In this episode of the Do This, NOT That podcast, Jay busts some common email marketing myths that he believes are holding marketers back. Jay tackles misconceptions around Gmail’s promotions tab, using the word “free” in subject lines, and more. Listeners can expect to learn the truth behind these email marketing myths and walk away with tips to improve their marketing performance.
– Jay explains the myth that you want to avoid having your emails go to Gmail’s promotions tab. He shares stats showing that only 15% of Gmail users have tabs enabled and 50% of those users read their promotions tab daily. His takeaway – the promotions tab is good, not bad.
– Jay busts the biggest email myth – that using “free” in subject lines will cause you to go to the spam folder. He explains how years ago this was true due to content filtering, but now sending reputation is determined mostly by technical factors.
– Jay emphasizes paying attention to small details in email, sharing a test where title casing subject lines lifted open rates by 10%.
Lastly, Jay talks about the free virtual Email Guru Conference, coming up on November 8-9 featuring speakers like Martha Stewart!
Transcript
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. We'll also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that.
Let's do this, do this, not that. We are here. We're ready to crush it. It's gonna be awesome. Today we're gonna do some myth busting.
And this is really me talking to the universe about things that drive me bananas. But more importantly, what drives me bananas. There are certain things in the world of email that hold us back as marketers.
What I mean by that is we all rely on industry best practices and we all go to Google. We go, am I allowed to do this? Can I put this word in the subject line? Is this bad?
And then invariably, no matter what it is that you're looking up, you'll find articles that saying don't do this. This is horrible. Avoid this.
uld and shouldn't do are from:So today we're going to bust some of those myths that are holding back your marketing that I think that after you rip through these ideas, you may be able to see an increase in your overall performance. So let me talk about the first one, especially since upcoming is a holiday season and that's important for both business consumer marketers.
I want to talk about the Gmail Promotions tab. When you send out an email and a portion of email goes to people using Gmail, I get this question a lot. How do I stay out of the Promotions tab?
And why would you want to stay out of the Promotions tab? Here's the secret. The Promotions tab is a great thing. It's not a bad thing. It's part of the inbox. You're not going to the junk folder.
So here's a few facts to take into account and why you don't want to try to get out of the Promotions tab. And by the way, it's very complicated to get out of the Promotions tab. And I'm telling you it's not worth it.
You see no performance lift by staying out of the promotion step number one, only 15% of Gmail users even have tabs enabled. That's it. 15%. 50% of people that do have their tabs enabled are reading their promotions tab email daily. Now, why does that matter?
When you go into a mall, what are you doing? What are you doing? You're in shopping mode. You're like, I'm buying something. I'm in the mall, right?
When you go into your promotions tab, you're not going there by accident. Like, hey, where am I? I'm lost. Where should I go? I'll go in the promotions tab. No, you're going into the promotions tab.
The same mindset of, like, when you're going to the mall, you're in buying mode, you're in content digestion mode. Literally 50% of the users are going in there every day into shopping mode in their inbox.
So anybody tells you, oh man, our emails are going to promotions tab. That's so bad. No, it's a win, it's not a loss. So good. Thumbs up from Promotions tab.
So dispel the myth that you want to get out of the promotions tab. That's nonsense.
Now let's talk about the biggest myth in the history of email marketing for business marketers and consumer marketers, and it is the word free. Free. Free as a bird. If you go to a hundred people in the world of email marketing and say, can I put the word free in my subject line?
Will that cause me to go the junk folder, the spam folder? My estimation is that 97% of them will say, oh, that is a spam trigger word.
You will go to the junk folder because you wrote the word free in your subject line or in your body copy or some other nonsense. And I'm here to tell you that's not true. Here's the history of the universe as it relates to the word free.
And by the way, any other content that you want to write in your subject line or in your body copy, any other words or any other things, like 10 to 15 years ago, email was really getting going and there was a ton of spam, a ton of everything. And the way that email got filtered, the way the receiving email networks filtered what was good and what was not, what was bad was based on content.
They didn't have the ability to do it any other way. So as these big networks were receiving email, they would look for certain words and they would say, hmm, anybody promoting anything free?
It's probably one of Those bad guys. So if they put the word free in their subject line, they're probably a bad guy. Let's dump them into the junk folder.
Even though we know we might catch some normal marketers, we're going to dump anybody that says the word free into the junk folder.
And for many years, content filtering, the words that you put in your subject line, the words that you put in your body copy, were the reason that you were going into the junk folder and the spam folder. And you build up a bad reputation. But guess what? The world changed, right? The world changed. Technology changed.
The reason 99% of the time that you go into the junk folder or the spam folder for business and consumer marketers is due to the technical sending reputation.
It's a technical thing of what is called your IP address and the domain that you're delivering from and the overall engagement that you have with the users in your database. How often are they opening and clicking on stuff?
