Jay Schwedelson (0:00)

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 do this, not that podcast presented by Marigold. And I'm trying something new today. This is going to be a new series I'm trying out called the Ultimate Series where we break down different marketing tactics and the ultimate tactics to try in that bucket. So today I want to rip through really fast. What are the ultimate subject line tactics right now, from our most recent data that are driving an increase in open rates, the percentage of people opening up emails for both business and consumer marketers. This is going to be the most annoying episode ever because I'm going to rattle off so much stuff. And if you're driving, you're like, well, I can't do anything with that. That's what I do. I'm annoying. Oh, well, this. This is me. How you doing? Anyway, let's get into it. So I want to bucket this into three categories. Tactics that you could do in your email subject lines for your promotional email that will lift your email performance by 10% so your open rates go up around 10%. The next bucket will be tactics that will lift your open rates by about 20% and the last one, 30%. Ooh. Anyway, all right, so let's jump into it. These tactics from our most recent data from our website subject line.com, where we analyze over 6 billion emails that are being sent, both business and consumer. These are the tactics that are helping lift open rates by about 10%. Let's rip into it. First off, use all lowercase. You don't capitalize any word. Okay. It used to be that title casing was the thing where you capitalize the first letter of each word and that gave you a little lift. Now we're seeing absolutely no capitalization whatsoever. Is a great test to try. And by the way, for all of these things, none of this will cause you go in the junk folder or the spam folder. You don't go in the junk folder spam folder because the words or symbols or special things you do in the subject line, that's information from 15 years ago. No matter what you read on any website, it is garbage. All right, so what are the other 10 percenters? Emoji is the first character of your subject line. We all know that emojis work. You're like, oh, they're stupid. They're ridiculous. I'm in a conservative industry. And B2B, you can use a check mark. You could use a graph. You don't need to use a ridiculous one. If you're in the consumer category and you're not using an emoji, you are missing the boat. You got to test an emoji. It works. All right, the last 10 percenter is this idea of actually saying open me the word open. We're seeing this as one of the fastest growing words used in subject lines. When you actually start your subject line with something like open me or open this, and then you might say, you know, open me. This is exciting. You know, whatever. Actually saying open me works. It shouldn't work. It's embarrassing. That works. I don't know why it works, but putting the word open in your subject line is actually giving a little lift. All right, those are the 10 percenters. Let's move on to the 20 percenters. Wow, I talk fast. This has got to be so annoying to listen to. Oh, well, what are you going to do? All right, let's talk about the 20 percenters. These are tactics that on average right now are lifting email open rates, the percentage of people opening up your business and consumer emails by about 20%. Start your subject line with a number. The nine things your competitors know, whatever. Start it with an actual number. It stands out just a little bit. The three pitfalls to avoid. The seven things HR professionals know, the three hottest trends for the summer, whatever. Start it with a number. The next one is question subject lines. Turn your subject line into a question. Doesn't matter what your offer is, what your newsletter is about. It does not matter if you turn your subject line into a question. Right? It crushes it. We like questions, we like answers. Things like, are you tracking this conversion stat yet, whatever it is. All right, the next one. Email exclusive offers. This one's not used enough. So you have your offer. Turn the offer into an email exclusive only. And you want to start your subject line by saying email exclusive colon or something like that, right? It might say email exclusive. This discounts not on the site. Email exclusive. You won't find this content anywhere else. We like the idea of exclusivity. There's no reason that this should work. It's a ridiculous thing that it does work. But if you've never tried an email exclusive offer, an email exclusive sale. Email exclusive content. This is a no brainer all right, another 20% are three dots. The three dots at the end of your subject line. The ellipsis at the end of your subject line. Right. So you'd write a subject line that might say, you know, we didn't expect this result, dot, dot, dot. Or did you know, this new tactic, dot, dot, dot. Whatever it is, it makes our mind want to see the rest of what's inside that email. So adding three dots, the end of your subject line is a great 20 percenter. That lifts your email open rates by about 20%. And then the last one is starting your subject line with brackets. I love brackets. At the start of your subject line, you take brackets, and inside the bracket, you put the word or phrase that your offer is about. Right? It might say early access. Inside the brackets, it might say new sale. Inside the brackets, it might say special invite, whatever. You put those 12 words inside the brackets, it crushes it. All right, now let's go on to the big finish. The 30 percenters. These are tactics that are lifting email open rates, the percentage of people opening up your emails, by about 30%, which is bananas. And by the way, everything we just talked about costs you nothing. Easy to try, you could do on any platform. This ain't magic. All right, first, 30% is personalization, but not the name. When we talk about personalization, it's not saying J comma, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's not personalization. We're talking about putting in the interest that the person has, putting in the person's geography, putting in the person's job function, putting in the company name that the person works