SPECIAL SERIES ==> Stop Freaking Out Over Unsubscribes 🚫 <== | BATHROOM Break #72 COLLAB: The Marketing Millennials + Do This, Not That

Daniel Murray: 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, but I

Jay Schwedelson: don't recommend both, but that's your choice. This collab is gonna be super fun. We have Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials and me, Jay Schon from the Do This Not That podcast@subjectline.com.

Jay Schwedelson: Each episode in this series, we are gonna 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.

Jay Schwedelson: We are back for another special episode of The Bathroom Break. I'm Jay Sch Delson. I'm here with the marketing millennial Daniel Murray, and today we're gonna be talking about some important data around unsubscribes. But before we do that, uh, Daniel's added a new person to his newsletter, to his database.

Jay Schwedelson: Daniel, you now have a kid. You're a first time father. First off, how are you doing? How is it going? Um, there's

Daniel Murray: the highest of highs of having a kid and then there's the like no sleep and all that. So it's, it's, it's good and trying to take care of myself too. So it's, it's, it's a great ex, it's a great experience.

Daniel Murray: I get why people say things flip a switch when you have a kid, so, but I'm glad I live in the age, age of AI now and it could solve a lot of worries parents have where I could just. Ask chat, GPT. A lot of things. Wait, what are you asking?

Jay Schwedelson: Chat, GPT about parenting

Daniel Murray: of like, is this enough? How much formula should a baby have?

Daniel Murray: Is a baby getting enough sleep? Oh wait, the baby has a little blood on each shirt. Is this okay? Uh, like. Um, all this stuff. So does

Jay Schwedelson: it say, uh, actually you're a horrendous dad and you need to go find help. Yeah, yeah. You need, you have mental health

Daniel Murray: problems and extreme anxiety, so you should go, um, you should go see a therapist.

Jay Schwedelson: Oh, wait, one last question before we get to the episode. Regarding this being the bathroom break, how everybody really wants to know how are your diaper changing skills?

Daniel Murray: I'm actually a pro at diaper Change. My, my kid, my kid tends to have 12 to 15 diaper changes a day. So we're, we're getting a numbers now we're getting a numbers.

Daniel Murray: Uh, it's a volume

Jay Schwedelson: game.

Daniel Murray: It's a volume game. We're getting a number, but you know, the, the doctor says you have to get at least four to five P diapers, and he's exceeding that. So I'm proud of him.

Jay Schwedelson: Well, Daniel always says about marketing, you gotta get your reps in and this is the exact same thing. So let's jump into the topic of the day.

Jay Schwedelson: Unsubscribes. Why are we talking about this? I'm gonna tell you why we're talking about this because normally the time of year that we're heading into kind of the Q4 time of year, uh, people don't realize this, but from October 1st through December, uh, 15th, it is the highest unsubscribed period for any other time of the year, that 75 day period.

Jay Schwedelson: On the consumer side, your unsubscribe rates are. 230% higher during that period. And on the business side, they're 220% higher on the business to business side. But the reason we're talking about it is because this year unsubscribe rates are gonna be even higher than normal because the economy's a little bit all over because of tariffs.

Jay Schwedelson: I don't care what you think about tariffs. Doesn't matter. People will be watching their wallets a little more. So looking for more deals. When you look for more deals. Daniel, why does that cause unsubscribe rates to go higher?

Daniel Murray: Because a lot of people are what they do when they come, especially in consumer, they look for the welcome offer.

Daniel Murray: Once welcome offer hits, they look for the email, and then after the email, they don't want to be sent just. A flow of emails in the inbox unless it's another deal. Um, also this also brings to the point that you should, any discounts you're giving should be better than the welcome offer. Otherwise, you're not gonna, when, like, if you're giving like, welcome 10, you can't give 10% off the next time because you're just gonna to any exceeding discounts need to be, if you're doing a sale, needs to be better than that.

Daniel Murray: Welcome offer that you have, but a lot of people are right now, like you said, are seeking deals, but I think it's actually a good thing because you want to have people on your list who want to buy and want to continuously buy. Um, and it's a good signal that someone's alive on your list. You'd rather have someone leave your list.

Daniel Murray: Knowing you leave your list. They know that you're not, they're not the right customer. And have someone that you don't know if they're opening or closing your email. Um, that's my point of view.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah. And on the business to business side, the reason unsubscribed are also so high, okay. Is 'cause everyone's trying to like, oh, I'm gonna get super organized heading into the new year.

Jay Schwedelson: And they're like, I'm gonna get off this list, I'm gonna get to inbox zero, all this stuff. And the reason that we're talking about this is. The biggest fail that we both see marketers make is the reaction to unsubscribes. What they do is they're looking at their dashboards and they go, oh, it's October.

Jay Schwedelson: And their unsubscribes start to tick up higher. They go, oh no, we're sending out too much email. Our newsletter's not interesting. Uh, this offer stinks. That's the problem. Let's reign it back. Let's change things. 'cause our unsubscribes went higher. And that's why it's important internally to manage the expectation.

