Ep. 139 – 40% INCREASE in Engagement from ONE WORD! Subject Line Tips, Offer Tips, and 🫠 IT IS HOT OUT! | Jay’s Scoop

Foreign.

Welcome to do this, not that, the podcast for marketers.

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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.

Do this, not that.

Fired up today to talk about small things that are having a huge impact in the world of email marketing.

And people don't realize it, but stuff is always changing in email.

Little things have an impact and.

And they come out of the blue.

There's a saying that's always stuck in my head, which is cheesy, but whatever.

And the saying is just when I got used to yesterday, along came today.

I know that sounds really lame, but it always is in my head because that's marketing.

That's email marketing specifically.

And there are words and phrases right now that I'm going to take you through that are crushing it that six months ago really weren't even on our radar.

So let's first talk about business, then we'll get into consumer.

So in the world of business, what we name our content, okay, if we name something a white paper or we name it a guide, or we name it a report, that has a big impact.

And for I would say the last year or so, guide has been the top dog.

If you name something a guide like the Small Business Guide to Success versus the Small Business Ebook to Success, same exact content, just different title name guidelines, would output ebook by about 30%.

And that's really important for marketers because you can name things whatever you want.

And you always have to keep that in mind.

You can name things whatever you want.

So the content format right now, name that is doing so well in the last 90 days is blueprint.

Yes, blueprint.

I know, you're like one word.

Yeah, it actually does make a huge difference.

So we did this huge test because if guide is the top dog, we want to say, okay, what if we call something the same content, right, but we call it a blueprint versus a guide.

And we did this with a huge number of tests and we found that if you name the thing blueprint, instead of naming it a guide, blueprint will increase downloads by 22%.

And this is data from the last 90 days.

Now, if you name something a blueprint versus an ebook, because ebook is the most boring thing ever, nobody actually reads an ebook.

Okay?

The blueprint download rate over an ebook with the Same content is 40% higher if you name it a blueprint.

And when you do this and use blueprint, you want to put in your headline, your subject line, your content title, your landing page in general.

And I feel like I'm a broken record when I say this, but I can't take it the name of your content or the name of your sale on the consumer side, you can change it.

And it is something that you need to be a B testing.

So often markers are ab testing.

When are we sending out something?

When are we posting something on social media?

What is the copy that we're writing in the message?

What is the creative that we're doing?

What is this subject line?

What is the landing page?

But the thing that we never ab test is the name of the content piece.

Okay, the name of your content piece is not your dog.

You can rename it.

So if you're not ab testing the name of your content piece, what are you doing?

And it's the same thing on the consumer side.

You should be ab testing the name of your sale.

All right, a few other words before we get to the consumer side.

Another word that is doing incredibly well we're seeing the last 90 days is the word insider for business to business marketers.

But this one's a little different.

Instead of you just saying insider, tips to whatever, adding insider as part of your content title name, and especially in the subject line as well.

Insider, guide, insider, blueprint.

Okay, Adding insider to whatever your content piece is called and mentioning that in the subject line.

Right.

If you mention insider, whatever in the subject line, Insider, content type in the subject line, we're seeing increase open rates by over 20% than if you don't add the word insider to it.

Now you're sitting out there saying, really?

This is what I'm listening to this, this garbage.

Adding one word here, one word there.

But yeah, this is how you win in marketing.

It's about doing lots of little things.

And there's no one thing you're ever going to do that's going to be like, oh, yeah, now we crush it.

We did this.

One thing doesn't work that way.

Another word that we're looking at or a phrase rather that we're looking at, we don't have full data on yet, but we're seeing a trend really well in the last 30 days is step by step, that being the start of your subject line or the headline in your email, on your landing page, on your social posts.

Step by step, I think is an up and Comer.

How cheesy is that an up and comer?

I need to get a life.

Anyway, let's move on to the consumer side.

On the consumer side of marketing, it used to all be about.

FOMO is everything.

The fear of missing out.

The fear of missing out was really about.

You just want to make sure you bought the thing, you got access to the thing.

You just didn't want to miss out.

But the world has shifted to something else, which is something I call font funf f O N f, which is the fear of not first fun.

The fear of not first.

Because that's really what we care about now.

We want to be the first to access the thing.

We don't want just access to it.

We want to be the first.

And we're seeing it with one very magical word right now.

And that is the word just.

If you start your subject line with the word just, okay, just, it is increasing open rates by over 30%.

Things like just dropped.

All right, if you said just drop two or three years ago, I don't even know if people would even understand what that meant.

Just dropped means that the item is now available.

The new thing, the new color, the new style just dropped on our website or whatever it is starting your subject line with just is crushing it.

So it could be just dropped, it could be just launched, it could be just in meaning you just got it in stock.

So the word just is magical right now.

And then the other magical word on the consumer side is only starting your subject line, your offers, everything with the word only is increasing performance by about 20%.

Only 24 hours remain, only online only today.

So these little things really do add up and they can have a huge impact.

So before we get into, since you didn't ask, which is the ridiculous portion of this podcast, and it really is ridiculous, I want to let you know that this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold.

