EP. 71- SECRET to Staying in INBOX! Ask Us ANYTHING

Foreign. Welcome back to Ask Us Anything. This is our short episode that we try to tackle one work question and one ridiculous question.

We getting questions all week long.

And by the way, if you want to submit a question, you can go to jschwettleson.com and click on podcast and you'll see the area where you could submit your question and we'll try to tackle it. So what's going on this week? We got a question in from Jill from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Love Wisconsin. My brother lives there.

A little cold, but I love custard. You know what? Custard better than ice cream. There I said it. Hot take about Milwaukee. That's where you know a lot of custard is.

Anyway, Jill asked this question. Jay, I got an email from you this week asking for input ideas for this podcast. And I'm curious, how did that email do and why did you send it?

I really like this question because I did send it for a very specific reason. So some of you may have gotten an email from me this week and this is a really great tactic to think about for yourself.

And I'll tell you what the email was all about. So I sent out an email to I have a newsletter, a personal newsletter that I send out. It's called Scoop.

And that newsletter goes out to about 50,000 subscribers. And I sent out an email that was basically a personalized email. It was like a letter format email from me.

And the email said, hey, wanted to pick your brain for a minute.

We're working on the episode topics for my do this not that podcast for the rest of the year and wanted to see if there are any topics that you think we should do an episode on. Now I sent that out to about 50,000 people.

Anne Hanley from Marketing Profs Daniel Murray for the Marketing millennials Chase Diamond. I mean, some of the absolute top marketers do this exact tactic. And there's a reason that I do it and that they do it.

Now first off, you want the input.

I mean, I love everybody listening to this thing because the input that I got back in terms of topic ideas is going to my team is taking all that and it's going to fuel all the podcasts that we're going to do for many months because so many Good ideas were shared, things that we weren't even thinking about or we could see, oh, what are the common themes that everybody's sharing with us? So in terms of the ideas that we got, it was incredible. But the other big thing, and by the way, this is not a survey. This is not.

We're saying, click here and take this survey that is totally separate. This is reply to the email that you just received. And the person actually hits reply and then it goes. And you can actually read those replies.

But here's the secret sauce thing, which is why this is an incredible tactic for salespeople to do, for direct to consumer brands to do, for nonprofits to do, for B2B software companies to do.

When you send out an email and then someone replies that email and writes a note, future sends from that originating sending email address have an 80% higher inboxing rate because that person replied. What does that mean in English?

What that means is because you sent an email from this sending address and that person got it and then replied and wrote something, you're in like a conversational tone the next time you send them. Anything could be a promotional email, email, webinar, invite, a discount on whatever, doesn't matter.

You have a incredibly higher likelihood of staying in that person's inbox, not just for that next send, but for all future sends. Because basically what's happening is you're training that person's inbox that they like interacting with you.

So when you do a letter format question that you try to get replies from, you get incredible information back. The person feels connected to you. Because I feel so connected to everybody that replied. I loved it. Thank you. Thank you.

I feel like we have a one to one relationship and now my inboxing rate is going to be so much higher for all of those individuals. And you could do super cool stuff.

So if you're a consumer brand, you could say things like, you could send out an email and you could ask something like, hey, what other brands or products you often compare ours to and what sets us apart in your opinion? Or how about, can you share any stories or moments where our brand or product have made a positive impact in your life? Or how about this?

Have you come across any innovative products or concepts elsewhere that you think our brand could incorporate or adapt? Those are awesome for consumer brands. What about on the business side? On the business side, no brainer.

Imagine, you know, your, your salesperson sends out this email. What type of content would be most useful for us to share in future newsletters or webinars? Right. People are going to write back.

You'll be shocked about the replies that you get. And now when that salesperson goes to send out that, that next email promoting a product, he's going to stay in that inbox.

Or what about, are there any additional features or functionalities you'd like to see added to our product or service? It will literally give you a roadmap for the future. So I strongly encourage this one to one email outreach where you're really asking for replies.

And don't put any other garbage in there. Don't put an offer, don't put a piece of content. Just ask for that simple reply.

All right, now before we get on to the ridiculous question, and the ridiculous question this time is totally ridiculous. You got to hang out for it.

I wanted to share that this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold, and I have something cool to share with you from Marigold. Now, Marigold is the absolute best email sending platform on earth. I use it to send out my emails. We send out about 6 billion emails a year.

And you could download this thing for free. Why do you want to download it? They do this study every year and the content coming out of it is bananas.

They ask all these different questions of marketers and business owners, and I rely on this data. For example, one of the questions they asked was about utilizing surveys in your marketing. And this stat blew my mind.

55% of people said the top factor for them in why they take a survey is if it had less than 10 questions. That's the type of information that you need to arm yourself when you go into a meeting about setting up a survey or any other type of marketing.

All right, let's move on to the ridiculous question.

So I got in just an incredible number of the most bizarre, ridiculous questions, so I wanted to rip through a few of them and give some ridiculous answers. All right, so I'm going to rip through a few questions that I got here. First question is, the world is ending, but you get one last meal.

What fast food chain do you choose and why? I choose. I choose Taco Bell. I choose Taco Bell because I literally, first of all, I could go there with, like, $10 and get 45 things.

It's amazing how many different items you can get at Taco Bell. And they all basically taste the same, but they're all awesome. And I get the hot sauce. So Taco Bell for the win all day long.

Don't me if you don't agree. All right, next question. The Bachelor or Love is Blind? Oh, my God. That's a terrible question.

So I have to choose between watching the Bachelor and Love is Blind. Wow. Tough going with the Bachelor. You know why? I don't know why. It really depends. Season, season right now. Great season. The Bachelor.

But Love is Blind is so good right now. That's a tough question, man. That's like picking between your kids. All right, next question. How would you do on Naked and Afraid?

Oh, have you seen Naked and Afraid? You ever seen that show? They drop you off in the middle of nowhere with nothing. Basically nothing.

No clothes at all, and you're partnering up with some person, and you have to survive for, like, 21 days or whatever it is. I would do so bad. I would do so bad. Like, I would probably make it, like, 10 minutes. I'd be like, all right, I'm hungry. I think I got bit by a bug.

I'm out of here. I would. I would be. It would be Naked, Afraid, and quitting. That would be the name of the show if I was on it.

So, no, not very good on Naked and Afraid. Okay, next class question. Which person from a reality cooking show would you most want to hang out with? Well, I like Guy Fieri.

I like Donna's Drivers and Dives. But I think, oh, easy. Gordon Ramsay all day long. Gordon Ramsay. I love that dude. That guy is awesome. I've watched every Kitchen Nightmare.

I've watched every Hotel Hell. I've watched Top Chef. Not Top Chef. Oh, my God, Master Chef. I watched it all.

The thing I don't understand about Gordon Ramsay and all those shows is like, whenever he goes to do Kitchen Nightmares, the same thing happens. They go to these restaurants.

And the first thing the dude does after he eats the food and he says it's disgusting is he goes, I want to see your kitchen. I want to see where you keep all your freezer and all the food. And every single time he goes in there and it is disgusting. It's not clean.

And the freezer has got like old food and all this stuff. And I'm like, dude, if I got on this show, the first thing I would do is I'll be like, we gotta clean our kitchen. We got to clean our freezer.

Like, what is wrong with these people that they don't. What, do they not watch the show? I don't know. Anyway, Gordon Ramsay for the win. All day long. Thank you for being here.

And check out our longer episode on Friday. It's like 10 minutes where we go over tips, tactics and all sorts of stuff.

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