EP. 47- NEW Subject Line TESTS! l Jay’s Scoop

Welcome to do this, not that, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid. Also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that. Another episode of do this, not that.

And the year is wrapping up. So one of the parts of my company is subject line.com, which is a pretty cool site. It's free. Check subject lines there.

But anyway, we are constantly reviewing what is working in the subject line and what is not to drive more people to open up email. So I thought it'd be kind of fun to share with you some recent trends that we're seeing in the subject line.

Some things that maybe you've never tested that as we head into the new year. They're really quick wins, little things that you can try that actually make a difference.

Now people ask me all the time, what's more important, the open or the click on an email message.

And I would say the overwhelming majority of marketers out there will say, of course it's the click because opens are inflated and all this other nonsense. And no, I don't say that. I say the open is the most important thing because it's obvious if you don't get the email open, who cares?

Who cares what's in your message? Who cares about anything?

I want to give you some tips that you could use in the subject line right now that will increase your open rate a little bit. So here we go. Let's run through them. And this is data from the last 90 days.

And we, we transmit on behalf of my agency clients about 6 billion emails annually. And that's where all of our stats and trends and tips come from. So anyway, the first one is AIM Point marketing.

And this really applies not just to your subject line, but this should apply to the headline in your social posts or your search ads or anywhere. A pain Point marketing is everything. Because ultimately, what are you trying to do as a business marketer or as a consumer marketer?

You're trying to solve for something, right? You're trying to help the person solve for something that they're trying to overcome. They're cold, they need sweaters, they need to overcome that.

They're struggling with their accounting software because it's a big pain in the butt. They need better accounting software. You want to help them overcome that.

They're tired of losing Business to whatever you want to help them overcome that. So you're trying to help them overcome these pain points.

So rather than having your marketing be telling people how great your product or service is, which is what we all do, we go out there and say we have the greatest product and you should buy it or use it or whatever. That's. That's so boring. What you really want to be telling the person is what is in it for them.

So in this subject line we are seeing, when you utilize pain point marketing, it is lifting open rates on average about 25%. And let me give you examples of what I mean by pain point marketing.

So when you literally start your subject line with things like is your accounting team happy? Is your sales team frustrated by your CRM? Is your New Year's resolution going well?

And really, you know the answers on the other side of that, they're going to open it up and they're going to be like, well, no, it's not going well. No, I'm not happy with my accounting software. And then when they open up that email, they're going to see that you have the solution for them.

Say, well, guess what, you don't have to worry about that because we have the thing you need to overcome that. So when you have your subject line, start with is your. Or start it with tired of or struggling with, this is how you get people excited.

So literally starting your subject lines with is your tired of or struggling with, and then you put in the information afterwards is a crazy easy way to get people to engage. Another one that we're seeing, and these are kind of random, but that's what it's all about.

It's about little things that make a difference and how do you get that edge? And again, this is not just in your subject line. You want to be utilizing this everywhere.

You're doing your marketing because that's what people react to and we see it in the data. So another thing that we're seeing that's super interesting is this idea of comparison subject lines.

And really what we're saying is, do we measure up in the subject line? That's what you want to ask the person. And this is actually boosting open rates by about 3, 30%.

I'll give you examples of subject lines in this category of what we're calling comparison subject line. How do we stack up? How do you measure up? How do you rank? Where do you stand? If you got an email and it says, how do you measure up?

You're like, I want to see that. I Want to see how I measure up? Or it said, how do you compare? And this could be for your company.

Whether you work at a company or you own a company, you want to know, how do you compare? You want to open that up and see where do you stand? What's your status in comparison? How do you fare compared to others?

All we want to know is, hey, where do I fall in all of this? What's my percentile? What's my rank? Where do I fall? Am I doing great? So this idea of playing to that emotion of how do we compare?

How do we measure up? And this idea of comparison subject lines and what you're comparing is yourself to others.

And literally just by having your subject line be, how do you stack up? How do you measure up? What's your standing? How do you rank? This is super engaging and performing really, really well right now.

Okay, let's go on to something completely, totally random, different. Forget about what you're writing. Let's talk about how much you're writing. I get asked a lot. How many characters should I write in the subject line?

And all this. And that's nonsense to me. I don't care how long your subject line is. What I care about is what you're doing in those first few characters.

That's the most important thing. But we just did this really cool study.

We looked at a regular subject line with a regular number of words and characters, whatever, versus super short subject lines. One word, two word, three words.

And we found that by writing subject lines with just two words or just three words, you will see your open rate increase by over 25%. As opposed to writing a regular subject line, you're writing with two words or three words.

Maybe your subject line says, this is it, or it says this is why, or it says SEO Trends. Or it says festive plaid. Literally one or two words. And yes, the words that you write matter. But why does 1, 2, or 3 words really work so well?