Now, sometimes when you get to the ad read of a podcast, you zone out.

You're like, who cares?

That's boring.

But listen, you have an email sending platform you're using right now.

You probably don't love it.

It probably doesn't have all the features that you want.

It probably is not getting the job done.

I use Marigold for my email sending.

I send out over 6 billion consumer and business to business emails every single year.

I've been using them for years.

They're a roll up of sell through and campaign monitor and my Emma and Cheetah digital.

They are awesome.

If you don't know about Marigold you should check them out@meet marigold.com and if you want me to hook you up with the most amazing person there, just DM me on LinkedIn.

Say, Jay, I need to meet somebody at Marigold because my email sending platform is meh.

All right, DM me.

I will connect you to somebody at Marigold.

I am telling you, you.

You can have a better experience with your email sending than what you're having right now.

So check them out at Meet Marigold.

I strongly recommend.

All right, let's get into.

Since you didn't ask, it's 5 billion degrees down here in South Florida.

That's where I live.

I live in South Florida.

And it is really hot.

And I've been down here for over 30 years, so I shouldn't really be, like, surprised, but it's so hot.

So me and my family went to the beach this weekend, okay.

And the sand was.

It wasn't even normal.

All right.

The sand was so hot.

And I don't know where my flip flops were, but I was trying to get from, like, this one area of the beach to the other area of the beach where my family was.

I don't know why I wasn't with them.

And so I'm like, okay, I got to get there.

So I start walking, and then I realized the sand is so hot.

It was so hot.

Like, my feet were going.

The skin on my feet were going to melt off.

So it was just getting hotter and hotter.

And I start running, and I'm like, I'm not going to make it.

And I didn't make it.

So what happened was almost like 60% of the way there.

I was like, this is it.

My feet are going to die.

Something bad is going to happen.

So I ran and I just sat down on this random dude's chair next to this random dude, and I sat down on his chair.

I have no idea who he was.

And he looks at me, he goes, what's up?

I go, my feet are very hot.

I go, I'm very sorry for invading in your space.

And I thought, he think that was funny.

And he'd be like, oh, yeah, no problem.

Do whatever.

No, he didn't think that at all.

He's.

Yeah, these chairs are not for public access.

I'm like, I know that my feet were burning off, dude.

And he just gave me a stare, get out of here.

And he was a big dude.

So I had to get back up with my burning feet, and I ran away.

And I get to the chairs, okay.

And then I get to where my family is.

I tell them all this.

They didn't care at all.

They thought I was a big doofus, and they're probably right.

And then I'm like, you know what?

I'm gonna go in the water because my feet are so hot.

Let's go in the water.

You're at the beach.

What's wrong with you?

So I go to the water, and then I get there.

I'm about to go in, and then all the people are just standing outside the water, looking at the water.

I go, what's going on?

And this lady goes, oh, we just saw a shark.

I'm like, come on, enough.

I just want to go in the water.

And then my wife comes walking down.

She goes, what's everyone doing?

And then.

And they go, we just saw a shark.

And I turn to my wife, I go, I'm going in anyway.

I don't care.

The shark's not going to eat me.

It doesn't bother me.

And because I don't care.

And I'm like, me, we're hot.

And she goes, you can't go in.

They just saw a shark.

I'm like, the shark's not eating me.

So of course I didn't go in because I have no authority over my own brain whatsoever.

And I waited five minutes, I went in later, but that was annoying to me.

And then I got home, and because of all the hotness that was going on, this is the most random.

I don't know what I'm talking about.

I was like, I need some ice cream.

This was the mode I was in.

I need ice cream.

So I went to the freezer.

I go to the freezer.

Maybe this ever happened other I'm sure this happens to everybody.

I go to the freezer, I open it up, my phone rings for a second, freezer door closes.

I was like a spam call.

So I got rid of it, and I go back, and I just missed the freezer door from opening whatever it was closed.

So I go to open it again, and it's like in that mode where the strongest human being on earth couldn't open the freezer because it did that, like that suction freezer thing when it just closes.

And I don't know why, but that frustrates me more than possibly anything on earth.

That one moment, and I use all the strength I have, and I pull on the door as if I'm like Thor trying to take the hammer out of the stone or something, and I'm trying desperately to open it.

My son walks by goes, what are you doing?

I go, I'm trying to open the freezer.

He goes, just wait 10 seconds.

You're crazy.

And I was like, what am I doing?

So speaking of what am I doing, what am I doing right now?

I have no idea.

Anyway, that's what's been going on me.

Very important stuff.

Listen, thanks for being here.

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You follow the show.

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And if you haven't registered for Guru Conference, the world's largest free virtual email marketing event, it's two days and it's free.

We only have a certain number of virtual spots.

We buy some and we run out.

Sarah Jessica park is going to be there.

I'm going to be there.

20,000 marketers can be there.

It's going to be bananas.

But you got to go to guru conference.com to register.

I promise you we will run out of spots and that would stink.

Thanks for being here.

And don't open your freezer door later.

You did it.

You made it to the end.

Nice.

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