Ep. 141 – WILD Test Ideas! (you have NEVER tried these!) ➡️ Ketchup on EGGS?🥚| Ask Us ANYTHING

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 Ask Us Anything from Do this not that. This is our super short episode where all week long we get in work questions and we get in ridiculous questions. We try to tackle one of each.

And if you want to submit a question super easy, just go to jschwettleson.com there's a button that says podcast and then there's another button that says Ask us anything and you could submit. We get really wild questions. Let's jump into it. First, let's do our work question. We got a work question from Lisa from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Love Pittsburgh. Did you know Mr. Rogers, the show? He was from there and the show was filmed there. Love that show. I always wonder, did he have more?

Did he like actually go through pairs of shoes or. Because he never really walked anywhere. The pair that he put on, was it like the same pair for 4 billion years? I don't know.

But what's your question, Lisa? All right, Jay, have you seen really strange tests work recently?

We're trying to expand out our testing ideas and we wonder if there's anything strange that you've tested that has worked.

Okay, here's some really random test ideas that are actually working that are all over the map and they're not going to always work for everyone, but they're interesting. One is testing an emoji at the start of your subject line as the first character and then as the last character in your pre header.

So you have your subject line. Line, right? You put an emoji at the start of your subject line.

And then you have your pre header, which is like that second subject line, which is the subject, which is the thing under the subject line, the light gray text under the subject line. At the end of your pre header, the last character of your pre header, you put the same emoji. So you start your subject line with one emoji.

Let's say it's a calendar emoji.

And then you end your pre header with the same emoji, a calendar emoji and your book ending your subject line and your pre header with the same emoji.

And we're seeing it actually give a lift to Overall email marketing, open rates and, and we think it's because it's almost like getting people to look at the whole thing as one package. Your subject line and your pre header.

So if you've never thought about testing that, that is a strange one that we've been seeing working here and there. So that's worth a try.

Another one that we've seen work really well, which is interesting, is personalization, but not in the subject line, no J comma, whatever in the subject line.

And not starting your email with J comma, whatever and personalizing the start of your email, but personalizing the second or even third sentence of your email copy itself. Amy Porterfield does this a lot with her emails.

She sticks in first name personalization in other parts of the email message, not starting it out because that always seems a little bit generic.

But if you never tested using personalization, first name personalization within the message, but not at the start of the message, or we actually see that lift, click through rates a little bit. So that's a really weird test. And the last one that really is an important one is doing what's called domain frequency checking.

I don't think enough marketers do this. So take your database, okay. And sort it by the domain.

So let's say you have people from the Ford Motor Company, your database, if you do a domain frequency count, you sort it in descending order, you could see how many people from the Ford Motor Company do you have in your database? You can, and you're going to be shocked. Put aside the Gmail and the Yahoo and things like that.

I promise you, you will be shocked about how many contacts you have per domain in your database.

And oftentimes if you have too many contacts at a given domain, not the big consumer ones, but regular domains, let's say you have 500 at UnitedHealthcare or 300 at Ford Motor Company. It could actually impact your deliverability. But. But also you should look into why do you have so many contacts at those organizations.

So a great easy test that I think most people don't do is take your domain frequency count, okay?

And then only send to those contacts where you have less than 25 people per domain and put all the other ones to the side for a particular send and then send it out and see how that performs. It can be a really interesting test to see if you get a lift in your email marketing performance.

But by not sending out to domains where you have more than 25 contacts or just throttling the number of people that you're sending per domain. So you're not sending out at all to anybody. We have more than 25 contacts at a particular domain. It will change your performance.

It's a really interesting thing to try.

And if you do see a significant lift, then you got to dig into some of your deliverability towards those domains where you have a lot of people at them.

But if you're not doing a domain frequency report on your contacts on an ongoing basis, I think it's a really interesting thing that most marketers are sleeping on.

All right, before we get into the completely ridiculous question, I want to let you know that this podcast has a sponsor, the greatest sponsor on earth, Marigold. Marigold is my email sending platform. I love Marigold. I send out 6 billion emails a year. Business, consumer.

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Go to meet marigold.com. it's great for business and consumer marketers. Small, medium, large. I can introduce you directly to the greatest human beings there.

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Meet Marigold.com an amazing email sending platform. All right, let's get into the ridiculous question. We got a question from Daniel from Minneapolis. What is going on in Minneapolis?

You know what Minneapolis is known for? The Juicy Lucy, which is pretty good. If you don't know what Juicy Lucy is, that is a burger or hamburger stuffed with cheese on the inside.

If you've never had a Juicy Lucy, you don't need to wait to go to Minneapolis to try one. You can get one almost anywhere or make it yourself. I'm telling you, it's underrated and it's really good. So what's your question, Daniel?

All right, totally ridiculous question, Jay. Do you put ketchup on your fries or do you catch up, put ketchup on the side of your fries? I'm a side ketchup dude.

Because I think it's annoying when you get ketchup all over your fingers. But I do think either option is fine. I will tell you, when I lived in New York, I grew up in New York.

I moved down to Florida when I was 15 years old, okay? And I'll never forget the first time I went to a McDonald's drive thru. I and I got a burger, a regular burger, and I almost threw up.

Because in New York, at least when I grew up, they didn't put mustard on hamburgers. They only put ketchup. And so when I got the burger and I moved down to Florida, they don't ask you, do you want, what do you want on the burger?

They just put mustard and ketchup and I bit into it and it was disgusting. Who puts mustard on a hamburger? That's completely gross. And I know that happens, especially because now I live in Florida.

I know it happens here, probably happens everywhere, but. But it's disgusting. Okay, now what else about ketchup? Ketchup on hot dogs all day long. Don't at me. You're wrong. Ketchup on hot dogs all day long.

I'll tell you where ketchup does not belong. Since Daniel asked, I see people put ketchup on eggs. That's actually disgusting. Something is wrong with you if you put ketchup on eggs. It's gross.

You'll never convince me otherwise. It's disgusting. The other thing, by the way, that's disgusting is bacon. That's chewy. Bacon should only be eaten if it's crispy.

If you're eating chewy bacon, that's in the same category as ketchup on eggs. Like, what is wrong with you? Stop it. Just stop it. Listen, we've covered a lot of important information today. Yeah.

Go to jschwalson.com, submit a ridiculous question or an important question, we'll try to tackle it here. I appreciate you all and. And listen, if you're not doing anything to go out, get a juicy Lucy, get some fries, just do it. Why not Live? Come on.

All right. Thanks for checking out. Later. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.

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