Your Email Marketing Metrics Are Lying | Bathroom Break #113

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 with another bathroom break.

0:41I am here with bestselling author of USA Today, Jay Shreddison. And I wanted to talk about something because for some reason, everybody who's coming to the U.S. for the World Cup is obsessed with ranch dressing and they're taking full-size ranch dressing in their carry-on, not even like under the plane, like carry-on. Have you been seeing this? Not only have I been seeing it, first of all, I'm clueless about the World Cup. People would text me and they'll be like, did you see what happened with like, who, Cape Verde or whatever? I'm like, is that a country? Or did I even just say that? I have no idea who's winning or tying or losing.

1:16But all I really care about is these people from different countries are like, we discovered ranch dressing and which is amazing because i use ranch on on popcorn pizza uh pita chips everything my my toenails but i don't understand something how is ranch dressing not made it to europe like was there like a block in ranch dressing like why do they have caesar dressing like why what's going on you i don't think they have dressing they don't have dressing in here i mean they don't I was about to say they don't have deodorant. That's horrible. I can't say that. I think in some countries they say shower once a week or something.

1:55Is that true? I don't know, but I definitely can't. You know what I also feel bad about? The person at Foxborough Stadium that had to put tape on every seat to cover the logo, and there's 63 ,000 seats. You saw what happened with Levi's. They covered their thing outside the stadium. Yeah, but they did a great job with that, but someone had to go. And then I saw something, they had to cover the like mayo and mustard things because it had brand names on it. They're really going ham. They're covering everything. You think if we opened up a pop-up shop like in, I don't know, in Germany or London that says just called We Have Ranch, like we would just go viral?

2:29Like is that all you need to do to get rich? I think so. I think that's our next business idea. But talking about like great things that are happening, marketing, actually not so great things that are happening, marketing. one thing I've been thinking about and I want your opinion is like people are overestimating clicks and opens because of bots um yeah there's a stat out there that like 95 percent of you know like clicks are bot activity so like we've seen this in our newsletter that where we put like something called a honey pot and the top of our newsletter are fake link to see how many bots would actually click it.

3:06So there's a lot of fake clicks out there. And I believe you need to track who is clicking, who is opening, who is visiting your site, who is filling out, and instead of the net number. But you have another thing to say about this as well. Yeah. I mean, in general, for everyone out there that thinks that they go into their ESP or their platform, when they send out their email and they look at their metrics, like, oh, oh, I got 99 % delivered. I got a 42 % open rate. I have a 3 % click-through rate. Not a single one of those metrics is accurate. Not one. And it gets worse and worse and worse because so many infrastructures now are trying to make sure that nothing bad is coming into their network.

3:49So they are kind of pre-clicking everything and there's all this bot activity. So table stakes is knowing that your numbers are wildly inflated. On the reverse side though, if you don't have good metrics, If you don't have, let's say, a 20 % open rate at least, if you don't have a 1 % click-through rate at least, that's really bad because so many of the clicks and opens are not real that if you're not seeing that, then you have a massive deliverability problem. Would you agree with that? Yeah, a massive deliverability problem, or the people on your list are just sleeping. Like you have nobody who's actually, or you're putting out content that's irrelevant.

4:33It's either you have a delivery problem or a content problem. There's the only two problems. And the other thing I would say about it is like a lot of people out there with these marketing automations tool where you're doing scores. If they opened, if they clicked, they get an extra score and they move up the chain. One simple thing you want to think about doing is take anybody in your database who's clicked on every email that you've sent in the last six months. I promise you they don't like you that much. Zero percent chance. Anybody that's clicked on every email that you've sent them or opened every email that you sent them, and now you're factoring that into the marketing automation score, you're giving that contact, that is a fail.

5:12That is all bot activity. That is not real. And that is why your BDRs and your SDRs cannot stand the leads that they're getting because it's all fake. And then on the flip side, we talk about this a lot, but we are moving into the era of zero click. And things that you should think about is like there's things that are happening that you can't see like forwards or someone sees something in your email and then goes to like search it. So you need to create things that are worth sharing because that's a metric that email is not tracking right now. and that's a metric. Social tracks it kind of, but they can track screenshots.

5:55So shareable things are happening. And then especially with AI and AI just scans things, it doesn't click things. So clicks shouldn't be, we're trying to say clicks are not the end all be all. You can't have everything with clicks. Clicks are not like, clicks are a fake metric because they're inflated. So the who is clicking is important, but not on email Because email, there's some weird things that happen, like with Apple pre-opening every email. So what is your recommendation for people for creating content for zero click? Well, in general, everybody always says there's only 5 % of the market that you're going after is in market at any one time.

