moving things in the background, just to show that there is a video that you want them to click out to. I think that's super important as a way for having a new type of call to action in your email. So I think that if you're going to do, if you have other things like a case study you want them to link out to or something that you want them to link out to, it's good to have like a couple teasers in a GIF.

5:30Yeah.

5:31Jay Kingley:And just, you know, if anybody out there is like, well, it's going to mess up my deliverability, it's going to be do this, that or whatever. It's just not true. It's literally three images that are tied together. So if you have three images in your email to begin with, it's the same idea. They just move around a little bit. And we're like, oh, look, that's moving around. It's in our subconscious. Nobody ever looks at your animated GIF like, that is dope. That is awesome. I need to interact with that. But we do in our subconscious. And at the end of the day, email is all about the little things.

5:57Jay Kingley:And if you haven't tested animated GIFs in a year, in six months, in whatever, you got to do it. There's no downside. It's easy. And this is the time of year. November through December are the highest period of the year where animated GIFs work the best because we're like kind of like

6:09Daniel Harmon:in this mood of hey what's up and also i think what i suggest with anime gifts is always the theme it if you're going to do something fun theme it to what's happening so if it is over the holidays you could theme it to a holiday something funny for the holidays um if it's you have an offer you could theme it to something in the offer you could do a lot of things where you theme that that gift to what is happening because relevancy is the key to a lot of marketing. If you can show something relevant that your audience will care about. If I was prospecting Jay, I would have a golden bachelor or some real...

6:51Daniel Harmon:Actually, this is a quick pivot. I love that someone made you a golden bachelor on LinkedIn.

7:01Jay Kingley:Someone made a meme of me as a golden bachelor and they post on LinkedIn. It's always amazing. open up linkedin and i'm like what what's this all about there's a picture of me as like the golden match i'm like oh my god what is going on yeah don't do that i don't need now i'm gonna get more of them yeah everybody send send your best um ai image of jay to his inbox uh he would love he would love to see what you can come up with um thank you so much i appreciate that you know in general though just one more relevant thing and then we'll be idiots i don't think we realize that ai which is my best friend anything you've always been like i always wanted to try that but i don't know how to do it just like animated gifs how do i actually do that whatever it is just go to ai and say hey i'm a doofus i don't know how to do this can you tell me in simple terms how to do it and now you have somebody that you don't have to feel like you are supposed to know stuff uh and you don't know it you can just ask it like animated gifs try it out yeah you also could go to

7:58Daniel Harmon:like giphy um and put a video in and it could it will show you a bunch of and you can crop it to the perfect part of your video you want to do it so that there's easy stuff like that or you could go to ai and tell you or what you could do is if you don't have a video like there are tons of ai video platforms that you can make an animated video and then crop it into a gif so there's so

8:24Jay Kingley:many ways to do to do on the free version of canva they have a whole gif studio where you can make gifts in three seconds so it's all easy um all right speaking of easy so daniel the day after you move do you find it weird like when you move in trying to sleep in that new place for the first time i feel like it's a very weird situation whenever you move and you've moved i i do but

8:47Daniel Harmon:talking about the bathroom i think it's always weird like if you get up in the night and you need to go to the bathroom and you forget where the bathroom is because you're just so disoriented and you you walk and you walk the same path as your at your last place and you you're looking around wait where's the bathroom right now i think that is the that is the problem when you sleep in

9:07Jay Kingley:a new place and isn't like wi-fi the most like if you don't have your wi-fi set up you feel very uncomfortable it's i do it makes me i know ari made me go up two days before i move to go set the wi-fi because she will not move in without the wi-fi set up she refuses to it it's a good move uh well it's not a good move is listening to this show oh my god why did i just say that no that's not true it's an amazing move the bathroom break is something listen go follow the marking millennials leave daniel a review tell him how awesome he is because he really is very awesome and uh do this not that you check it out and daniel any other parting words yeah everybody

9:46Daniel Harmon:send congrats to jay he was a top 100 podcast in in the the u.s i think he was like a topping some of the most well-known celebrities in the world what were you in the top 50 i hit like i think 67 or 67 you get it you know how crazy that is so give him a round of applause everybody i pre i appreciate that i'm sure uh a lot of people care um all right you rock all right see you the next one.

10:14Jay Kingley: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 hope you give it a try. Oh,

10:28Daniel Harmon: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. We'll talk about it. Just give us a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out. Later.