at. So things like this for affluent investors only or the top golfers need to know this. Or only for HR professionals or retail industry executives need to know this. Or this is popular in the Atlanta area. Personalization based on the person's interest, geography, job function. It could be their title level. Right? Things like this is for marketing directors. Anything like that crushes it. Forget about first name personalization. Talk to the person and tell them who they are. The sooner you tell somebody who they are, the faster they want to react. I love that test. All right, another one. And the 30 percenter is this idea of, I don't like even calling it this, but it is what it is. The fake mistake. Starting your subject line with either oh, yikes, or oops, right? You might have something like, oops, you almost missed this. Oops, you're about to scroll past this. Yikes, your form is leaking conversions. Why does this work so well? First off, it does this whole kind of fear thing. But also, we're all basically horrible people. And the reason I say that is the number one kind of email that gets open more than any other email is when a brand sends out an email and it starts subject line with oops, we forgot to put in the link. Right, We've all seen those. And then we open it up because we love seeing when a brand says, oh my God, I'm so sorry we screwed up on that email, but here's a discount code for you because we screwed up. I say we're horrible people because we like seeing when these brands screw up. I don't know why it averages over a 50% open rate when a brand screws up, but we could play on that. We're not trying to confuse people. But if you start it with oh, yikes or oops in your subject line, you're playing on the fact that people's eyes are attracted to that. And then you go, oh, you're going to miss out on our most important event of the year. You know, yikes. This webinar is actually a big deal anyway. That's a 30% lifter. And the last one are two word subject lines. The reason just having two words in your subject line crush it is it's not about the words that you write. It's all the white space that's around the words, okay? It stands out in your subject in your inbox in a big, big way. If you've never tested a two word subject line, it can crush it. Things like, you know, maybe you just write, you know, pipeline, panic or wow, cool, doesn't matter. It's all about the white space in the inbox. It's not so much about the two words that you have to really stress about. So those are the 30 percenters. Wow, that was a lot of stuff. Really fast. All right, before we get into since you didn't ask, which is the ridiculous portion of this podcast which always goes sideways, I don't know what happens. I want you to know this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold. Marigold is my email sending platform. That is the platform I test out all of these things on. I get all the coolest metrics back on. You don't like your email sending platform, you need to check them out. Meet marigold.com I'm telling you, you could be a big marketer, a small marketer, consumer, B2B. Doesn't matter. You got to check them out at me. Marigold.com I send out billions of emails and I am telling you, there is a better way. All right, let's get into. Since you didn't ask, and this one's really ridiculous. So I've been doing research on Andy Cohen from Bravo. Why? Because Andy Cohen is going to be speaking at our new event, Eventastic, that's coming up the first week of June. Right. And I'm going to be doing a fireside chat with him. So I started going deep on Bravo because I'm starting to put together, like, information so I know what to talk to them about, whatever. And I found out there's all these new shows coming to Bravo that I didn't know about. So first off, coming in later on in the next few weeks, there's a new show called Next Gen nyc. This is either the best or worst idea for a reality show. And what it is, okay? It is the children of all of the current and former Real Housewives. So the Real Housewives have been on the shows. They have kids, and their kids are now older and they're going to be on their own show. I mean, I'm going to watch this. I don't know if this sounds great or terrible. I can't decide. Is this terrible? Maybe. But the one I'm most excited for, which coming out in like the next two weeks, is called Love Hotel. I know you're listening this. You're like, is he being serious right now? Is he really going to watch this? And 100% the answer is yes. So Love Hotel is fantastic because what it is, this is a whole new dating show that takes place at a luxurious hotel somewhere. And it has a bunch of the Real Housewives who are single, like Luann, who I love the Countess Luann, Shannon Beador, Giselle. I mean, there's all these people are going to be there. It's called Love Hotel. Very excited about that. And there's another show that already premiered that I tried. Don't really like it that much. Denise Richards and her Wild Things. This came out a few weeks ago and it's following Denise Richards life. She was the one that was married to Charlie Sheen and. And her kids are on the show. They're older, whatever. She seems very nice, but it's like her going through and deciding to go on only fans, like, what is going on? I didn't know any of this. And I'm like, does Denise Richards need to be doing this? I don't know what's going on. Anyway, I, I was one episode done, so I don't think I'm all in on that. But I appreciate you being here. Let me know DM me. Let me know what you think about this new ultimate series because we might break down landing pages and offers and and social media and who knows what. I don't know what I'm talking about. I appreciate you. And if this wasn't terrible, leave this thing a review. It would mean a lot to me. All right, take it easy. Later. 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 marketer. And hook us up with a five star review if this one wasn't the worst podcast of all time. Lastly, if you want access to the best virtual marketing events that are also 100% free, visit guruevents.com so you can hear from the world's top marketers like Daymond John, Martha Stewart and me. GuruEvents.com check it out.