EP. 85- OFFERS Working RIGHT NOW! (psst…you’re doing it wrong) l Jay’s Scoop

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.

And let's talk about something that's impacting your marketing that you may not be aware of for both business and consumer marketing. And that is we've entered into a time of the year where marketers don't even know why their campaigns are not doing well and what's holding it back.

And the reason I say the time of year is important is when you get to the March, April time of the year, we no longer care whether you're a business professional or a consumer. We no longer care that it's a new year. Okay, January and February is okay. It's a new year.

What's the trends, the outlook, the forecast for this year, all of that and what am I going to personally, what am I do to better myself? All that. No, when you hit March and April, we're in the thick of it. We no longer care.

And there's a huge impact on the performance of our marketing campaigns if we don't realize what people are thinking about. So we want to focus on what is coming up. That is how we react to marketing. We don't care about what it is that we're doing right now. Okay.

We don't care about the season that we're in. We don't care about the, the quarter that we are in. We don't care about anything that's happening right now.

We care about what is coming up and we see it in the data.

So let's break down business and consumer and what we should all be doing and not doing in terms of the campaigns that we're running and how to really leverage the time of year that we are now in.

And all this data I'm going to share with you, these stats and trends and tips they come from, my agency does about 6 billion emails annually, business and consumer, and we have a research group, we're always aggregating trends and stats and stuff. So this is coming from real time data. For example, let's start on the business side first.

If you're out there marketing, and I'm sure all of us have been starting probably somewhere around November and probably still using it right now.

Anything that's related to the outlook of that current year. Okay? Those offers flatline. We actually see a drop in click through rates on current year outlook offers.

They drop by over 50% compared to 30 days prior. So March 15th is that date, right? It was great, February 15th.

But once March 15th hits, the outlook style offers for that current year go in the garbage. And we don't care about the outlook. Why? Because we're in it. We don't need the outlook. I can tell you exactly what's happening. I'm right here.

Okay, for example, in March and April is talking about Q2.

If the start of your subject line actually says Q2, referencing the second quarter, Q2 at the start of your subject line in March and April will lift your open rates by over 20%. Why? Because we're like, okay, great. What's going to happen in Q2? A great example would be something like Q2 trends for retail sector.

So leveraging that upcoming quarter and the quarter that just started does really well along the same lines. And this works for B2B. And then we'll get to consumer. And this is a really cool stat.

And this works for almost any month, mentioning the upcoming month, whatever the upcoming month is, Right? Mentioning the upcoming month two weeks prior to that month in the subject line. Okay, Increases email open rates by over 25%.

Here's an example of what I mean. If it's March 15th and you put in your subject line April must knows for HR pros, right? You're mentioning April. It's not April yet.

April's not for another two weeks. But again, it's all about looking forward. And so if you mentioned that next month, two weeks prior to it starting, we see a really nice increase.

It is going to start holding you back right now. Now, on the consumer side, we are even more focused as consumers.

We're even more focused on what is ahead than the current time period that we are in. Did you know, for example, I didn't know I had to look it up. Did you know that spring starts March 19th? I'm in spring. I've been in spring for weeks.

I don't. Who knows that we're. It's ridiculous. So zero people. Zero people are excited about spring because it feels like we're already in spring.

When I say excited, I don't mean like you're not excited that the season. Spring as it relates to marketing offers. Right? That's not what we care about. Here's what we care about again. March 15th is that date. Mid March.

Mid March is the date where things really flip a switch on the consumer side as well. So we care about two things. Holidays, and we care about the summer. For example, starting March 15, Easter gives you a huge boost in email open rates.

We mentioned the subject line over a 30% increase in email open rates when you mentioned Easter. All right. A lot of marketers make a mistake and they think, oh, I can only start marketing a few days before or one week before a holiday.

That's not true. We like looking forward to things and the summer is a great example of that. Right.

The summer may seem far away, but in our minds, do you want to buy a new outfit for spring? No, you want to buy a new outfit for summer. You want to get excited, Think about maybe a trip you're going on.

