Ep. 272 – Ask Us ANYTHING❓ NEW DATA: Apple iOS 18 Mail App impact? ➕ Marriage Proposal ideas? 💍

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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.

We are back for Ask Us Anything from the do this not that podcast presented by Marigold.

This is our short episode where all week long we get in questions, we get in work questions, we get in totally ridiculous questions, and we try to tackle one of each. If you want to submit a question, it's easy. You go to jschwettleson.com there's a button that says podcast. Another one that says, ask us anything.

And I mean, put it in there because we love it and we need it for the show and we appreciate you. So let's do the work. Question first. We got a question from Michelle from Manhattan, New York.

You know, I just tried something because of Manhattan, New York, which is, you know, Manhattan's the city, which is the cronut. Have you all heard about the cronut? Have you tried the Cronut? It's been out there for a while now. It started in New York City.

I got one down here in South Florida because I wanted to try it because everyone's like, yeah, I got a cronut, and they're not good. A cronut is a croissant and a donut hybrid. And you're like, oh, I like croissants. I like donuts. This should be good.

And so, I mean, it's not bad, obviously, but it's nothing special. And the problem with the cronut is it's a mess. So I was walking around with this thing. I'm eating it, and it's a disaster.

And I looked like a disaster. And, yeah, I don't know. And then I saw another place that was selling do sons. So I'm like, what's a dosan?

Because I just tried a Cronut, like, the other day, and they go, it's the cronut. But we called it a dosant, a donut croissant. I'm like, come on, enough.

Basically, if you want this, buy a croissant and you buy a donut and you put one bite of each in your mouth and you are good to go. Anyway, who cares? What is your question, Michelle? Jay.

My team is trying to figure out how to make sure Our emails are not going into the Promotions tab in the new Apple Mail app. Now that iOS 18 is available everywhere and the automatic categorizations of emails is occurring, how can we navigate all this?

So, great question, and I actually do have some really interesting data on this. So for those of you who are not aware, um, you know, Apple has updated all of our phones with iOS 18.

Part of that update was that they updated the Mail app, the blue icon on our phone that we all click on to check our email. Now, According to validity, 47% of all email is checked by clicking on that mail app.

And it doesn't matter if you have a Gmail address or use a work address, whatever. We're all clicking on that blue icon to check our mail.

Now, in the iOS 18 update, they turned on this thing, which is automatic categorizations of our emails, right?

So as emails are coming into us now, they're being bucketed into the primary tab, a transactions tab, and updates tab, and a promotions tab for all business and consumer offers and all this. And Apple, using its AI stuff, is able to determine what email should go into what bucket.

Now, a few things, and I'm going to tell you right now, I'm giving you the preview. You got nothing to worry about. This is a nothing burger. I'm going to tell you why.

First off, the only people who really can leverage all of this are people with newer iPhones. Okay? If you have an old iPhone, you can't even mess around a lot of stuff.

So what did we do to find out how big of an impact the categorizations of our emails is as it relates to marketing? All right, so we did a survey.

World Data Research did a survey of 4,000 people that are using the new iOS18 functionality and mail app categorizations. All right?

We did a survey of these 4,000 people, and we asked them, are you using the automatic categorization of emails into tabs, such as primary transactions, updates and promotions, or are you using List View, which is the old way, and. And are just seeing all the emails as it was.

So what you can do very easily, if you don't want the categorizations on your phone, you could switch to List View, and it's the way you've always checked your email on the mail app. So we did this survey, and guess what? Only 32% of people are using the new categorizations, which means a lot of people are turning it off.

By the way, I'm one of those people. I thought the categorizations were ethically annoying. So I turned it off.

And from the limited time that's been out there and from this survey, we're seeing a lot of other people are turning it off also. Now we asked the second question. If the categorizations on your phone are turned on, you have them on.

How often are you checking the promotions tab on your Apple iOS mail app? And over 40% of those people that actually have the bucketing and the categorizations turned on said they're checking it daily.

Well, that's great news because the overwhelming majority of people don't have the categorizations turned on. And the people that do have it turned on are actually going into their promotions tab and checking for offers and stuff. So here's the deal.

I wouldn't do anything to navigate the Apple changes because it's a big nothing burger. And I'll tell you even why it's a nothing burger.

So then we said, okay, let's do some campaigns and actually test is performance dropping for business to business and consumer emails when you are sending emails to people that have this opportunity to have the categorization going on. So we ran these tests. For the last 30 days we marketed to for business campaigns and consumer promotional email campaigns.

We sent to 200,000 people that we knew had the newer iPhones available that would potentially be using the categorizations. And we wanted to see did you know, open rates and click through rates and all this stuff go up, down, sideways, whatever.

And most importantly, did response rates go down. And guess What? To these 200,000 people, we tested a zillion different sends promotions, whatever. We saw no change. Nothing.

No change in click through, no change in response rates. We saw no change. So maybe this changes a year from now.

