In this week’s “Ask Us Anything” episode, Jay tackles a work question about improving email engagement and a fun question about the strangest job he’s had. Listeners will learn tips for making their email campaigns less like wallpaper to stand out and drive more clicks. Jay also shares a humorous story from his high school job.
Main Discussion Points:
– Why high open rates but low click through rates happen in email campaigns
– Study showing inserting a letter format email between template emails lifts engagement
– Doing a format departure from your template for 1 out of every 3 emails
– Jay’s high school job putting sensors on clothing at The Limited to try and meet girls
And 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!
Get this podcast EXCLUSIVE offer today!
https://jayschwedelson.com/marigold/
Transcript
Foreign. We are back for Ask us Anything.
This is the super short episode each week where we get questions in all week and we get ridiculous questions, we get work questions in, we try to tackle one of each. One work question, one ridiculous question. We keep the episode short and it's kind of fun. So this week, let's first talk about our work question.
We got a work question from Sonia from Las Vegas. I've been in Vegas many times. I get nervous when I go to Las Vegas because I'm not a. I don't gamble a lot. I'm not a very good gambler.
And then when whoever I'm with will be like, hey, let's go play blackjack. I don't like it because I get nervous because I don't know what I'm doing. And. And then I'm like, I don't want to say hit.
And then I screw up for the guy next to me or the girl next to me. So I get nervous, like playing some of these games because I don't want to screw it up and do the wrong thing. You didn't ask.
That has nothing to do with this episode. Who cares? Anyway, Vegas. Love Vegas, though. Great food. All right, here's the work question. Sonia from Las Vegas wants to know.
Our email open rate is really good, but our click through rate is terrible. Any advice? So that's interesting and this is something I think we all struggle with.
Like, why are so many people opening up our email and nobody's clicking on it? What can we do? You know, we just did a study which I think is super interesting that maybe you can benefit from. Here's the issue.
Your emails are wallpaper. A lot of marketers, consumer and business marketers. What do we do? We basically have a format of our emails and we send out that same format.
We mix it up a little bit with maybe some different images, some different things, but basically we have a format. We have these templates and that's what we do.
Now they may look nice, they may look professional, they may check all the boxes of stuff you should be doing, but they're wallpaper because after you send out a bunch of times, the recipient's like, who cares? I've seen this, done that.
So we did this whole review where if you were sending out three emails in a row, doesn't matter what you're promoting, doesn't matter really. The cadence. And you're using your standard template.
Three emails in a row with your standard template promoting whatever it is, your sale or, or your webinar, whatever, verse Inserting in those three times instead of sending the same three emails, basically the same format.
If you insert a letter format email, so now you're sending one from your regular template, then you send a letter format, then you send your letter your regular template again. By inserting a letter format email, does that change the engagement from the person that you're marketing to?
And what we found was really cool when you inserted, when we inserted that letter format email, click through rates rose not just for the letter format email that we sent out. It rose for all three emails ongoing. Right? It rose by over 25%, the click through rate. Why?
Because when the person starts to see that's the not going to be the exact same format every single time you send it, they get more interested in whatever it is that you are sending each time. So it doesn't. When I say letter format, that's an email that looks like it's a personalized letter coming from a person, whatever it may be.
But really the moral of the story is if you want to get more engagement from all of your emails, you want to do at least one email like out of three. Every time you send out three emails, one email out of three, a radical departure in format. And it looks completely different.
Like, whoa, I've never seen anything like this from this brand before. You do that like every third email and it will actually lift your engagement on all your emails.
Because now when the person that opens it, because you had high open rates, they're opening like, whoa, maybe something's going to be different this time. And it's all in the subconscious. Not saying they're like, this is the coolest email I've ever seen.
So mixing it up with your formats is a great way to lift the performance on all your email. All right, so before we get to the ridiculous question, I wanted to share with you that this pod, this is actually really cool.
I think it's really cool. This podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold. Now, Marigold is an amazing email sending platform.
I use this platform and it has a bunch of different sending brands in it. Sheeted digital, sail through campaign monitor.
All these different platforms are part of Marigold, this big email organization and their stuff is awesome. Now just for the listeners of this podcast, do this, not that they've given us an offer that I could share with you. It is 50% off.
One of their absolute best platforms, this platform called Emma Emma Emma is amazing email sending platform. And for only the listeners of this show, you can get it for 50% off. And it's A limited time thing. It's going to be over in a few weeks.
You want to take advantage of this, you go to jeddelson.com marigold that's my full name. J A Y shwetleson.com marigold and that is the only place that you're going to find this 50% off offer for Emma. Check it out. It's really cool.
All right, now let's go on to the ridiculous question. We got a question in from Jessica from Nashville, Tennessee. Oh, I would. I've never been to Nashville. Okay.
I go on a guy strip every year, and I bring up, let's go to Nashville. And I've. And they always say, now, let's go here, go there. I want to go to Nashville.
Anyway, if I get there, I'm going to find Jessica, we're going to hang out. It's going to be great. All right, the question what is the strangest job you've ever had?
That's an Actually, an excellent question, I will tell you that. All right, well, here's one. When I was in high school, I was trying. I was trying to meet girls. I'm not gonna lie. I was trying to meet girls.
So I said to myself, how can I meet girls? What job can I get to meet girls? And I came up with this idea, which was a total fail.
So I got a job at a store called the Limited that was like a women's clothing store. And I don't even know if that's still out. It was in the mall.
And because I was like, I'll meet everybody, the people that work there were all, we're all women. And then the people that shop there were all women. I mean, this is a brilliant idea. I got the job. So they made me the stock boy.
And I was in the back, in the stock. And then. And I would, like, get all the clothing, the shirts, bodysuits, which I didn't know what that was at the time.
And what my main job was to put the sensors, the little things with the needle, you know, the sensors that you put on the clothing that are super annoying. Those big, long plastic things so that way you don't steal the stuff. My job was to put the sensors on all of the clothing. And it was so annoying.
I kept sticking my finger with the needle thing. And then my other job was to.
When somebody needed, like, a different size, they come running in the back and they'd be like, I need a size medium in this shirt. You gotta get it, like, right now.
And I would run around like, an idiot and everyone would always be yelling at me because I would be doing it too slow and it was a total failure because I met no one. Everyone hated me. They thought I was a doofus because I couldn't figure out where the clothing was. It just didn't go well.
The whole thing didn't go well. I was not good at it. But I tried. I tried.
And if the limited is still out there, I feel for all the stock people in the back because that's not fun anyway. I don't know. That is a random story, but it's true. So thanks for being here.
Make sure to check out our episode at the end of the week, only about 10 minutes where the latest tip tactics, all this stuff.
And make sure to go to guru conference.com because we are opening up registration to the largest virtual free email event in just about a week or two. It's going to be amazing.
And also if you want to submit a question, any question, go to jschwetelson.com and you'll see a button there that had podcast and that is where you could enter in any question you have and we will tackle it right here. Thanks for being here. 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 guruevents.com so you can hear from the world's first top marketers like Daymond John, Martha Stewart and me. GuruEvents.com check it out.