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Foreign.
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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.
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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, different marketing topics, and if you want to be in the bathroom, fine, just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out.
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We are back with another episode of the Bathroom Break. I am here with the gym bro, Jay Shon. And I am Daniel Murray. And I want to talk about why I call him the gym bro. Because I just figured out that this guy for the last two years goes to the gym three times a week and he runs Saturday, Sunday, so he's really some sort of athlete out here. So I know New Year's resolutions are happening. Or how do you get to the gym three times a week? And how. What do you suggest for people to do that?
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Okay, don't follow anything. I do, health wise. I do go. I've been going for three years so you could screw off three days a week. I go at around 6:45 in the morning. All right, which is absolutely terrible. And I'm not, I'm a very horrible worker outer. And I also get very embarrassed. So like where I go to this gym in like my community area and I get there and if I go to use the bench press, I'm very weak. And so I try to wait until people that I don't know are nowhere near the bench press because I don't want them to see how weak I am because that would really bring shame to my family. So that's. I'm not thinking about getting healthy or getting stronger. I'm just thinking about how embarrassed I am by how weak I am when I'm at the gym. What do you think about that?
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I like that. I mean, I have been kicking off tennis again and I been trying to go at times when nobody could see me playing because I haven't played for five months. So I don't want to get embarrassed when, if someone comes and sees and they say, what happened to you? So I'm. I'm going as early as possible to play tennis these days, so.
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Well, let me ask you something, meaning a gym bro. So if everyone there doesn't know, Daniel doesn't talk about a lot. But he was a D1 college football player, University of Cincinnati. Like, real time. Whatever. I want to know something, because you used to have. You were a big dude. You had a bench press a lot. What was your Max best bench press in your life?
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I think it was like 425.
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Wow, that's crazy. That's crazy.
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And now, now it's probably like 205. So we'll see.
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That's crazy. You're like, tough. Don't mess with Daniel, what is your Max Brands press?
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We should. Everybody should know.
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Six pounds. All right, let's get into it. Listen, what we want to talk about today is something that works in social media. It works in email, it works in all marketing. And it's going to annoy you that it works, but it does, which is this idea of telling people what to do. And it's in our subconscious, but when you actually tell somebody what you want them to do in your copy, in your social post copy, in your images, in everything, it crushes it. So, Daniel, do you use this tactic and how have you tried it?
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Yeah, I think one way I like to do this is in ads or content and saying it at the end, screenshot this and send this to your team. Save this for later. It helps. The one metric I always try in content is shareability and getting that share button hit. But you sometimes have to remind people to do that. So if you have that at the end where you say screenshot it, send it to people. Especially even in my email where I might have a guide or something, say, save this and send this to your team. Or as a cta, you, you'll want to screenshot this. Something where you're going to tell people exactly the action that you want them to take. I think it Click here. The click here button is a little bit dead now, I would say, and I don't like to say that buttons are dead, but it's not going to perform as good as telling people what to do. And there's some other ways that I think about it, but I wanted you to go into some ways you're using it as well.
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Yeah. I'll tell you two ways that we're using. We've tested and it's worked really well. So email in this subject line, if you actually start your subject line, and this is from our subject line.com data. If you start your subject line with open this right or open this email, it actually lifts the open rates by about 15% from what we've seen, which is ridiculous because you're Telling somebody what to do. But if you've never tested that, that's a great simple test to try. And it's a little bit annoying that it works. You're like, screw off, I don't want to listen to you. But, but for some reason the subconscious we react to what we're told to do. And we also have tested this quite a bit on, on LinkedIn where we'll put out a post, like a carousel post with some sort of, you know, useful tactic. And we'll do a test of including save this post. We'll put that like in the top portion of the copy versus not having it. And when we include save this post, we actually now because LinkedIn has changed there what you could see, we actually see a lot more LinkedIn saves and we could see that in the analytics when we say save this post. So by telling people you know exactly what you want them to do, it will give you a boost in performance. Yeah.
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Some other places I've seen and I've wanted to test this and I'm going to test this in 2026 is buttons on your website or your nav bar. Instead of like saying content, you could say learn here or have a what action they're going to take at that button. Instead of saying content library, you could say learn here or instead of community, you could say network here. Having a idea what they're going to do when they click that button is way better I feel like than just having obvious titles that everybody is doing. I think you got to tell people what they're going to expect when they click that button and when they land on that, that page. And I think I'm betting that it will help retention when you, when you say this is what the action I want you to take when you do click this button or watch this piece of content or view this ad, more people will do that action and you'll retain them longer that way.
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Yeah, and in a lot of ways we've been all doing this, but we're doing it in a horribly boring way. Like we're telling people, you know, let's say for an event or a webinar saying register, you're trying to tell the person to register or if it's a consumer offer, buy now. But you're telling them that at the very end and you're telling it in this very self serving way as opposed to on the upfront. You know, open this, read this, save this, screenshot, this. Instead of just doing it at the end of the motion, do it at the Beginning of the motion so you can get more people to actually make it to the end of the motion.