But right now, the Apple iOS Mail app update that everyone was freaking out over has had absolutely no impact on marketing performance for both business and consumer markets. And by the way, if you also don't want to waste your time, don't worry about Gmail promotions tabs either.

Do not try to get out of the promotions tab in Gmail. First of all, that's part of your inbox. It is not the junk folder. And here's the thing. Less than 30% of Gmail users have that tab turned on.

The promotions tab turned on and activated.

And for those people that do have the promotions tab turned on, 50% of those people check it daily, which means they click on the promotions tab and they check out what's in there. And when they do click on it they're very intentional about what they're doing. Okay?

They're in there looking for offers because that's why they clicked on the promotions tab. Again, we do not see any performance decline when your mail goes into a promotion tab.

So don't waste your energy trying to figure out the Apple thing or the Gmail tabs. It's a waste of your time. All right, before we get into the ridiculous question, which is totally ridiculous, I want to let you know about Marigold.

They're the exclusive sponsor of this podcast. Now, I love Marigold. I talk about them a lot because they're awesome. They're my email sending platform.

If you're a business marketer or consumer marketer and. And you haven't thought about them, they're better than what you're using. I know they're better than what you're using because they're the best. Okay?

If you want to check them out, you go to meetmargle.com small marketer, big marketer, doesn't matter. Their roll up of my Emma and Cheetah digital and campaign monitor and live clicker and sail through Marigold is a fantastic platform.

At least go check them out@meet marigold.com. all right, let's get into the ridiculous question. We got a question from Stephen from Freehold, New Jersey. What up, Stephen? What do you got, Jay?

I'm planning on proposing to my girlfriend. Ooh. I need a great idea on how to surprise her. How did you propose? And do you have any good ideas for me?

Well, first of all, Steven, I hope you used a fake name, because if your girlfriend listens to this show, she's going to know you're about to propose. All right? So, all right, I'll tell you. I'll tell you what I did, and then let me see if I got a good idea for you.

So, first off, when I proposed to my wife, there was a.

There was a bar, a very nice bar, fancy bar near where we live, that was a magic bar that you go in there and it was like a regular bar, but they had these cool magicians walking around. It was really fun. And they would go to each table and they do these tricks and all this stuff.

And so I told my girlfriend at the time, who now is my wife, I said, hey, I don't remember how I told her this, but I said, we won something, Some sort of gift card or whatever, and let's go to the magic bar tonight and let's invite your sisters, because her sisters were around and their boyfriends and she Goes, oh, that's so cool. And so we went to this magic bar and we got all dressed up because it's kind of fancy.

And before that I had gone to the magic bar, like a week or so before that. And I worked out this thing with this magician, one of the fancy magicians that walks around to the table and I had a whole plan.

So we go to the magic bar and we're at our table having a drink or whatever, and then this magician walks over the table, goes, hey, I want to do a trick for you all, whatever. And he goes, does anybody here have a ring? I want to show you this cool trick. So one of my wife's sisters had a ring on a regular ring.

And he took the ring and then poof, he made it disappear. And then he did something. He goes, okay, now I'm going to make it reappear. And he had this little box and poof, it reappeared.

And my, my sister in law took her ring back. And then the magician was still standing there. And then he shook the box again, it was closed.

He goes, wait a minute, I hear something else in the box. And we're like, what? What's in the box? And then he turned to me, he goes, open this up. I hear there's something in here.

So I opened it up and it was the ring for my wife. And so I took the ring out, I got on my knee. My wife was completely in shock, okay? And it was amazing.

And her sisters were there and we captured the moment and I got her. I totally fooled her. So that was cool. Oh, I'll tell you the idea I didn't use. So if you want to steal it, this was what I was going to do.

I had a whole plan. The plan was me and my wife were going to go for a walk on the beach because we live near about 10 minutes away from the beach.

We're going to go for a walk on the beach, like around sunset, just a regular walk on the beach, whatever. And that I was going to hire these like, I don't know, actors or whatever that I found. This is so random.

And they were also going to be walking on the beach, like in the opposite direction of us. And we were going to walk by each other.

And then as soon as we walked by each other on the beach, all of a sudden the, the fake couple, the actor couple was going to yell, oh no, I can't find it, I can't find it. Can somebody help us? And we were going to turn around and we're going to say, what's going on?

They were going to say, oh, we're looking for this ring. We just dropped this ring. Can you help us find this ring? It's my wife's, my whatever.

And then we were going to search all around for it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then one of the actors was going to quote, unquote, find the ring, but he's going to turn to us and say, oh, I found a ring, but it's not mine.

And I'm like, oh, that's a ring that rings for me. I was going to grab it, be on my knee, and then propose to my girlfriend who became my wife, and she would have been totally shocked.

That was my backup idea, so feel free to use that one. I don't know if it's terrible or not, but yeah, that's what I got. All right, once again, this podcast is super random.

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