So in March and April, if you use summer in your offers, in your actual offers, let's say your sum, your offer was get ready for summer sale, we see a 40% higher average click through rates than those that mentioned the same spring, the season that we're about to be in and that we are in. Right. So helping people to look forward, whether it's on the business side or the consumer side, this generates incredible performance.

All right, before we get into. Since you didn't ask, and for new listeners of this podcast, that's where I talk about things that are totally useless.

That's a really good sell, right? Totally useless. But hang on. I want to let you all know that this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold.

If you don't know what Marigold is it is the sending platform that I use for all of my email. It is absolutely the number one email marketing platform on earth. They have a lot of brands that you may know that are part of Marigold.

Things like Emma and Sail through and Campaign Monitor and a bunch of others. Those are all part of Marigold.

And they just released this amazing piece of content that I've been using called the Relationship Marketers Guide to Generative AI. Right.

And in it, which I found super useful, they have AI prompts, AI writing tip prompts that will really help you to utilize Chat, GPT and all the other platforms that are out there. If you want to get access to Marigold's Relationship Marketer Guide to Generative AI, it's totally free.

Just go to jschwetelson.com Marigold that's J schweddelson.com Marigold and you could download it. And if you don't know about Marigold as your email sending platform on I could not give it a higher recommendation.

You could find more about that@meet marigold.com all right. Now let's go on to. Since you didn't ask. Oh man. I realized something. I just got back from a family trip with my wife and my teenage kids.

I live in Florida. We went out to Colorado. We had a great time. But I realized I am the worst packer in the history of the world. And here's what happened.

So I don't know why, but whenever I pack my suitcase, I think I'm packing as if wherever I'm going, there's going to be like a world war that breaks out. I'll never get back home and I need to bring everything in my closet and put in my bag. Every time I get home from a trip, I owe my bag.

And 75% of the stuff that I've packed I did not use. I don't know what I think. I need three jackets and 400 pairs of socks. And what am I preparing for? So we went to the airport, okay.

And we go to put the thing to have it weighed on the thing before you give them your bag. And my thing, of course, because I don't know how to pack. My wife packs. It's like a Tetris game for her. Everything fits perfectly. She has a room.

I don't know what is going on over there. I pack and it's like someone threw up in my bag. It's crazy. Anyway, get to the thing and I would put it on the scale and my thing was overweight.

I had too much in it, obviously, because I'm clueless. But my son, my teenage son, because he packs himself, which is amazing. He had, like, nothing in his bag because he's the opposite of these.

What, I need one shirt for a week or whatever. And so they were like, okay, you move some stuff into his bag so that way you can be equaled out.

So I open up my bag, which always has to be the most embarrassing experience you could possibly have at the airport. You open it up and. And it was like, almost like my bag exploded when I opened it up because there was just so much.

And it was looking at me like, what is wrong with you? And it's valid because I. It was out of control. And I'm sitting there shoving stuff in his bag. And everyone's, you're a loser.

And I feel like a loser, and I am a loser. Oh, that was not fun. Totally. Oh, you know what else wasn't fun? So finally we get through security, and I.

The one thing I don't pack, whenever I do this part of the podcast, I don't know what happens. I lose my mind. Anyway, the thing I don't pack is snacks. I don't know why I should pack snacks.

And the reason I say that is I always wind up going to the store, right? The store that has all the snacks. And I walk out of there, and the snacks in these stores, it's worse than the movie theaters.

They're like $8 billion for a bag of, like, trail mix. I never eat trail mix, but for some reason, I have to buy a bag of weird trail mix with yogurt nuts or something. I don't even know what.

And it's, here's your bag of trail mix for $20. I'm like, what the hell is this? So from now on, what I need to do is I. I need to pack less clothing because I'm not going into a nuclear war.

And every trip that I go on, and I need to focus on packing snacks. So that way, I am not supporting the trail mix industry in some sort of bizarre way. Anyway, this is what's on my mind. You are awesome for being here.

All right, two things. One, leave this thing review. Even if you hate it. Just give it a one star if you hate it.

But if you like it, whoa, give it a five star because that actually helps. And that's awesome. Number two, are you registered for our free giant virtual email marketing conference? You gotta be there. It's going to be bananas.

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You can register for free@guruconference.com you are awesome. Thanks for being here. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice, but the party's not over.

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