Because if your users are opening and clicking on stuff, it gives you a good reputation for your technical infrastructure.
So the next time you go to send, it will go into the inbox because the receiving network knows, hey, this person opens your stuff, let's deliver it back to the inbox, because they like getting your stuff.
If you go back to your inbox right now, consumer or business, and you look for the word free in your inbox, not your junk folder, not your spam folder, the word free in subject lines, you will see free being used by most of the major brands that are out there, business and consumer, and they're not going to the junk folder, they're not going to spam folder, and they're in your inbox. Why are they using the word free? Because there is no greater word in the English language that elicits response than the word free.
We do an analysis of every word every month that is driving open rates for emails. And every month for the last however many years we've been doing it, free is number one. Always. We do free tests.
A B test free included versus free not included. It lifts open rates by over 25% when it's included. Free industry report free item with purchase Free Anything consumer free anything B2B.
So I'm here to liberate you. And it's not just the word free. It is any of these spam trigger words that is a hot mess of garbage. Spam trigger words are not real.
And these lists that come out every year saying you can't use these words is ridiculous because that's not why you're going to the junk folder or whatever. And here's the other secret. You can manage your own expectations. I don't care who you are, the biggest marketers on the planet.
Some portion of your email campaign that you're sending out doesn't matter who you are. You're the greatest marketer in the world. Some portion will go to the junk folder and spam folder. It will. That's the nature of the Internet.
So when you see an email, go to the junk folder, spam folder. That doesn't mean it's the end of the world. That is the Internet, and that is the world that we live in. So I'm here to tell you, free is good.
I feel like Gordon Gekko, free is good. Free is good for you to try and stop the nonsense and. All right. Getting off that tree. Other things. I also want to paint the picture.
Some people say, well, little things in email don't matter. The littlest thing in email can make an impact. And as a marketer, I want you to look and think about everything when you're sending out an email.
I'll give you an example. We just did this study, which I thought was wild. To me, it was wild. He's talking about little things that matter.
We did analysis of title casing in the subject line. Title casing is when you capitalize the first letter of each word, like in a sentence or in the subject line.
The first letter of each word versus the way you normally write a sentence. Only title. Capitalize the the first letter in the sentence, whatever.
And when you do title casing, you're capitalizing the first letter of every word in the subject line. We actually saw almost a 10% increase in open rates on the emails that we did just by title casing the subject line.
So when you think you've done it all to squeeze out performance from any marketing channel, you haven't. There's always little things that you could be trying that can make a difference. So we dispelled a lot of myths.
Now get to the portion of this podcast called since you didn't ask. And this is where we talk about things that have nothing to do with marketing or business or whatever.
Now, I need to give a full rundown on the Golden Bachelor. That's going to be on another episode. I mean, the greatest show in the history of the world. I will get to that. But that's not. That's not today.
Because I don't know, honestly, because I'm hungry. That's. That's the truth. I'm Going to tell you why that matters, because last night in my house was salmon night.
Once a week for like the last, I don't know, 15 years, me and my wife and my kids, they're teenagers, we have salmon night. And we did this really because we wanted our kids when they were little to get used to eating fish.
We didn't want them to be, oh, they only eat chicken fingers or whatever. So we. We broke them. We broke them early in their lives. Now they like salmon, whatever. And so last night was salmon night. And here's the problem.
I don't know why I'm telling you this. Because I'm hungry. That's why. So last time was salmon night. And this is what happens to me every salmon night. So it's always good.
Me and wife cook it together, whatever. She does more cooking than I do, but I try to help because I'm an idiot. I don't know what I'm doing. And we eat it. Oh, good. It was good. It was great.
Tastes great, great, great. And then, like two hours later, I'm starving. I'm starving. It defeats the entire purpose of salmon night.
Salmon night supposed to be healthy, but it defeats the purpose because two hours later, it's as if I didn't eat anything. And I go back to the refrigerator and I then wind like I'm at a buffet and it may be the last meal of my life.
And I eat everything in the refrigerator because of salmon night. And salmon night has the opposite effect of on me because I wind up eating 7 billion things. This is what happens on salmon night.
Why am I sharing that? I don't know. I don't know anything. Oh, my last thing I'll share. We have our big virtual free email conference coming up. Guru conference.
It is two days, November 8th and 9th. Listen, we only buy a certain number of virtual seats. We bought 14,000 virtual seats. We're already over 13,200 registrations. I want you to be there.
It's two days. Martha Stewart is speaking. Come on. What else do you need to know? I'll be there. 30 sessions, two days virtual free.
Guru conference.com you are all my people for listening this. I want you there. It's going to be wild. Guruconference.com thank you for listening to this podcast and enjoy salmon. You did it. You made it to the end.
Nice. But the party's not over.
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