SPECIAL SERIES ==> One Word, More Conversions 😳 <== | BATHROOM Break #91 COLLAB: The Marketing Millennials + Do This, Not That

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Do This, NOT That: Marketing Tips with Jay Schwedelson

Episode: SPECIAL SERIES – "One Word, More Conversions 😳" | Bathroom Break #91 COLLAB (feat. The Marketing Millennials + Do This, Not That)
Date: January 19, 2026
Host: GURU Media Hub
Guests: Jay Schwedelson & Daniel Murray

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Episode Overview

In this special collaborative "Bathroom Break" episode, Jay Schwedelson (Do This, Not That & subjectline.com) and Daniel Murray (The Marketing Millennials) tackle a simple but radically effective marketing tactic: how modifying just one word in your offer title or content piece can lead to substantially increased conversions. They discuss the psychology behind naming, share practical A/B testing strategies, and swap stories about personal pressure, stress management, and morning routines.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Power of a Single Word in Offer Titles

• Radical Impact of Names:
  • Jay emphasizes that way too many marketers don't realize how powerful the name of an offer, sale, or content piece can be on conversions—often more than the actual offer, creative, or landing page.

    “It is the simplest thing. It is the title. It is the name of your content piece, the name of your offer, your sale… If you’re not testing an A/B version of just the title, that could have the biggest impact on all your conversions.” — Jay [04:27]

• You’re Allowed to Change It:
  • Marketers get "confused"—the offer name isn’t set in stone; it should be actively tested and iterated.

2. Segmentation & Personalization of Offer Names

• Daniel suggests personalizing offer names for different segments within your audience to increase relevance and engagement.

  “You don’t have to marry that offer name for everyone. You can personalize names to groups of your audience and still package it the same.” — Daniel [05:24]

• A/B testing isn’t just for subject lines—applies across social, paid ads, thumbnails, and more.

3. Simple, Actionable Modifier Tests

• The Modifier-Only Test:
  • Jay suggests pick a bland offer title and add a single modifier (“Quick Fix,” “Simple,” “Glow Up,” etc.).
  • A/B test the original versus the modified version for real conversion impact.

    “You can throw in literally one modifier word, do an A/B test. …This isn’t like an open rate or click-through rate; this is conversions.” — Jay [07:31]

• Examples:
  • “HR Guide for SMBs” → “Quick Fix HR Guide for SMBs”
  • “Email Framework for 2026” → “Simple Email Framework for 2026”
  • “Skin Care Sale” → “Glow Up Skin Care Sale”

4. How to Structure Your A/B Tests

• Daniel cautions: Test with only a single variable so you learn what really drives changes—don’t run tests where too much changes at once.

  “There should be something that is testable. …You need to have some slight modifier, not big modifiers, when you’re doing A/B tests.” — Daniel [07:51]

• Small tweaks provide repeatable insights (ALL CAPS, emoji, action word, position in the line).
• Use AI tools (like ChatGPT) to brainstorm possible strong modifiers for future tests.

  “Just go on there and say, this is my offer. What are one to two word phrases that I could use as modifiers? And it’ll give you a bunch.” — Jay [08:52]

5. Handling Pressure in Business Deals

• Jay and Daniel share personal stories about feeling pressured to over-deliver—especially with larger deals where expectations are higher or smaller clients where the investment is critical.
• They discuss when to walk away from high-pressure, no-upside deals.

  “When the money means that much to them, and frankly, I’m being a jerk here and there’s no upside if I do a great job, I get concerned about, is this a good use of time? Does that make me a bad person?” — Jay [03:09]
  “I don’t want to be the fail point.” — Daniel [04:13]

6. Jay & Daniel’s Morning Routines for Stress

• Jay shares he recently started a morning routine: staring at the sun (if it’s out), followed by 10 minutes of meditation before checking his phone.

  “Every time I wake up now, and before I look at my phone, I do a 10-minute meditation. Am I the weirdest, biggest nerd now of all time?” — Jay [09:28]

• Daniel references his time at Snack Nation, where he A/B tested different wellness routines.

