December 26, 2022 • 46 mins
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In this episode, we talk with Jay Schwedelson, the founder of SubjectLine.com which is the leading free subject-line rating tool ranked in the top 1% of all websites worldwide. Jay is also the president and CEO of Worldata Group, a multi-brand marketing services company whose portfolio includes Subjectline.com, Outcome Media and Guru Events which puts on the GURU conference, the world’s largest email marketing event. He has keynoted and presented for more than 50 organizations and has been named to Crain’s Top 100 Industry Leaders for 10 consecutive years.
Tune in to hear:
- His opinion on the overall state of email marketing is compared to other channels.
- Some of the most common challenges he hears from marketers when it comes to email marketing and if the issues are different for B2B vs B2C marketers.
- Jay’s suggestions for some simple and quick tweaks to improve open rates for email campaigns.
- What he thinks are the best days, times or frequencies for sending emails?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Michael Hartmann (00:00):
Hello, everyone.
Welcome to another episode ofOpsCast, brought to you by
marketing ops.com, powered bythe MO Pros.
I am your host, MichaelHartmann.
Joined today by both co-hostNaomi Liu and Mike Rizzo.
Naomi coming fresh off of herrecent solo hosting job.
Nice job, Naomi.
Naomi Liu (00:15):
Thank Thank you.
It was much more difficult thanit appeared.
Isn't that the case that I madeit always for sure.
I was like, yeah.
is it recording?
Am I getting everything correct?
Can they hear me?
Mike Rizzo (00:26):
Oh my gosh.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I remember when I had to hostone by myself and I was like, I
don't even know how to intromyself.
I, I hiccuped up, I hiccuped,and I was like, I am not Michael
Hartman.
Like that, that, that was whatcame outta my mouth.
Naomi Liu (00:38):
Mm-hmm.
Michael Hartmann (00:39):
Uh, makes, yeah.
so rough.
So rough.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, joining us today with thiscraziness is Jay Schwedelson.
Jay fender of subjectline.com,uh, which is a subject line
rating tool.
If you haven't used it, it's agood thing.
We do use it.
Jay is also the president andCEO of World Data Group and
multi-brand marketing servicescompany.
(01:01):
The port portfolio includessubject line.com, outcome media
and guru events, which puts on aconference called Guru
Conference, the world's largestemail marketing event.
So he's also been a keynotespeaker and presented for many
organizations.
So Jay, thank you for joining ustoday.
Jay Schwedelson (01:17):
Yeah.
Fired up to be here.
This is gonna be fun.
Michael Hartmann (01:19):
Yeah, let's I, we'll try to keep it light.
Um.
But you know, if you saysomething, you know, that we
wanna question, we will.
Especially Naomi, nothing getsby her.
All right.
So, uh, you know, one of thethings I wanted to start out
with cuz since clearly you're anemail advocate, right?
So yeah, there's a lot of thingsthese days about things like
(01:43):
dark social and social media andemails dead.
you know, what is your take onkind of the current state of
email marketing as it comparedto other channels?
Like what are you hearing do andif you have any data even
better.
Jay Schwedelson (01:59):
Yeah, look, I mean, I obviously always stand
on the email soapbox cause theworld that I'm in, uh, but I
don't think there's ever been abetter time to be, uh, really
focused in.
On your email marketing effortsfor, for a couple reasons.
Number one, um, a lot of usspend a lot of time doing, you
know, content creation and, andputting these out on social.
But we, you know, we have tolive by the, the algorithms,
(02:21):
right?
You put something on social,maybe 10% of your audience sees
it.
Who knows?
Um, you run display ads.
Nobody's interacting with thatemail is the only channel that
exists that you are in controlof getting in front of your
entire.
Uh, in some sort of long form,uh, way that you want to
communicate, and it's the onlychannel where you're, you know,
(02:43):
fully owning, uh, that data set.
You know, uh, look what'shappened with Twitter.
Twitter's changed in the matterof 30 days.
The dynamic has totally changedthere.
And if your go-to-marketstrategy has been Twitter as
your primary outlet, it's like,uh oh, what does that mean?
Right?
But so email allows you a, anability to control things, and
then the people that say email'sdead or it doesn't work, in my
(03:04):
humble opinion.
We're just not using it theright way or not staying up to
late date with the little thingsthat, that make email work.
