Ep. 188 – What’s Up THIS WEEK ==> NASA Wants to HIRE YOU? 👻 Halloween for B2B and B2C already? BENNIFER is Not Over! I repeat NOT OVER🫠

Foreign. We are back for what's up this week from do this, not that podcast presented by Marigold.

This is our super short episode where we break down what's going on this week in business and marketing and in life. And I thought this was really cool. You know, the election coming up is super annoying.

It's just all over the place, and markers are trying to figure out how to navigate it. But some marketers are figuring a way to grow their database on the back of the election, the presidential election.

So Stonyfield Organic, which is the big yogurt brand, they announced this cool promotion that's called Toxic Free Election Challenge, where they're encouraging consumers to avoid social media for the month before the presidential election on November 5th. And they're going to give 100 customers $1,000 each that are able to complete the challenge of staying off social media for a month.

And you go to their site and you can register for it. And for every registration they get, they're donating 50 cents to the organic Farming Research Foundation.

The reason this is cool is that, you know, everyone gets to kind of play along. It's for a good cause.

And they're going to have a massive explosion in database growth because how often do you give your email address to a yogurt company? You don't. Right. And so it's a cool way to do it. Now, could I. I would fit fail on day one, stay off social media for a month.

0% chance I'm a giant loser. No way I could do that. All right, what else is going on this, this week? Well, NASA, you know, the astronaut stuff.

NASA just announced that they are looking to bring on 50 social media influencers. This is how you know that our society is really collapsing. This is crazy.

So they have this upcoming launch of this thing called Europa where they're sending an uncrewed spacecraft to go near the Jupiter moon or something like that. And what they want to do is they want to get these big social media influencers to all get involved and to cover this unmanned trip to Jupiter.

And so you could actually go on NASA's website and you can apply to be one of the influencers.

And it's wild because, you know, they want to make sure the person actively is promoting on social media and they have a large reach and, and they have a unique audience. But the fact that we're at a place in the world where NASA is now onboarding influencers.

If you don't think influencer marketing is a thing and you don't think your brand should get Involved with it. I mean, this is how we're promoting going to Jupiter. This is wild. All right, what else is going on?

Well, it is not too early to think about how to incorporate Halloween stuff into your marketing programs. And this is not just a consumer thing. I think business marketers make a mistake.

They don't realize that things like Halloween can give a boost in engagement to their stuff as well. So subjectline.com just came out with some really cool information. Okay.

That states from September 30th, which is coming up from September 30th all the way through through October 31st. All right.

There are certain emojis and words that if we put in our email subject lines for consumer and business marketers, it will give us a lift in the number of people opening up our emails. And this is where people tune out like, well, that's gimmicky. That's cheesy. Because I don't want to do that. Get involved with Halloween. Great.

Go out of business, and the rest of us will do the tactics, and we'll get the engagement. So what? What works and what doesn't work? So first, let's talk emojis.

These are the four emojis that will lift your open rates from September 30 through October 31. The most, 20% lift for consumer marketers and 15% lift for business markers.

When you put these emojis in your email subject line, just incorporating them, whatever you're saying, right, whatever you're promoting, you have the ghost emoji, the skull emoji, the jack o' lantern emoji, and then the screaming face emoji with the emoji with the hands on the face. Now, what's interesting is most people go with the jack o' lantern, you know, the pumpkin, and that's a bad move.

The number one emoji is the ghost emoji, followed closely by the skull emoji. The pumpkin emoji is third, and it's a distant third. So if you're going to incorporate. I know how stupid this sounds. I really do.

I mean, what do we all do for a living? This is ridiculous. We're talking about emojis in subject lines. But, yeah, this is what works.

And make sure it's the first character of your subject line. You can't stick it at the end. Nobody's going to see it. And they're lifting email open rates. 20% for consumer and 15% for business.

Now, the words that you want to be considering for your subject line that give you a boost during that same period, September 30, all the way through October 31, according to Subjectline.com are the words on beware. What am I saying? Beware. Beware? Is that how you say it? Beware. Whatever. Zombie, monster, and scared.

So for example, let's say you're a B2B SaaS company, right? You can say monsters in your workflow. Here's how to scare them away. Skeleton crew.

Our SaaS tools can help you scale fast zombie workflows, slowing you down. So you can use this stuff without sounding like completely off brand and you're involved. So it's coming up. So get ready to leverage that.

So let's talk about useless news. I mean, really useless news. I think Bennifer might be back. I do.

So listen, for those of you who have not been following this, first of all, congratulations, you have a life. I obviously don't, but JLo, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, you know, they got married again. I think it was their second marriage. Right.

And they then JLO just filed for divorce a couple weeks ago. Right? Because Ben looked miserable. Filed for divorce? Well, literally just now, this is being reported today. Okay, jlo and Ben were spotted.

They went to lunch with their kids and they were spotted holding hands. And then inside there, and there's video and picture list.

Then inside the restaurant, they were seen being like, very like kissy huggy, all this stuff. And so I don't know if the divorce is off or what's going on, but I have to tell you in general, I think this is ridiculous.

And the reason I think it's ridiculous is if I was like, very famous like Ben Affleck or JLo, and I was trying to save my marriage, would I, you know, put my kids in the car, go to whatever the hottest restaurant is in California or whatever and know the paparazzi was going to be there because that's where they're going to be. And then put on this display to show we're back together. No, I would go to, like, somewhere random that no one's going to go.

Like, I don't know, go to. Go somewhere random in Wyoming and go sit on a ranch and decide if you like each other. Get out of the news. Like, what? What are you actually doing?

I mean, random people like me are talking about you on marketing podcasts. That's weird. You got to get out of the news. Anyway, thank you for checking this out.

We still have our short Ask us Anything later in the week and our big Tips episode the end of the week. And if you've not registered for Guru Conference, what are you actually doing? It is free. It is virtual. It is the world's largest email event.

I will be there. That's not a plus, that's a negative. Sarah Jessica Parker is going to be there. The founder of Morning Brew is going to be there.

Amy Porterfield is going to be there. Ann Hanley's going to be there. I mean, guru conference.com it is free. You got to check it out. You're awesome. And what else? Keep tabs on Bennifer.

Let me know what's going on, what you see out there. All right. Keep it real. Thanks. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.

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