7. Using Meditation & Apps

• Jay uses Headspace and now the Peloton app for guided meditation.
• They both praise Peloton’s non-bike offerings:

  “I just use the app for meditation. It’s great.” — Jay [10:36]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Power of Offer Titles:

  “Marketers get so confused. Your offer name, your sale name is not your dog. You can change the name…” — Jay [04:27]

• On Selective Testing:

  “We just say, let’s just put it out there and why is my content not getting viewed? Most of the time it’s the hook, it’s the title…” — Daniel [05:42]

• On Simplicity in Testing:

  “You need to have some slight modifier, not big modifiers, when you’re doing AB tests.” — Daniel [08:08]

• On Handling Pressure:

  “I don’t want your pressure of your 100% budget on me. And I’m the fail point.” — Daniel [04:13]

• On Wellness Startups:

  “For like a year I would do everything. I would A/B test: if I go vegan versus this on this diet, what would happen?” — Daniel [09:53]

• Bathroom Break Banter:
  Daniel: “Well, this has been so informative, everybody … The goal today is, go do a five-minute meditation!” [11:00]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [04:16] – The power of one-word changes in offer titles
• [05:24] – Personalizing and A/B testing offer names by segment
• [06:32] – Modifier-only offer name test (+ examples)
• [07:51] – How to properly structure A/B tests; single-variable focus
• [08:52] – Using AI for brainstorming modifiers
• [09:28] – Jay’s meditation routine and stress-management discussion
• [10:26] – Tools: Headspace and Peloton for meditation

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Actionable Takeaways

• Don’t neglect your offer title or content name—it’s one of the easiest and most impactful things to test.
• Test single-word modifiers as an A/B test and segment your audience for personalized hooks.
• Use AI tools for brainstorming strong, relevant modifiers.
• Keep your A/B tests simple with minimal changes so the results are actionable.
• In life and business, know when to decline opportunities that carry high risk with little upside.
• Try a five or ten-minute meditation in the morning for better focus and less stress.

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Tone: Lively, irreverent, jargon-friendly, highly actionable, authentic banter.
Speakers: Jay Schwedelson (marketing scientist, energizer), Daniel Murray (relatable, reflective, experimental).

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This episode is a snack-sized masterclass on how a tiny tweak—a single word—could hugely impact your next campaign's performance. If you only change one thing this quarter, make it your offer’s title.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Welcome to a new special series called the Bathroom break. That extra 10 minutes you either have to listen to marketing tips or use the bathroom. Or both. But I don't recommend both. But that's your choice.

[A]

This collab is going to be super fun. We have Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials and me, Jay Schwedelson from the do this, not that podcast and subjectline.com each episode in the series, we are going to go over quick tips about different marketing top topics. And if you want to be in the bathroom, fine, just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out.

[B]

We are back with another Bathroom Break. I am here with the man who officially sold subjectline.com guru conference. Certified guru to drum roll, please. If you didn't. If you're not online, constant contact.

[A]

You suck. You're such an idiot. You really are an idio.

[B]

So everybody go flood these DMs. Flood everything and say, congrats, because this is the big deal.

[A]

Yeah, this is a really great episode. You're in your car right now. You're like, okay, great. I need to hear about Jay selling some random thing. No. First of all, thanks. I'm stoked. It's really cool. Constant contact, cool company. But beyond all that, I'm not going anywhere. We're still causing all the chaos with Guru Conference. We're gearing it up bigger than ever, and they're leaning in. They want to make this crazier than ever. So everyone's like, oh, my goodness, do you feel so relaxed now? Do you feel like this? I go, no. I feel 10x like, more anxiety, more everything than I did before because now I want to crush life. And I'm. My wife is like, what's wrong with you? You're like, worse than ever. I'm like, I don't know. I can't help myself.

[B]

Oh, my goodness. I mean, it's pressure when you're like, have a. You want to make it even better and better and better since you have a company involved. So.