Jay Schwedelson: Say, no, no, no, no. This is the time of year that, hi, that we get high unsubscribed. So, so Daniel, when you see unsubscribe, like on your newsletter or on your offer emails, do you freak out? Do you start to pull back range? What do you do?

Daniel Murray: I think it all goes into like analyzing if this is the time of year or is it.

Daniel Murray: Are we sending things the wrong type of things to the audience? Like, are we, is this, is this content audience mismatch or is it actually just a time of of your thing? Because also, sometimes if you send something way out of left field that is, has nothing to do with your audience, you're gonna get. A ton of unsubscribes 'cause they're on your list for a reason.

Daniel Murray: But if it's you're doing the same cadence and there's a high unsubscribe, you shouldn't freak out and say, I'm sending too much emails. You should look at the data and say, okay, maybe these people are not on my ICP. Maybe these people are getting inbox zero. Like I don't if, if I am consistently doing content audience.

Daniel Murray: Matching with my content. I'm not worried. I'm more worried if I send something out of the blue and then I see a high un unsubscribed.

Jay Schwedelson: So you were, you were telling me before, and this is kind of funny, uh, if you don't read Daniel's newsletter, you should, um, it's incredible. Uh, but it's very long form. He writes a long form newsletter, a lot of in depth about marketing stuff.

Jay Schwedelson: He's got, uh, like 150,000 subscribers, whatever it is. You're saying that sometimes now you're getting ubs 'cause people think that your newsletter is written by ai. First of all, do you do that?

Daniel Murray: No, I think, I think, um. I would say like, it'd be dumb for anybody not to like use AI to edit content and help you like get catch grammar mistakes.

Daniel Murray: But the initial, like first four drafts, I think you, the drafting process like, and the ideation and the, the tone and voice and structure is me. The editing sometimes is ai, so I'm not gonna lie and say that it's never has ai, but I think. I think people are jumping to conclusion that like if something, this is like the M dash issue and the period issue or like too much pacing here was like too many emojis.

Daniel Murray: I had to like reel back emojis in my newsletter just because people thought it was ai. But I've been using a emojis in my newsletter before AI was a thing. So it's like these like little things of like people thinking it's AI because you use too many emojis or you use too many. Uh, like M Dashes. I'm not an M Dash person, so thank goodness I never fell into that.

Daniel Murray: But like there's writers out there that have been using M Dashes forever, and now they're getting called for using AI when they're not using ai. So I think. I think it's an excuse and I'm also okay, like if you think, if you don't like my content unsubscribe that's like, like that, like you wanna weed out the people you're trying to get, the point of an email list is to get to the closest to your ICP as possible.

Daniel Murray: Like you want the core audience on your list and you want to keep looking at the retention of that core audience. So if you're not retaining core audience, there's something wrong with your content. But what we do with our email list is look at like. In the last 12 months, how many people are we retaining?

Daniel Murray: And you normally see after the curve, after 10 months that, um, if you're retaining the same, the audience, the retention of audience, pretty much the same. So the first like two to three months, you're always gonna see higher unsubscribes to new people because they're like, oh, let me, a lot of people go on a list, let me test out this content and don't like it.

Daniel Murray: But once you it, it goes longer. You normally see, you retain those people for a long period of time.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah. Uh, it's so important to, to be putting out value so that way you can retain these people. So, alright, so back to, um, you being, uh, a dad. Okay. So what is your vibe? Like if a rando person comes over and wants to see the baby, are you like super chill?

Jay Schwedelson: Like, oh yeah, you wanna touch its hands, you wanna touch its face. You, you, do you? Or like, when I, when my kids were younger, we were like. We were freak as age. We wouldn't let anybody near the baby. Like, where do you land on that? Wash

Daniel Murray: hands for warm water for 20 seconds if you don't have a, a Tdap shot, which babies are very raw, babies are very, they can get whooping cough very easily, and adults don't know they carrying whipping cough.

Daniel Murray: So if you don't have a Tdap job in the last five years, you can't come see my baby. Uh. Yeah, like it's it until the baby gets shots. And then, um, the next two months he, he's, it's fine, but I'm not like, you have to wash your hands. There's no kissing the baby. You can hold. I don't care if people hold the baby.

Daniel Murray: Like if you're, if you're, if you have, I don't care about that stuff. But if, just don't kiss the baby and wash your hands and it's all fine.

Jay Schwedelson: Well, everybody cancel your trip to Daniel's house because you're not gonna be able to, uh, kiss the baby, especially if you have, might have whooping cough. Look at this.

Jay Schwedelson: Dr. Daniel. We're changing the podcast name to Dr. Daniel. Well, we, we did it again, another emitting episode of the Bathroom Break. Listen, follow the marking millennials. That is the best podcast. My podcast stinks. Do this. Not that. But if you're bored, you could follow that one too. And we'll see you at the next one.

Jay Schwedelson: Daniel, come on man. I gotta get back to work. Get out of there. Alright, 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.

Daniel Murray: Back from my bathroom break. This is Daniel. Go follow the Marking 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. We'll talk about it.

Daniel Murray: Just give us a, a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out later.