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In this short episode of the Ask Us Anything podcast, host Jay Schwedelson answers two listener questions – one about email marketing tactics involving misspelled or informal words, and one asking for his thoughts on the recent Oscar nominations and snubs. Tune in to hear Jay’s direct, honest opinions and some tactical email marketing advice.

Main Discussion Points:

– Using “interjections” like “yikes!”, “oh no”, etc in email subject lines can significantly lift open rates for both business and consumer email campaigns

– Jay thinks the Barbie movie director Greta Gerwig was snubbed and should have been nominated for major awards for managing to make the Barbie concept into an awesome movie

– Jay doesn’t think it makes sense that Ryan Gosling was nominated for an Oscar for Barbie but Margot Robbie wasn’t, since the whole cast did great but it wasn’t due to any particularly standout acting performances

And MASSIVE thank you to our Sponsor, Marigold!!

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https://jayschwedelson.com/marigold/

Transcript
Jay Schwedelson:

Foreign. Welcome back to Ask Us Anything. This is a super short episode where each week we try to tackle one work question and one ridiculous question.

And we get questions in all week.

And by the way, if you want to submit a question, which we would love, go to jschweddelson.com, click the podcast button and there's a big button there that says ask us anything. And that's where you can put in your question. And we will try to tackle that. And yeah, so let's jump right into this super short episode.

Our first question is the work question. We got a question in from Casey from Deerfield Beach, Florida. That is right down the road from where I live. Actually, I live in Boca Raton, Florida.

And yeah, I love it here. It's like a, like a big Seinfeld episode. We dinner at 4 o'. Clock. I dig it. Don't at me, don't care. Anyway, what's the question from Casey?

Casey wants to know. I see subject lines that include misspelled words or purposely have things like sh. Or do these tactics work? Or will this go into the junk folder?

First of all, this is awesome because this tactic rushes it. Now, I'm no English major awesome teacher person at all, okay? But those are called interjections.

And interjections are basically words that express a sudden burst of emotion like ouch or aha or, or yikes. And people think they need to write perfectly in their email campaigns, but the opposite is actually true.

Email subject lines, for example, they're where grammar goes to die. And when you have poor grammar, it actually does incredibly well for both business and consumer marketers.

Interjections are among the best tactics to use. And if you haven't tested them, you should.

And some of you out there are going to tune this out, be like, no, no, no, my brand, I'm in a regulated industry. We target healthcare. We target government. Government. Or we target affluent investors. We can't use things like oh, no, or yikes or whoa.

Or oh, you can't use any of that because it's not serious enough. Listen, you're marketing to a human being.

So, for example, on the business side, interjections in subject lines will increase your email open rates by over 25%. And on the consumer side, interjections will increase open rates by over 30%. So let's give some examples.

On the business side, if you got an email subject line that said this, the letters shhh. So shh. Exclusive just for HR leaders. Or how about yikes. Webinar starts in 30 minutes. Register now. You would respond, you'd react to that.

Is it a little bit ridiculous? Maybe a little. But interjections work. And on the consumer side, it is a no brainer, right?

You get a subject line that says, oh, no, exclamation point, 30% discount gone tonight, or where were you? Right? And you're going to open up and be like, you missed out on this amazing discount, but here's another discount for you.

So things like ouch or aha or huh or yikes or whoa. Or oh. If you're not testing interjections at the start of your subject line, you are missing out again.

They can lift your email open rates by over 25%, whether you're a business marketer, consumer marketer, just by using things like yikes. Oh, oh, no. I mean, this thing sounds ridiculous, everything coming out of my mouth, but it works.

All right, before we get on to the ridiculous question, I want to let everyone know that this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold. What's Marigold? Marigold is cool, okay? It's the email sending platform I use. I send out my emails on Marigold. We send out billions of emails.

But Marigold is not just one platform. It's got all sorts of amazing tools and, and loyalty programs.

And they're the company, the parent company of things like Sail through and Campaign Monitor, Cheetah Digital and mm. And here's the thing. Only for the listeners of this podcast, the do this, not that podcast, they've given us a special offer.

It is a 50% off discount.

So if your marketing budget being cut and you're trying to save some dollars and trying to figure out what email sending platform to use or what loyalty marketing platform to use, you want to check out Marigold. And there's only one way to get this offer, okay? It's on there one of their awesome platforms called Emma.

You go to jschwetelson.com Marigold and you will find information on the 50% off discount. You go to jschwettleson.com Marigold to find it. That's only for the listeners of this podcast. Hope you check it out.

Marigold is a tremendous platform. All right, now it's time for the ridiculous question this week which came in from Caroline from Plainview, New York.

Plainview, right near where I grew up. I grew up in Jericho, New York, in Long Island. So shout out to all the peeps in Plainview and say hello to all my cousins.

Anyway, so what's the ridiculous question this week, Jay? Do you care about the Oscars? I guess A little bit. Only for the. Only.

Because as it relates to Barbie, and I'll get to the Ryan Gosling thing in a second, but that's not it. So, you know, the thing with Barbie is that Greta Gerwig, who's the director of Barbie, didn't get nominated for an Oscar.

And the reason this is ridiculous, in my opinion, is I remember when the ad started running for Barbie before it came out, and I'm like, this movie is the dumbest idea of all time. This is going to be the biggest flop since that movie with JLo and Ben Affleck, Gigi or whatever that was a million years ago.

Like, this looks like a horrible, epic waste of money. And then the movie comes out and it is awesome and it dominates pop culture and it dominates everything.

So Greta Gerwig should not just get nominated for Oscar. She should get nominated for Nobel Peace Prize. She should get nominated for.

I don't even know every major award on earth, because to take Barbie and turn it into something awesome is not easy. So that rubs me the wrong way. And then in terms of Margot Robbie not getting nominated and Ryan Gosling getting nominated.

And first of all, Ryan Gosling shouldn't feel bad that he got nominated. Great. Good for you. Hope you have fun.

But if Ryan Gosling's getting nominated, the entire cast should get nominated because they all did the same thing. I mean, it wasn't like the acting was, oh, my God, this is amazing acting. I can't even believe what I'm watching by anybody in the movie.

They were all good. The movie was great. So to nominee one person, not another, is just ridiculous, in my opinion. So that's my take on the Oscars.

I do kind of look at the list of all the movies, like, oh, I gotta watch them all. But then I look at the list of them after I. I go through them. Like, I don't want to see any of these movies. They look terrible.

So, yeah, that's my vibe on the Oscars. And check out our episode the end of the week.

And then make sure you check out guru conference.com because we're opening up registration in a few days. That is the world's largest free virtual email marketing event. @guruconference.com get on the Insider list so you can be ready to register.

It's going to be amazing. All right, thanks. 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.

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