[A]

That is true. It is a weird thing, though. And you know, like, with you, with your clients, whatever. Do you. Do you wake up? I'm just curious about your own pressure. Whatever. Do you ever feel like this? Like, okay, great, we got a big deal, or whatever. Who cares? Whatever. Or do you instantly be like, how am I going to over deliver? Like, where is your mindset on deals in general?

[B]

I think it always, the bigger the client, the more pressure to over deliver, the bigger the. And it always. It usually the correlation to how much someone pays you is the pressure of over delivering. So if it's like a small deal, then I'm going to still over deliver because that's my nature of work. But if someone's coming and they come with these expectations, a bigger deal, and they want to pay you more to do something, then it's.

[A]

Let me ask you, I know this isn't the topic we're going to get into, but I'm just curious. I'm talking about if you're going to do a deal, somebody and they don't have a lot of budget, okay. And it's not one of these companies that they're giving you a small budget. If you do a good job, they're going to give you a big budget. It's one of these opportunities where they're like, this budget for us is a huge deal. We don't even normally spend this much. We really don't even have it. But we believe in what you're doing. We're going to give it a try. But really we need this to go super far. A lot of times I actually turn down those opportunities, but because when the money means that much to them, and frankly, I'm being a jerk here, and there's no upside if I do a great job, I get concerned about, is this a good use of time? Does that make me a bad person or what?

[B]

No. I mean, especially in service business, you're trading time for action where like, if you're a software company means a little less. But if, I mean, a software company does, if you have a lot of like customer support, onboarding team, and then you could allocate those resources to a bigger deal. But I think, no, I think if there's a chance at that company, you believe that company has the potential to scale in the future and you are on the scaling ship, then yes. But otherwise, the pressure. I don't want your pressure of your 100% budget on me. And I'm the fail point. I don't want to be the fail point.

[A]

I totally agree with that 100%. Yeah. That's a good way to frame it. All right. Speaking of that, let's frame the topic of the day. What we're talking about here. Daniel and I were talking about, okay, all these different topics we want to talk about. And something I realized with Daniel is that probably the easiest thing that you can do to radically change the sale of your consumer product, the amount of your B2B content getting downloaded or registered for how many donations your nonprofit is getting is not your Actual offer, your creative, your automation stream, your landing page, any of that. Believe it or not, it's the simplest thing. It is the title, it is the name of your content piece, it is the name of your offer, it is the name of your sale. And marketers get so confused. Your offer name, your sale name is not your dog. You can change the name of that offer, that content piece. And if you're not testing an AB version of just the title of your offer or sale or donation push it is the easiest thing to test and it is the thing that you're probably not doing that could have the biggest impact on, on all of your conversions.

[B]

I also have a deep feeling that you don't have to marry to like that offer name for everyone. You can personalize names to groups of your audience and still package it the same. But if, if you're, if you have different sections in your, in your audience and they respond differently to different words or different ways you frame things, it's also good to send emails or do paid ads framing it. One way to this with this title and then to another person frame it. But I do agree the A B testing smart. We do this all the time as marketers email subject lines, but we don't. If you're on social, you do it on thumbnails. If you're on Instagram, you do try. If you're doing a new trial reels but we don't think about like should we Change it to 5xyz or the ultimate this playbook or but we just say let's just put it out there and why is my content not getting viewed most of the time? It's the hook, it's the title that is not opening it.

[A]

So all right, so I want to give you some quick, simple tests coming out of this that you can try. It couldn't be easier. All you need to do on that next, whatever push that you're doing could be a content piece, could be a consumer sale, could be a nonprofit push. All you're going to do is literally change a word. That's it. It's like called your modifier only test. So for example, let's say you were pushing, you know, the HR guide for SMBs. That's your offer title, which is horrendous, generic and boring. Change it to Quick Fix hr guide for SMBs. Do a head to head test. A version, boring version, B version you stick in that, that modifier. What would you rather download, the HR guide for SMBs or the Quick Fix HR guide for SMBs? And let's say you're promoting. Let's say I was trying to push out an email framework. Would it be called email framework for 2026 or the simple email framework for 2026? Or if it was a skincare sale. It's not your skin care sale, it's your glow up skin care sale. You can throw in literally one modifier word, do an AB test. See the, the impact it has on your conversions. This isn't like an open rate or click through rate. This is conversions. It could not be easier to try that.