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The hardest thing to do in marketing and what our job is is to get attention. But once you have attention, the next thing you need to do is invest in ways in capturing that attention. Because you, you spend all this money to get this person to a landing page or to your content or something. So, and all I'm saying to do is test these, test different CTA's buttons to make them more action forward instead of just generic and see if there's a lift in your content, see if there's a lift in your downloads, see if there's a left in your saves. And like what Jay said, which is something is gold, is if a platform is tracking that metric like LinkedIn tracking saves. Instagram tracks the share button or remit repost button. If you're saying those things and people are doing those action that gives you signal that you're trending in the right direction.
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All right, so back to our gym bros thing. I want to know something like when you are at the gym, are you the type of dude who, if you're using something, you leave a towel on there on the bench or on the machine and then you go somewhere else, do something else and you come back or do you take it with you wherever you go? Like, are you trying to like hold on to your thing? Are you a jerk like that?
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I think it depends on how busy that place is at the time. So I'm pretty conscious that if, if the gym is busy, I'm just going to stick to my machine. But if, if it's an empty gym and there's my worst is when there's two people in the gym and you, you have a little rotation going and someone goes to take that machine when there's a thousand other machines in the gym and they will need to use that machine in that moment. I, I, that's when I get annoyed. The other times I'm, I'm pretty conscious that hey, there's a lot of people in this gym. I am not hogging this machine. Or if I'm going to do this, I just say you can work in with me and do that. I, I'm pretty but I think it's the worst to just save a machine.
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Yeah. For some horrible bad gym etiquette, which is absolutely the worst. But Daniel's actually going now every single day at 5 in the morning. Oh, did you see this, by the way? This is so wild. I saw Marky Mark or whatever his name, Mark Wahlberg. He was on the news. He was talking about his sleeping whatever. He gets up at 3 in the morning, he said, and he goes to bed at 6:30 at night.
B
Sounds like you're a sketcher. I don't know what you're. I don't know what's different than what you do every single day.
A
6:30 is crazy. He's going to sleep. Like, that's.
B
Like that literally is my baby schedule. My baby goes to sleep at 7 and wakes up at 3:30 every single morning. So he's literally my baby.
A
But he said he wants to spend more time with his kids. But I'm like, dude, you're going to bed before your kids. I'm like, I don't know.
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Your kids ain't working. Waking up at 3:30.
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What's going on? I don't know what's going on. All right, again, I don't know what's going on with this podcast, but you guys all crush it. Leave Daniel a review. Leave me a review. I don't know. We'll check in the next one. 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.
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Back from my bathroom break. This is Daniel. Go follow the Market Millennials podcast, but also tune into this series. It's 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.
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Later.
Podcast: The Marketing Millennials
Host: Daniel Murray
Guest: Jay Schwedelson
Episode: Bathroom Break #88
Date: December 29, 2025
In this episode of "Bathroom Break," a special short-form series from The Marketing Millennials, Daniel Murray teams up with Jay Schwedelson (subjectline.com, "Do This, Not That" podcast) to unravel the subtle but powerful role of psychology in creating high-performing Calls to Action (CTAs). The focus is on actionable insights for marketers aiming to boost engagement and response rates across email, social, and website experiences.
Jay (04:23): "If you start your [email] subject line with 'open this'...it actually lifts open rates by about 15% from what we've seen. It's ridiculous, because you're telling somebody what to do."
Daniel (03:17): "I think one way I like to do this is in ads or content and saying it at the end, 'screenshot this and send this to your team', 'save this for later'."
Jay (04:23): "It’s a little bit annoying that it works...our subconscious reacts to what we're told to do."
Daniel (05:26): "Instead of saying 'content library', you could say 'learn here'...having an idea what they’re going to do when they click that button is way better than just having obvious titles."
Jay (06:30): "Instead of just doing it at the end of the motion, do it at the beginning...so you can get more people to actually make it to the end."
Daniel (06:59): "Test different CTA buttons to make them more action forward instead of just generic...If a platform is tracking that metric...that gives you signal that you’re trending in the right direction."
The banter keeps a relaxed, self-effacing, and actionable tone (with regular digressions about gym anxiety and celebrity routines). The hosts advocate for relentless experimentation and data-driven iterations when it comes to CTAs, urging marketers to embrace uncomfortable truths about human psychology—even if it sometimes "annoys you that it works." The key actionable advice:
Spell out the desired action, make it specific, and measure everything.
For ongoing marketing experiments and tips, the hosts suggest trying direct CTAs widely and tracking the impact—because telling people exactly what to do, it turns out, is still among the most reliable marketing hacks.