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Ep. 195- NEW! 5 SUBJECT LINE TESTS you have NEVER TRIED!🥣SOUR PATCH KID CEREAL? Selling Sunset-GOOD or BAD?? – Jay’s SCOOP

Michael GuinooSeptember 27, 2024June 25th, 20251 min read

In this episode of “Do This, Not That,” host Jay Schwedelson shares five effective subject line tests for email marketing that are currently working well for both business and consumer marketers. He also busts some myths about email subject lines and provides actionable tips for marketers to improve their open rates.

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Best Moments:

(00:40) Introduction to five subject line tests for email marketing

(01:25) The impact of subject line character count on open rates

(03:25) Comparison subject lines and their effectiveness

(04:50) Capitalizing words in subject lines for increased open rates

(05:38) Using “Just for” in subject lines to boost engagement

(06:35) The effectiveness of using “2025” in subject lines after October 1st

(08:50) “Since You Didn’t Ask” segment: Observations on cereal varieties and TV show “Selling Sunset”

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MASSIVE thank you to our Sponsor, Marigold!!

Marigold is a relationship marketing platform designed to help you acquire new customers and turn them into superfans with their best-in-class loyalty solutions. Don’t take my word for it though, American Airlines, Honeybaked Ham, Title Boxing, and Notre Dame University are also customers!

Regardless of your size, check out Marigold today to get the solution you need to grow your business!

Check out this free content from marigold that Jay has loved digesting, 5 Steps For Selecting The Right Email Marketing Platform.

Transcript
Jay Schwedelson:

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 back for do this, not that, presented by Marigold. And today we're going to have some fun.

I'm going to share with you five subject line tests that you can do that are working really well for business and consumer marketers right now. And the thing about email that people always get confused by, like, oh, it's been around forever. Nothing changes, nothing's different.

You could do the same tactics from five years ago. It's going to work. And that's just not true. Human behavior is always changing and we change our reaction to things all the time.

And I also want to bust some myths along the way about what you can and cannot do in your email subject lines. And these tests apply to to business and consumer marketers. All right, so let's get into them.

The first one has to do with how many characters are in your subject line. One of the questions that I get asked the most about is, should my subject line be, you know, less than 50 characters or this or that or whatever?

And that's not it. What you want to do is make sure that visually, when somebody looks at your subject line, it stands out.

And there's some interesting data that you may not be aware of and what you should be testing.

First off, were you aware that only 9% of subject lines have less than 20 characters used, meaning 9% of subject lines are written in a way that's really, really short, less than 20 characters.

Now, subject lines, email subject lines that are written using less than 20 characters see an increased open rate by over 15% for business and consumer marketers because it stands out because it's so short. Now, here's the one that's going to blow your mind that you're not going to believe.

Okay, 6% of subject lines are written with more than 65 characters. Now, this goes against everything you've ever heard about email subject lines that should be short and less than 50 characters.

But the reason that super long subject lines work right, subject lines with more than 65 characters have an increased open rate by over 19% for business and consumer marketers. And the reason that works is that visually, when you go into your inbox you should look at this, okay?

You're going to see the subject lines that are crazy long and that fill up the entire subject line. They stand out. Now you may say that is ridiculous. It's going to get cut off. People aren't going to be able to read the whole thing. And that is true.

But it's going to stand out and people are going to take that extra millisecond, they're going to look at it. And everything that we're sharing today are things that you should be trying.

You don't want to do all these tactics all the time, but if you've never tested crazy stuff like this, this is how you get ahead, this is how you win. Another one that's working really, really well in the last 90 days is what we call comparison subject lines.

And this is lifting email open rates over 25%. And this is pretty wild. And again, this is for business and consumer marketers. Comparison subject lines are all about saying how.

Basically how do you stack up? That would be your subject line, question mark. How do you stack up? Question mark? How do you measure up? What's your standing? How do you rank?

Right when you get an email that says how do you rank? Question mark? Oh, I need to check. Are they talking about how do I rank in my fitness? Are they talking about how do I rank in my business?

Are they talking about how do I rank in terms of the CRM system I'm using? But you can go even deeper. Where do you stand? Question mark, right? How do you fare compared to others? How do you compare?

Literally these are the entire subject lines and that's all that you are writing. And this idea of comparison, you're comparing yourself or your business or your product or your service to other things.