[B]

And I also think that in any tests that you ever do in marketing, this should be only a slight modifier like that. There should be something that is testable. You can have two or more modifiers in a test. You can't have a whole sentence changing on both things. That's why I think even in subject lines, the way to do it properly is capitalize one word and lowercase on the other one. Or change a word, the first word or the second word, put, stop, put, emoji and test those little things. Because if you test the whole subject line, yeah, maybe one will open. But what did you learn from the test of that you're never going to use that subject line again. But it's easy to use something that, okay, caps work better, emojis work better. These type of word, like action words work better. You need to have some slight modifier, not big modifiers when you're doing AB tests.

[A]

Yeah, great. Easy use of ChatGPT or whatever you use. Just go on there and say, this is my offer. What are one to two word phrases that I could use as modifiers for this offer title? And it'll give you a bunch of them. Couldn't be easier. I am telling you this. Have a radical impact on your actual conversions. All right, Daniel, back to the beginning here. Handling, you know, work stress. I started. You're going to make fun of me. I'm going to see what you say to this. I started a few weeks ago meditating in the morning. Every time I wake up in the morning now, and before I look at my phone, I do a 10 minute meditation. Am I the weirdest, biggest nerd now of all time? What do you think?

[B]

No, that's not the first thing you do, though.

[A]

No, it is. What do I do?

[B]

Don't you go and go burn your eyes?

[A]

Oh, I stare at the sun. I said, yeah.

[B]

And then you.

[A]

Yeah, I stare at the sun for a minute. Sometimes the sun's not out yet, though, because it's so early. So I look for something outside and then I do a 10 minute meditation and then I get going with my diet. Is that the latest?

[B]

I used to. I used to work for this company, Snack Nation, that was like all into that stuff. So for like a year I would do everything. I would like a B test, like if I go vegan versus this on this diet, like, what would happen? Or. Yeah, so it's not. But I. I don't know where this came from. Maybe now you. That you sold.

[A]

It's like, because I thought I was going to drop dead on my dad.

[B]

Now you need meditation.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. No, like, okay, what else could I do? I'm doing all this, like, weird stuff. I want to go get acupuncture.

[B]

Are you using a headspace or are you using.

[A]

I'm using. I was using headspace. I just tried. I'm now using the Peloton app. They have a lot of. They have a lot of apps, actually.

[B]

Really good. Even if you don't have a Peloton.

[A]

Yeah, I agree. I'm going the Peloton. I just use the app for meditation. It's great.

[B]

I know. Just like that's one of the smartest things they did is they, like, they just had. Because I remember using the Peloton like seven years ago. Like, my heart rate go all through the roof. And not.

[A]

I would be like the last one. They're like, you're in 7,000th place. I'm like, this sucks.

[B]

Well, this has been so informative, everybody. You guys, I know you love hearing our, our stories of now. The, the, the goal today is go do a five minute meditation. It's going to be good for you. And till next one, later.

[A]

Daniel, come on, man. I gotta get back to work. Get out of there. All right, while he's still in there. This is Jay. Check out my podcast, do this, not that for marketers. Each week we share really quick tips on stuff that can improve your marketing and hope you give it a try. Oh, here's Daniel. He's finally out.

[B]

Back from my bathroom break. This is Daniel. Go follow the mark in the last podcast, but also tune into this series. It's really once a week, the Bathroom Break. We talk about marketing tips that we just spew out. And it could be anything from email, subject line to any marketing tips in the world. We'll talk about it. Just give us a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out.

[A]

Later.