Ep. 159 – Shhh…Poor Grammar WORKS! 😐 Vegetables at HOMEGOODS? | Jay’s Scoop

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 do this, not that.

Let me ask you a question. Are you bad at spelling like me? Do you have horrible grammar like I do? Well, this is your time to shine as a marketer.

Because living in this world of AI, the this last year, we've all gotten so accustomed to going on AI say make this content for me, write this for me. That all the content that's getting pumped out there is so generic, okay?

And then if you add on top of the generic world that we're now living in, the other world that we're living in is this world that we all text each other. We're texting each other with these abbreviations, with half words, with grammar that makes no sense.

And that's how we are communicating in our human ways, right? So what does this all mean? What does this have to do with marketing?

Well, we are now in a world where when you use unconventional grammar, when you use bad grammar, when you misspell things, when sentence structure is a mess, it does better than when you do things the right way.

And we're seeing in all different aspects of marketing, and I want to take you through some quick tips right now that if you start to test in your email marketing, your social media marketing, you will actually see a lift in performance. So let's first start out with, let's say that subject line onomatopoeia, right?

That was a topic that we learned about in high school that I never paid attention to, but it actually is doing really, really well in the world of email marketing specifically. And onomatopoeia are words that imitate sounds, right, that they represent.

So subject lines that start with these see an increased open rates for both business and consumer, but over 20%. So what do I mean by that? If you start your subject line with psst, you know that psst. Or shhhh or grr, like you're upset.

We actually see that email open rate left. So an example on the business side might be like, grr. Need better results. Don't miss this live event. On the consumer side, grr. Miss that last deal.

And the reason I'm saying that this stands out, that it's poor grammar. You're never going to get that from AI saying, write me a great subject line. And it's going to say, grr, miss that last deal.

It's not going to do that. So it feels more human tone as opposed to what AI spits out, which is all this garbage stuff. And it's also the way that we communicate.

So we don't just see it in onomatopoeia. We see it a lot also with slang acronyms. So slang acronyms, like we all know things like lol, right? Laugh out loud or tmi, Too much information.

We all know those, but bringing those into our marketing, the slang acronyms is doing really, really well. So first, let's Talk about the B2B side. Subject lines, for example, that start with a slang acronym are seeing open rate increases by over 15%.

And then if you use these slang acronyms in your lead on your social media copy, which is we're seeing engagement rise by over 20%. What do I mean by that? So let's say your subject line start out with icymi, right? In case you missed it. And you capitalize the letters ICYMI.

Starting your subject line, you're gonna get that 15% increase. Lift. How about SMH? Shake my head. Now how would you use that, right? You could say smh colon. Why is this still an issue? Question mark?

And yeah, it works on the B2B side really well. It works even better on the consumer side.

So if you start your subject line with one of these slang acronyms, we're seeing open rates increase by over 25%. So you capitalize the three letters, something like, let's say, for example, BRB. Be right back.

So if your subject line is BRB, buying the latest drop, dot, dot, dot, you're basically saying, hey, I'm going to go buy that drop right now. The new thing, or bff. This is just for you. Why does this work? Because this is how we communicate. This is what, how we text each other.

This makes you feel more like a human being. And so now acting like a human is allowing you to stand out. And it's the best part is you're already a human. You're doing it. Hello, you're a human.

Congratulations. Now you just got to act like one, right? And you could use other ones. For example, like if K, Y, K, if you know, you know, or yolo. These all work now.

They sound gimmicky, whatever. But yeah, this is how you stand out by not feeling like a generic boring whatever.

And bad grammar does so well, in the headline of your emails or on your landing pages, things like best period sale period ever, period, or best period event period ever, period. You all know that that makes it seem like it's oh wow, this is it. This is the big one, right? Using bad grammar wins.

Starting your subject line, for example, another great one with a broken sentence can increase your open rates by over 20%. What do I mean by that? If you start your.

If your subject line is and the winner is dot, dot, dot, or and first 30 days free or but only 20 spots left. That's not a real sentence, but comma, 20 spots left.