And it's a very open ended question. You're not being specific. So how do you stack up? How do you compare? What's your standing? This is lifting open rates significantly.

Another super random one. I know I'm all over the place, but hopefully, you know, gets you going, get the juices flowing and get you thinking about testing new ideas.

One of the most super random trends that we're seeing is capitalizing a word in the subject line. I'm not talking about capitalizing the first letter, I'm talking about capitalizing the entire word. Maybe it's the word new.

Okay, maybe it's the word event, maybe it's the word sale. But most people capitalize the first word of their subject line and that does do really well.

But the new test that we're seeing is capitalizing a word somewhere else in the subject line, in the middle of your subject line or at the end of your subject line.

So when you capitalize a word, all the letters in a word, and it's not the first word in your subject line, we're seeing that increase open rates up to 18%. Again, super easy. All of these things cost you no money. Take you three seconds and look, are they all going to work for you? Absolutely not.

But some of them will. One of the easiest subject line tests is just four. If you don't have just four as one of your ongoing things that you do in your subject line.

Regardless of I don't care if you're in the most conservative, boring B2B sector or if you're a direct to consumer marketer. When you do things like just for you, that's the simplest one just for you, that's your entire subject line. Crushes it as a subject line.

But then you get into things like just for VIP customers, just for job function, right? Just for HR pros, just for interest, right? Just for golfers.

In that case, just for subscribers, when you use just four in your subject line, it lifts your open rates on average by about 20%. Because why the second that somebody sees that, they're like, oh, wait a minute, this is not for everybody.

This is just for me, whether it's business or consumer.

sk, the last one is all about:is year, right? When you have:

Right?

So it would say, you know,:out what we're going to do in:

Since you didn't ask, which is total chaos, I wanted to let you know that this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold. Marigold is the greatest email sending platform on earth. I use it for all my emails, business and consumer.

But they have a new piece of content that I am telling you is possibly the best piece of content I've promoted on this podcast in over a year. It is Marigold's 200 brands that they are tracking. Their personalization, their loyalty, marketing, their trust, all this stuff.

They're taking 200 brands and they've created the relationship Marketing Trends Report and they break down each brand and they name the brands, okay? And you can see what they are ranking each brands and all these different marketing categories. It is wild.

If you want to download this brand ranking report, all you gotta do do is go to jschwettleson.com Marigold it's totally free. It's brand new. It just came out. That's@jschwettleson.com Marigold I'm telling you, this is wild stuff. All right, let's get into. Since you didn't ask.

Oh, man, I'm all over the place. I don't have a specific thing, but I just want to share with you what's on my mind because I'm just.

I don't know, I lose my mind whatever I do, wherever I go. So I was in the supermarket last night with my wife. We were going there to pick up some random stuff, and I'm like, I'll see you later.

I'm going down the cereal aisle. I had not been down the cereal island forever. I don't know why. I just don't buy a lot of cereal. I don't know what's happened to cereal, okay?

But cereal has gone. I mean, something's happened. I mean, yeah, they have all the Chex Mix and they got the Cinnamon Toast Crunch, but then they have weird cereal.

They have Oreo cereal. This is, I mean, this is not something you should be eating for breakfast. Oreo cereal. Then they had Sour Patch Kids cereal. That sounds disgusting.

Who's eating sour? Like, hey, it's 7 in the morning. Let's get ready for the day. Let's have Sour Patch Kids cereal. Are you kidding me? And they had Jolly Rancher cereal.

First of all, Jolly Ranchers were. Are disgusting on their own. But then you turn a Jolly Rancher into a cereal, you're like, what are we actually doing? This is like garbage.

Like, like literally garbage. So that was my vibe at the supermarket. Speaking of garbage, I've gotten into watching Selling Sunset. Now, everybody here knows I watch really bad tv.

Selling Sunset might be the worst TV that I watch, but it's really good. And if you don't watch it, I don't know if these people almost, they're almost like, AI.

I can't believe these people actually exist and they, they sell these homes. Everybody's house out there is like $20 million. What is going on? And everybody's dressed up fancier than I've ever been dressed up in my life.

And some of these people are very, very weird. I'm on Team Bri. If anybody watches that show, I doubt you do, but Selling Sunset, I give it two thumbs up. So this is what's going on with me.

All very important information. And we are just days away from guru conference. I am so excited. It's free, it's virtual. I will be there. Sarah Jessica Parker's gonna be there.

