Ep. 114- This is GOODBYE…and GOSSIP is GOOD! I Ask Us ANYTHING

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 we are here for Ask Us Anything from Do this, not that. This is our super short episode where all week long we get in work questions and we get in ridiculous questions and we try to tackle one of each.

And if you want to submit a question, it's real easy. All you got to do is go to jschwedelson.com podcast and there's a big button that says ask us anything and we'll try to tackle them.

So first, let's talk about the work question. We got a question in from Jessica from Lewiston, Maine. I have never been there. I'll tell you what I think about whenever I think of Maine.

This is so wrong. I think about lobsters. I feel like lobsters are a big deal in Maine. I think lobsters are crazy overrated. I mean, they're just like, okay, not great.

They're really expensive and I just don't care. No offense to all lobster fanatics out there, but overrated lobster roll is good because anything with mayonnaise tastes good. So whatever.

Anyway, what's your question, Jessica? Here it is. I've been getting a few this is goodbye emails from brands and companies that I stopped engaging with. Do these types of emails work?

Well, this is a really good question. And they really do work and they're really important to do.

What Jessica's really asking about is so you're on a list and you haven't bought from that company in a long time or you haven't engaged with that software product in a long time. And maybe you just signed up for a newsletter and you never opened the newsletter after you signed up.

And then after a period of months or maybe even a year or so, you get an email from that sender, that brand, and the subject line says something like this, this is goodbye. And then you open it up.

And when you open it up, it says if you don't click on this link to reactivate your account or keep your your interest activated, we're going to REM from our list. We're really sorry to see you go.

Now, these work incredibly well for two reasons, and I'm a strong advocate for doing this is goodbye emails number One, it is the absolute best way to get people to reengage with you, to wake back up, to realize that they haven't been engaging with your content at all. Whether you're a business marketer or a consumer marketer.

If you take your database of people that have not opened or clicked on one of your emails in over 12 months, I would even do six months. But I know that's aggressive for people, but you take it. Everybody has an opener clicked in over 12 months, okay.

And then you send an email to them with the subject line that says this is goodbye. That is actually the subject line you want to write. And then you write some copies. Hey listen, we'd love to have you on board.

We have all this new stuff to share, new ideas, new discounts, new whatever, whether you're a business or consumer marketer. But if you don't click this button that says keep me on the list, we're going to take you off the list. I'm sorry, goodbye.

When you do that, we see performance on those emails have open rates over 25%. Now you may say to yourself that's not that high. My newsletter gets 40% or blah blah, blah.

These are people that have not opened or clicked on one of your emails in over 12 months. To get over 20% open rate on an email to people that don't open your emails is awesome. It's crazy.

And the save rate, the percentage of people that actually will then save themselves and stay on your list is at about 9% on average. Which is awesome. Now some of you out there are saying, but I can't do that. I don't want to shrink the size of my database. This is a bad move.

I like having all these people on my list. They are a boat anchor.

The reason that these brands do this and these software companies do this is they know by having people down opening or clicking on their emails, it is depressing their ability to stay in the inbox. It's suppressing all of the performance on all the other email marketing that they're doing.

And, and it's irrelevant to them to have to keep sending to people that are not engaging with their content.

So they'd rather get back a portion of people that will engage right the save them right then than keeping them just sending them and crushing their deliverability. So I'm a big fan of this is Goodbye. The tactic that I think is the absolute best if you're going to try this is actually a two step goodbye.

So instead of the first email being an absolute where you're really kicking them off the list.

You send out one email to this, to the people who have not opened or clicked in over 12 months with a subject line that says, is this goodbye question mark? Right. And in there saying, you know, we've noticed you haven't engaged. We'd really love to stay on board. If you want to stay on board, click here.

So it's not saying we're taking you off the list.

And then two weeks later, to the population of people who did not save themselves on that first one you send them, the one that actually says this is is goodbye. And that's the absolute one where you do take them off the list. Right.

And overall, if you do the two step process, we see a save rate of about 15% overall. And when you get rid of the people out of your database, you could still leverage that data even though you're not emailing to them anymore.

The people that didn't save themselves. That database is still so valuable for retargeting and remarketing on social platforms like Meta or, or Google or on LinkedIn.

So it's not as if you can't use the data anymore, but you have to stop emailing to them because it's epic waste and it's hurting your performance. All right, before we get to the ridiculous question, I want to let you know that this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold. I love Marigold.

I send out my emails on Marigold's platforms. I've been doing that for year, for years.

This is so cool because loyalty marketing is, is so critical to getting people to stay with your brand, engage with your brand, spend more with your brand. You want to download this thing? It's free. You can go to J Schweddelson.com Marigold that's jschwedelson.com/marigold.

We get so many crazy questions. All right, got a question in from Dave from Hoboken, New Jersey. Hoboken's underrated. Northern New Jersey in general is underrated.

So props to shout out to New Jersey especially. I mean, southern New Jersey is fine, but that's a whole different thing. Northern New Jersey is awesome. Anyway. What's the question, Dave?

Dave wants to know, do you think it's bad to discuss political stuff when you're out to dinner with another couple or friends? I don't know. It's higher than a billion percent, but a zillion percent, yes. For me. I can't handle it.

You know, it's the weekend, you're trying to have a good time, and then if somebody brings up, like, political stuff or whatever, and it's like, oh, no, I can't. I don't want to. I don't really want to get into what your opinion is. I don't want to get educated by you enough.

I see it on social media, I see it on the news. I'm not into it. Here's what I'm not into talking about at dinners or whatever. Politics, please. No. That's a hard no. Your personal achievements.

I don't care. Congratulations. You won a pickleball tournament. Nobody cares. I don't care. All right.

I also don't like, really, like, inappropriate jokes where it's like all of a sudden I'm like, what? This person's a. A jerk. I mean, so. So what should people talk about? Okay, gossip. 100%. I want to know about other people that I live near.

Or like friends of friends that are doing something embarrassing that they shouldn't. I want to know all things gossip. Bring it on. I know that's a terrible thing to say, but I'm all in on gossip. Yes. For the win. TVs and movies.

I need to know anything that I should be watching. Absolutely. And then new places to eat. That's it. That's all we should ever be talking about when we go out with other people.

Gossip, tv, food, end of story. Nothing else. No personal achievements, no politics, nothing. Stop it. Stop it. Anyway, what am I talking about? I don't know what I'm talking about.

Hey, listen, appreciate you being here. Check out our longer episode the end of the week. And please register for Guru Conference, the world's largest free virtual email marketing event.

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