Especially 2 words and 3 words. That's what I would focus on. The reason 2 words and 3 words work so well and give you that lift is it stands out.

When someone's looking at their inbox, they don't realize it, but because it's so much shorter. From a literally an appearance standpoint, the two word and three word subject lines automatically stand out.

And then the person reads it, and then the person opens it. Now, it's hard to write any type of copy right in such a short amount of time, but it's an awesome test. Now, you can't do it every time.

But if you haven't tested a two word subject line or a three word subject line, I'm telling you, it is a great, easy test. And all of this costs you nothing. It costs you nothing to try. So one more of these subject line tests before we get to some other stuff.

And again, why are we going through this? We're going through this because as you go into the new year, you want to try new stuff.

And sometimes it's hard to like, oh, I got to get my IT person involved. I got to get a designer and no, let's change some words in the subject line. Let's see if it makes a difference. It's just that easy.

Another one that we're seeing that was working really well is what we call Secrets of the ultimate level. This is actually also lifting open rates by over 20%. The secrets of the Ultimate Level. All right, I love this one.

And here's what I mean by Secrets of the ultimate level.

When you get a subject line, it says, secrets of top chefs, secrets of top CEOs, secrets of successful startups, Secrets of affluent investors, Secrets of marathon runners. Don't you want to know all those secrets? Don't you want to know the secrets of top chefs? What are they doing?

What's the secret of an affluent investor? What are they investing in? What's the secret of top CMOs? When you see that subject line, you're instantly like, ooh, I gotta find out the secrets.

And then of course, you say, oh, the secret is that they're doing this, that they're using this software, that they're buying this kitchen utensil, that they're doing whatever applies to your world. We just want to know. We want to look behind the curtain. What are they doing? How do they do it?

So this test of Secrets of so easy, no brainer, and super fun to test. So those are some subject line test ideas that you should maybe give a whirl. Why not? It won't always work, but it's fun to try new things.

So before we get into, since you didn't ask, which is the portion of this podcast that just goes, I don't know what happens, what we talk about or what's going on. I want to tell you that this podcast is exclusively brought to you by Marigold. That was me saying Marigold. Marigold's awesome.

It is my email sending platform. I send out billions of emails. I use Marigold. I've been using Marigold for years. When I started using Marigold, I was not sending out A lot of email.

It is great for a small marketer, a medium sized marketer, a giant marketer, and it's got so much other cool stuff, like loyalty programs and all these other tools and stuff. And it's a roll up of all these amazing companies like Sail through and Miami and Cheetah Digital and all these other cool companies.

It's all part of Marigold, which is this cool organization. So anyway, if you're in the market for a new platform, you gotta check out Marigold. Meet Marigold.com. check them out at Meet Marigold.com.

all right, let's get on to. Since you didn't ask. So with New Year's right here, I gotta talk about New Year's and what do I think about. New Year's is so epically overrated.

It just is. Everything about it is overrated. New Year's resolutions are overrated. Someone gave me literally the worst idea the other day.

This is possibly the worst idea I've ever heard from one human to another. And this was the idea. I was talking to a buddy of mine. I go, you got any New Year's resolutions?

He goes, yeah, me and my wife do this New Year's resolution thing that always backfires. I go, what is it? Because this is what you do.

You and your wife sit down, you and your significant other, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever you got going on, and you let the other person, you say, you get to pick two resolutions for me and I get to pick two resolutions for you. And I was like, that cannot end well. Because what happens? I was like, so what goes on? He's like, well, it's a disaster.

Because basically she'll be like, hey, my first resolution for you is you got to put your clothes in the hamper every day. Not leave clothes on the floor. My second one is, you got to lose £15. I'm like, oh, my God, this is terrible. There's no way I would do that. That is.

That is like instant fight, instant bad. You're literally telling the other person, this is what I think you suck at. And, yeah, go for it. So, worst advice ever got. Worst idea of all.

Don't you do not do that idea. What else? Oh, you know what else is overrated is fireworks. Fireworks. Overrated. I don't understand. They just. They. I don't get. I don't know.

Maybe, maybe I. I don't know why it bothers me so much. You sit there, they go up, yay, whatever, and then they. It's overrated. It is. That's my opinion.

And then about five minutes after New Year's end, everyone does the awkward, can we leave now? Which basically means you've all been waiting to leave. Nobody actually wants to be where they are. They're waiting to leave. And then you leave.

It's just so weird. Anyway, I'm going to bed at 10 o' clock on New Year's. Don't at me. I don't care.

It's gonna be fun. I appreciate you checking out this podcast. We have big plans. Check out Jay schweddleson.com and you are awesome. Happy New Year's. Later. You did it.

You. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.

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