We are gonna have an 80s costume contest, a karaoke contest. We are going to have all sorts of people there. We only have a certain number of virtual seats left.

You gotta register guruconference.com and if this podcast wasn't the worst thing in the history of the universe, you could do me a solid and leave it a review because you are awesome. Connect with me on LinkedIn. I don't know what we talked about today. Go test subject lines. Peace out. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice.

But the party's not over. Subscribe to make sure you get the latest episode each week for more actionable tips and a little chaos from today's top marketers.

And hook us up with a five star review. If this wasn't the worst podcast of all time.

Lastly, if you want access to the best virtual marketing events that are also 100% free, visit google guruevents.com so you can hear from the world's top marketers like Daymond, John, Martha Stewart, and me. GuruEvents.com check it out.

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Transcript
Jay Schwedelson:

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 back for do this, not that, presented by Marigold. And today we're going to have some fun.

I'm going to share with you five subject line tests that you can do that are working really well for business and consumer marketers right now. And the thing about email that people always get confused by, like, oh, it's been around forever. Nothing changes, nothing's different.

You could do the same tactics from five years ago. It's going to work. And that's just not true. Human behavior is always changing and we change our reaction to things all the time.

And I also want to bust some myths along the way about what you can and cannot do in your email subject lines. And these tests apply to to business and consumer marketers. All right, so let's get into them.

The first one has to do with how many characters are in your subject line. One of the questions that I get asked the most about is, should my subject line be, you know, less than 50 characters or this or that or whatever?

And that's not it. What you want to do is make sure that visually, when somebody looks at your subject line, it stands out.

And there's some interesting data that you may not be aware of and what you should be testing.

First off, were you aware that only 9% of subject lines have less than 20 characters used, meaning 9% of subject lines are written in a way that's really, really short, less than 20 characters.

Now, subject lines, email subject lines that are written using less than 20 characters see an increased open rate by over 15% for business and consumer marketers because it stands out because it's so short. Now, here's the one that's going to blow your mind that you're not going to believe.

Okay, 6% of subject lines are written with more than 65 characters. Now, this goes against everything you've ever heard about email subject lines that should be short and less than 50 characters.

But the reason that super long subject lines work right, subject lines with more than 65 characters have an increased open rate by over 19% for business and consumer marketers. And the reason that works is that visually, when you go into your inbox you should look at this, okay?

You're going to see the subject lines that are crazy long and that fill up the entire subject line. They stand out. Now you may say that is ridiculous. It's going to get cut off. People aren't going to be able to read the whole thing. And that is true.

But it's going to stand out and people are going to take that extra millisecond, they're going to look at it. And everything that we're sharing today are things that you should be trying.

You don't want to do all these tactics all the time, but if you've never tested crazy stuff like this, this is how you get ahead, this is how you win. Another one that's working really, really well in the last 90 days is what we call comparison subject lines.

And this is lifting email open rates over 25%. And this is pretty wild. And again, this is for business and consumer marketers. Comparison subject lines are all about saying how.

Basically how do you stack up? That would be your subject line, question mark. How do you stack up? Question mark? How do you measure up? What's your standing? How do you rank?

Right when you get an email that says how do you rank? Question mark? Oh, I need to check. Are they talking about how do I rank in my fitness? Are they talking about how do I rank in my business?

Are they talking about how do I rank in terms of the CRM system I'm using? But you can go even deeper. Where do you stand? Question mark, right? How do you fare compared to others? How do you compare?

Literally these are the entire subject lines and that's all that you are writing. And this idea of comparison, you're comparing yourself or your business or your product or your service to other things.

And it's a very open ended question. You're not being specific. So how do you stack up? How do you compare? What's your standing? This is lifting open rates significantly.

Another super random one. I know I'm all over the place, but hopefully, you know, gets you going, get the juices flowing and get you thinking about testing new ideas.

One of the most super random trends that we're seeing is capitalizing a word in the subject line. I'm not talking about capitalizing the first letter, I'm talking about capitalizing the entire word. Maybe it's the word new.

Okay, maybe it's the word event, maybe it's the word sale. But most people capitalize the first word of their subject line and that does do really well.

But the new test that we're seeing is capitalizing a word somewhere else in the subject line, in the middle of your subject line or at the end of your subject line.

So when you capitalize a word, all the letters in a word, and it's not the first word in your subject line, we're seeing that increase open rates up to 18%. Again, super easy. All of these things cost you no money. Take you three seconds and look, are they all going to work for you? Absolutely not.