But if you're promoting in a we webinar or an event that gets the person going, or if you're promoting a free trial and comma, first 30 days free. This is what gets people excited. They don't sit there and be like, oh wow, I love a slang acronym. I'm opening this up. No, it stands out a little bit.

And as they're going through that social scroll in their inbox or they're on social media and they see that big headline image and it says brb, got to check out the latest drop. Like, what is it? It makes you feel like you are communicating with that person and not just this AI bot that's generating all of this copy.

That's garbage.

So layering in bad grammar, unconventional grammar, onomatopoeia, broken sentences, half sentences into your landing page, into your headline, into your subject line, into your social media posts. This is what's working now. All right, before we get into.

Since you didn't ask which is the ridiculous portion of this podcast, I want to let everybody know that this podcast is presented by Marigold. What's a Marigold? Marigold is my email sending platform. It is amazing.

It is great for small, medium and large companies, business marketers, consumer marketers. It is a roll up of sale through my Emma Cheetah digital campaign monitor. If you are thinking about a new esp, you got to think about Marigold.

And they have a new piece of content that they just released. The Complete GU Guide to Zero Party Data. You need to download this thing. You can get it@jelson.com Marigold and why is this important?

We are all trying to collect information from all the people coming to our site, filling out our forms. How do we leverage that? How do we turn that into actionable campaigns? This guide, the complete guide to zero party data is brand new. It is fantastic.

Jschweddelson.com Marigold it's free. Go check it out. All right, let's get into. Since you didn't ask. Oh, so many random things in my brain, right?

So the first one is, I cannot handle people wanting to talk about politics. Like, when I go out to dinner or whatever. People like, hey, what do you think about blah, blah, blah? And I'm like, I don't want to talk about that.

And you know what? The person doesn't actually want to know what I think. They just want to tell me what they think.

And the only thing I care less about than what I think about the topic is what the other person thinks about the topic, because it couldn't be more boring to me. So I came up with a move. I came up with a new move that is working so well to get out of this conversation.

So somebody says to me at dinner the other night, they go, hey, what do you think about blah, blah, blah? I'm like, I really don't want to have a discussion about blah about political whatever. And they go, well, do you want to know what I think?

And here's what I say. Now. I immediately say this. I go, listen, just a heads up. Happy to hear what you think about it.

But whatever you tell me, I might share on my podcast, and I always reference the actual person who told me that on my podcast. This is gold. Not that I would ever do that. But then they immediately like, oh, no, no, no, I don't want that out there. Great. Next topic. Don't care.

So the other thing that's going on, this is such a random transition, is that my wife and I went to HomeGoods this weekend because we were trying to get a new pillow, these new pillows for this bed in this room that we have. And so we were looking for new pillows. And I. I gotta tell you, I've been to Home Goods in a little bit, and that store is wild.

They sell a lot of random stuff at HomeGoods. So first of all, the whole pillow thing is impossible. It's like, you hold up a pillow, what do you think? I like it. I don't like it. I mean, forget it.

It's the weirdest thing of all time. But what is going on at Home Goods with them selling all sorts of different food?

Okay, it's one thing they want to sell, like, some sort of candy or whatever, but they were selling fermented vegetables, and it looked like those vegetables had been there for a minute. Okay. Like, I'm just putting it out there.

I'm sorry if somebody from Home Goods listening, and maybe I'm often saying, this, but I don't think we should be buying vegetables at Home Goods. It feels like they've been there for a while. And buy the candy. You want to buy some honey? Okay, fine. But the vegetables, I don't know. Very weird.

Stick with pillows. Not that we were able to land on one because we couldn't agree on that.

Along the same lines, by the way, I was in the mall the other day, I'm all over the place and we have a white barn like candle store in our mall. And I don't understand it.

Nothing smells worse to me than walking by the store because it is such a weird combination of smells coming out of that store. I can't handle it. It's like, hi, would you like to buy a candle that smells like lavender? And whatever else that weird smell combo is?

Is like lavender and weird smell together. Do you want a candle like this? I'm like, no, I really don't. It smells like garbage.

So don't get me a candle that smells like lavender and weirdness because I don't know what to do. They'll probably throw it out. Don't get me fermented vegetables from Home Goods because that scares me. And yeah, use bad grammar.

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