6:3895 % of the people that you are sending stuff to consumer business are not ready to buy your thing. So really what you should be thinking about is you need to build up your equity in that person's brain and not just trying to get them to download, to buy, to register, to subscribe. You need to be giving them stuff that they're finding of value. So when they are in market, they're thinking of you. And that's where the zero-click kind of mindset needs to be, this idea of no agenda marketing. If you look at, for example, Daniel's newsletter he sends out, it's really long. You don't need to click on anything to get massive value out of Daniel's newsletter that he puts out.

7:16And that is the way a lot of brands need to be thinking. Are you putting out content on social, in your emails that people don't need to click on, that they can get value out of? So when they are in market, they think of you because this world of zero click is where we're at because of all the AI overviews in Google and all the AI tools. We're getting accustomed to not clicking. So really reimagining your content for that world is what we should all be thinking about. Also, I think what you said about staying top of mind, it is like you say this all the time and people fight it. But sending more emails means you're top of mind more.

7:57And if it's relevant emails and ones that resonate with your audience, it's a good thing. because if you send an email once every two weeks, nobody's going to remember you. It's just like compared to someone who's sending three times a week to their audience. I mean, it has to do with relevancy, but if you're top of mind, you have to stay top of mind and staying top of mind, you have to be in someone's inbox or be in someone's feed or be in someone's drive home or being on someone's consistently to win. Listen, relevancy is married to frequency. the more relevant you are the more frequent you can send and here's the game like to daniel said if you're not sending out at least once a week at least you are not doing enough to stay top of mind with that person but you can send them garbage uh but that's the world that we're in now and any business if you're in a business and you're at the marketing manager whatever you are and one of the things that uh is something you track is the unsubscribes and if they tick up a little bit, that that's bad, that now something we're sending out too much or this, that, or whatever, that is not the right type of marketing organization.

9:05Unsubscribes is not a terrible thing. As long as then it'll go, you know, wildly high and don't be turned off by a few extra unsubscribes because you sent out a few more emails. Those people were never going to buy your thing. They were a bad fit. Let them go. But before we go, and you know, I want to know something. Is there something like that people do, let's say in Europe that we don't have here that when you go over there, like ranch dressing over there, you're like, oh man, I wish we had that over here because that's awesome. Like really small toilet seats, they seem to have that over there.

9:40I'm trying to think. I mean, decent public transportation is one that I always think about. Like when I go to Europe, I'm like, why does not the US have decent public transportation? It's so crazy to me. It's so bad here. It's terrible. I would like whenever I go to London like it's so easy to get around the city and even though you go to New York it's disgusting to be done I know sorry New York is but it is on a 95 degree day and it smells like pee underground it's not fun I'm sorry but like like so you're a very large human being you're like six foot five or whatever do you feel like Europe is not catered to people of your size I feel like everybody do you know the worst thing about here is for me is that when you get like a double extra large there, it really means like a large shirt.

10:29So like every time I go there and I feel like, oh, I'm going to put on a double extra and I put it on, it's like a crop top on me. I feel so terrible. Terrible. I ordered my son a 18-month onesie and he's only like nine months and it was like a crop top on him. I was like, are European babies that tiny? I want to know what people in Europe are eating. First of all, the food is better in Europe. I know it's healthier. That's a fact. They walk more too. That's for sure. Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff. And everyone's very nice over there. I want to start saying things like cheers. Oh, I did see the funniest thing.

11:08There's this guy who was on TikTok. He came to the United States. And he's like, I've discovered the best thing in the US. And he's like, air conditioning. They don't have it. And he's like, hockey just, it's hot. and I walk in and it's a winter day now. It's so funny. He's like, you guys should put that in your Nashville anthem. We have air conditioning. It is true. I have a nervous breakdown. My air conditioning breaks, I just lose my mind. Oh, me too. I lost it. I can't take it. I can't take it. Well, people probably can't take this episode. Listen, we appreciate it. When you guys leave us comments on Spotify or Apple, then we love seeing it.

11:49We jump in on that. And we did another bathroom break. We're going to see you at the next one. 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 marketing tips that we just spew out and it could be anything from email, subject line to any marketing tips in the world.

12:29We'll talk about it. Just give us a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out. Later.