So, so, uh, to not invest timein email I think is, is an epic
fail.
Michael Hartmann (03:17):
Yeah.
I mean, I, there's a part of methat also thinks a similar story
could be told about like, directmarketing, which is kind of
where I cut my teeth inmarketing was direct and
database marketing.
So I think it's anunderutilized.
uh, although it's making alittle bit of a comeback, I
guess, But I'm curious then, um,you, you mentioned right, not
using things well or, or allthat, so what are, what do you
(03:40):
see as some of the biggestchallenges out there for people
when they're, you know, emailmarketing is, and, and we talked
a little bit about this beforewe start recording, but like,
uh, we know, I think theprimary, the majority of our
audience is probably a littlemore B2B than b2c, but if you
see, are those differences inwhat you're seeing between those
as.
Jay Schwedelson (03:59):
Yeah, I think the biggest thing that, that
holds marketers back when itcomes to email is that they rely
on, uh, information from emailexperts, which I never, you
know, pretend to, to say that Iam one.
And what I mean by that is thereis so much legacy information on
the internet about email.
Best practices or what is anemail best practice?
You know, there, there arethings out there like, you know,
(04:20):
avoid spam trigger words.
That's why you go, uh, into thejunk folder or you can't send
this many times cuz you'll getunsubscribes and that's a
horrible thing, which also isnot true.
Or a series of of other, youknow, myths that are just
perpetuated.
Frankly, very lazy email expertsthat are out there that continue
to share information that's from10 years ago.
(04:43):
And so marketers rely on thisridicuLius information and they
don't use the latest strategiesand things that actually work
and their performance isterrible.
And then they say email is dead.
And, and that's, that's whatgoes on in the world.
And it frustrates me, obviously.
Michael Hartmann (04:56):
What, so I'm curious when, when you hear
people say that email's notworking or not effective, like
what do you think people arebasing that on?
Does it, do you think it's ametric based thing, or is it a
gut feel?
I mean, I have, I, I have mysuspicion on what your answer's
gonna be, but I'm curious whatyou see.
Jay Schwedelson (05:13):
You know, I think that they, they'll, let's
use webinars, right?
So a lot ofb, B2B marketers willuse a webinar as a content
vehicle.
They'll go out and say, okay,I'm gonna promote a webinar, and
they'll write a subject line.
Then the first word in theirsubject line will be webinar.
And then they'll be like, youknow, the five latest tips for
accounting software.
And they'll get, no, nobody openit.
Very few clickthroughs.
I'm like, ah, email sticks,right?
(05:34):
It didn't work for me.
Whatever.
And.
As an example of, of how to makethat work, you know, what we're
seeing, for example, uh, in datain the last, let's say six
months, is the word webinarsreally stink.
Nobody wants webinars anymore.
They're epicly boring, don'twanna put'em on their calendar.
So what we found is marketers,for example, that are promoting
webinars in email when theyleave the word webinar out of
(05:54):
their subject line.
and they're just promoting thetopic.
The topic says the five latest,you know, accounting software
tools, and they go into themessage and then it's promoting
the webinar in the message.
It's exponentially higher.
Uh, increase in performancetactics like that, uh, uh,
really work.
And that's when it's changed inthe last 12 months cuz webinars
(06:15):
become like a stained word.
So the people that just rely on,okay, I'm gonna do the same
thing like a robot webinar, putin the subject line, blah, blah.
that's the people that are, thatare seeing failure, uh, because
it's always changing.
A year from now will bedifferent, and that's you've
gotta constantly be doing thelatest, newest thing,
Mike Rizzo (06:33):
That resonates greatly with me.
Uh, we,
Michael Hartmann (06:36):
we, we strategically
Mike Rizzo (06:38):
try to keep the word webinar out of as many of the
types of things that, that wetalk about all the time.
Michael Hartmann (06:44):
Right?
That's funny.
I don't get, I don't get it.
Like, cuz what else do you use?
Like I get, I get the, I getthat it's a, something that
maybe people are averse.
Two because they've been on somany virtual things, but like,
what other word do you usebesides.
Can't be discussion.
Okay.
Yeah.
fireside chat.
But it's still But it's still awebinar, right?
Mike Rizzo (07:05):
It is.
It is.
