Ep. 152 – What’s Up THIS WEEK ==> Performance DOWN! Not a Normal Week – Prime Day…Political Impact…Trending WORDS! Beverly Hills Cop and Real Housewives?

Foreign.

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 what's up this week from do this not that.

This is our super short episode where we break down what's going on this week in business and life and marketing and then we still have our Ask Us Anything later in the week and then our big tips episode at the end of the week. So obviously this has been a week unlike any other the last few days and the last thing this show will ever be will be political.

But the assassination attempt on former President Trump was beyond horrible. And regardless of whatever party you support, I hope that everybody is happy that the former President is doing well.

And my heart breaks for the family of Corey Compentore who lost his life. It's just beyond words. But this show is not about politics at all.

But as it relates to politics, if we don't think about the impact of what is going on on the planet within our marketing, we're really not doing our jobs. And you just can't have your head in the sand and be like, I'll ignore it. Everything will be fine because this has an impact.

So we did what we're calling an instant impact analysis following the assassination attempt that took place on Saturday. And here's the data that we got out of it.

So we looked at 40 business newsletters where we had ongoing tracking available that get delivered on Sundays. So these are newsletters that always get delivered on Sundays.

And we looked at the tracking historically for the first 12 hours of those newsletters when they normally go out. And then we looked at the 12 hour tracking for these 40 different newsletters this past Sunday because the assassination attempt was on Saturday.

To get an idea of what was the immediate impact on the readership of these newsletters. Now this is not surprising.

The email open rates for those first 12 hours as compared to regular sends right sends that occur when there was no national event taking place. The email open rates for these newsletters was down 30%.

And I feel that because you really were trying to consume all the news information that was out there to stay up to date on whatever it is that was developing as it developed. Now of course that will simmer down a little bit as we get A little further away from that event.

But this week is a very strange, strange week for a couple reasons. Normally it's a week where we get a bump because it's Amazon Prime Day week, which is, you know, the 16th and the 17th.

And normally Amazon Prime Day lifts email open rates and a lot of other marketing channel open performance.

But email open rates specifically usually lifts all email open rates by about 10% because we're all in our inboxes, whether it's business or consumer looking for these additional deals because so many companies market around Prime Day.

But the opposite of that is that it's the Republican National Convention this week, which again, doesn't matter what party you're in or what you're interested in, that's going to have a impact because it's going to suck the, you know, the oxygen out of all of our attention. And that's going to be going on all the way until Thursday.

And so it's not really about, okay, what can I do to get my performance to do really well this week? I don't think that that's a, a realistic plan that you're going to crush it this week.

But what you want to do is manage expectations and really manage expectations internally back. Listen, our performance is not going to be what it is that we expected this week. It's going to be down a little bit.

And that's okay because it's important for everyone to be aware of your surroundings and what's going on in the marketing landscape. So what else is going on besides for all the current events that are impacting marketing?

Something interesting that came out is that Twitter is beta testing right now. Not Twitter, X. I can't call Twitter anymore. I sound ridiculous. So X is beta testing, basically downvoting.

There are now images showing up where they're putting out. It's not fully out there at all. But this idea of having a broken heart icon as opposed to just a heart icon.

The heart icon on X is used to like, but now they're testing out a broken heart icon which is effectively a dislike button. And from what we can see so far, it's not going to be on the original post. You're not gonna be able to dislike a post.

What it's gonna be used for is to be able to dislike replies on a post. So in theory it will help X rank the most relevant post replies in order.

And what they're gonna do is the ones that get the most likes and the least broken heart icons, right, the ones that get the most hearts are gonna be pushed up to the top of all the replies and then the garbage ones are gonna be pushed down. The ones that get the most dislikes are gonna be pushed down.

And what they're trying to do is for people that spam and just flood these replies with garbage, they're trying to. They want people to downvote them. Right. That way only the most relevant replies will float to the top.

So it'll be interesting to see because, you know, people, when they're given the option to hate something, they're pretty cruel. So we'll see how that goes. I thought that was pretty interesting.

Another really interesting thing that's going on right now in the last two weeks, subject line.com just came out with some research. What do you think are the two most impactful words right now in email marketing? Well, on the consumer side, it's not words, it's really phrases.

It's back to school. And on the business side, it's Q4.

So in the last two weeks, if you put back to school in your email subject line, the consumer side, it's lifting email open rates by about 28%. And if you put Q4, quarter four. If you put Q4 in your subject line, the business to business side is lifting open rates by about 22%.

So we're all looking ahead. That's basically what that means. We're always looking ahead. So test these things out. This is what's trending right now.

And in useless news, what am I up to? So I did watch the Beverly Hills Cop, whatever it is, sequel, reboot, whatever called Axel Fox. It was.

There was a lot of people that said it was terrible. I thought it was really good. I thought Eddie Murphy, as usual, was fantastic. It had over 41 million people that watched in the first week.

I give it two thumbs up. You should watch this. There's no reason not to watch this. The other thing I'm watching is that the Real Housewives of the OC is back. Watching that.

Not my favorite Real Housewives at all. Not even. It's not even close. But any Real Housewives that comes on, I will be watching. So that is back. Although I can't.

Tamara is the most annoying person on the planet.

And then lastly, and probably the most important thing that I've really talked about in their useless news part is that the Bachelorette is back, okay? And the first week was phenomenal and the ratings were up. So anybody out there who's a hater that's like, hey, the Bachelorette stinks.

Nobody watches it. Yeah, you know what, the ratings have gone up. I'm very pumped about this because it means going to keep on going.

So that's really the important stuff that I want to share about pop culture this week. Anyway, please make sure to check out our Ask Us Anything later in the week and then our long tips episode at the end of the week.

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