But some of them will. One of the easiest subject line tests is just four. If you don't have just four as one of your ongoing things that you do in your subject line.

Regardless of I don't care if you're in the most conservative, boring B2B sector or if you're a direct to consumer marketer. When you do things like just for you, that's the simplest one just for you, that's your entire subject line. Crushes it as a subject line.

But then you get into things like just for VIP customers, just for job function, right? Just for HR pros, just for interest, right? Just for golfers.

In that case, just for subscribers, when you use just four in your subject line, it lifts your open rates on average by about 20%. Because why the second that somebody sees that, they're like, oh, wait a minute, this is not for everybody.

This is just for me, whether it's business or consumer.

sk, the last one is all about:is year, right? When you have:

Right?

So it would say, you know,:out what we're going to do in:

Since you didn't ask, which is total chaos, I wanted to let you know that this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold. Marigold is the greatest email sending platform on earth. I use it for all my emails, business and consumer.

But they have a new piece of content that I am telling you is possibly the best piece of content I've promoted on this podcast in over a year. It is Marigold's 200 brands that they are tracking. Their personalization, their loyalty, marketing, their trust, all this stuff.

They're taking 200 brands and they've created the relationship Marketing Trends Report and they break down each brand and they name the brands, okay? And you can see what they are ranking each brands and all these different marketing categories. It is wild.

If you want to download this brand ranking report, all you gotta do do is go to jschwettleson.com Marigold it's totally free. It's brand new. It just came out. That's@jschwettleson.com Marigold I'm telling you, this is wild stuff. All right, let's get into. Since you didn't ask.

Oh, man, I'm all over the place. I don't have a specific thing, but I just want to share with you what's on my mind because I'm just.

I don't know, I lose my mind whatever I do, wherever I go. So I was in the supermarket last night with my wife. We were going there to pick up some random stuff, and I'm like, I'll see you later.

I'm going down the cereal aisle. I had not been down the cereal island forever. I don't know why. I just don't buy a lot of cereal. I don't know what's happened to cereal, okay?

But cereal has gone. I mean, something's happened. I mean, yeah, they have all the Chex Mix and they got the Cinnamon Toast Crunch, but then they have weird cereal.

They have Oreo cereal. This is, I mean, this is not something you should be eating for breakfast. Oreo cereal. Then they had Sour Patch Kids cereal. That sounds disgusting.

Who's eating sour? Like, hey, it's 7 in the morning. Let's get ready for the day. Let's have Sour Patch Kids cereal. Are you kidding me? And they had Jolly Rancher cereal.

First of all, Jolly Ranchers were. Are disgusting on their own. But then you turn a Jolly Rancher into a cereal, you're like, what are we actually doing? This is like garbage.

Like, like literally garbage. So that was my vibe at the supermarket. Speaking of garbage, I've gotten into watching Selling Sunset. Now, everybody here knows I watch really bad tv.

Selling Sunset might be the worst TV that I watch, but it's really good. And if you don't watch it, I don't know if these people almost, they're almost like, AI.

I can't believe these people actually exist and they, they sell these homes. Everybody's house out there is like $20 million. What is going on? And everybody's dressed up fancier than I've ever been dressed up in my life.

And some of these people are very, very weird. I'm on Team Bri. If anybody watches that show, I doubt you do, but Selling Sunset, I give it two thumbs up. So this is what's going on with me.

All very important information. And we are just days away from guru conference. I am so excited. It's free, it's virtual. I will be there. Sarah Jessica Parker's gonna be there.

We are gonna have an 80s costume contest, a karaoke contest. We are going to have all sorts of people there. We only have a certain number of virtual seats left.

You gotta register guruconference.com and if this podcast wasn't the worst thing in the history of the universe, you could do me a solid and leave it a review because you are awesome. Connect with me on LinkedIn. I don't know what we talked about today. Go test subject lines. Peace out. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice.

But the party's not over. Subscribe to make sure you get the latest episode each week for more actionable tips and a little chaos from today's top marketers.

And hook us up with a five star review. If this wasn't the worst podcast of all time.

Lastly, if you want access to the best virtual marketing events that are also 100% free, visit google guruevents.com so you can hear from the world's top marketers like Daymond, John, Martha Stewart, and me. GuruEvents.com check it out.