It still is.
But I, like today, I was on afireside chat with Darrell.
Right.
We did that for an hour.
Um, and, and we do paneldiscussions and we do, uh, group
workshops.
Right.
And even a workshop can be a oneway conversation.
uh, that's presenting a thing onhow to do something that is like
(07:25):
one video, one way conversation.
Uh, and, and, and so to thatpoint, like not to dive too far
into, you know, what, whether ornot to use a webinar or not.
Um, coming back to this emailthing, like we, we strategically
try to keep it out and part ofit is like, I personally anchor
on webinar sounds like a.
right?
Like I, like, I don't even knowwhen it is that it's gonna
(07:48):
happen, but I know that it takestime That's, and right, there's
time that I do not have.
And so when I see the wordwebinar, I'm anchored on
commitment and I immediately go,I have no time for that
commitment.
Jay Schwedelson (07:59):
You know?
And it's, it's to, and, youknow, playing off of that, uh,
so webinar is a commitment,which is a problem.
So what's been working reallywell, these same, in the same
boat of people that think, youknow, email doesn.
on demand.
Video content used to behorrible.
Right?
Three years ago, if you said ondemand, it was like, ugh, that's
like old legacy, bad.
on demand video content becausewe've all been like, Netflix,
(08:22):
right?
Is killing it.
It does so well.
But when we promote on demand,we don't say on demand.
We actually just say, watch now.
Cause on demand sounds old watchnow sounds active and new and
things like that.
So it's literally an email.
There's no silver bullet,there's no one thing that you're
gonna do.
You know, to, to Mike's pointabout trying to call it
something different and testingthat all out, those little
(08:43):
things have a, have a hugeimpact on your overall
performance, and that's, that'show you get emailed to work,
Yeah.
Mike Rizzo (08:50):
Yeah.
And, and this ties into theoverarching, you know, I, I feel
like the overarching theme here,is the webinar isn't the
problem, it's the content.
Yes, you can do the, thestrategic initiative to put
content into the world throughthe lens of, uh, whatever.
(09:13):
Watch now on Demand Live,discussions.
Is a, is a, is an approach,email is a delivery mechanism to
try to get that content in frontof somebody, but at the end of
the day, you omitting the wordwebinar is gonna impact your
emails, open rates, but whetheror not you're actually
resonating with your audience onthe content that they care about
is sort of the next layer,right?
(09:34):
So like email's not dead,webinars aren't dead, but your
content strategy might need tobe reworked a little bit.
Michael Hartmann (09:41):
Yeah, that makes sense.
that's kind of what it comes
Mike Rizzo (09:43):
down to for me.
But, I do like removing thosewords and I really appreciate
the tip Jay.
Unfortunately, now everybody inthis community who listens to
this episode is gonna be like,oh, I'm not using on demand
anymore.
I'm using
Michael Hartmann (09:56):
Watch
Mike Rizzo (09:58):
Cause like, I'm about to go like, send that to
our team and be like, oh yeah,let's start using watch now.
Cause I've been using
Jay Schwedelson (10:04):
On Demand and I've been bothered by it.
Right, right, right.
Totally.
Michael Hartmann (10:08):
So i, I wanna go back to, I think the question
about what, what maybe whatconstitutes success.
And naomi, I'm gonna put you alittle bit on the spot here
because I know, I admire whatyou've described, how you work
with your organization and givethem feedback about what's
worked and what's not.
I'm curious, like do you wait,from your perspective, what do
you usually look at when itcomes to email performance?
(10:30):
Or are you looking at that asjust a part of an overall
performance for, say, a generalcampaign?
Naomi Liu (10:35):
I I would definitely say a, a part of a larger
picture, right, because it.
I mean, I guess it depends onwhat the email campaign's for,
um, at least in our industry,you know, we're, we're generally
not generating, um, sales orconversions from an email,
right?
When you're talking aboutproducts that are in the six, 7
(10:56):
million.
Six or$7 figure range, right?
So for us it's, a lot of it isawareness, brand building, um,
customer testimonials, uh, totalcost of ownership, things like
that.
Um, when it comes to things likeclick through rates and open
rates, it's been definitely aneducation piece for myself and
(11:17):
my business partners over thepast.
Um, I would say like, Year orso, but solidly within the last
six months, especially when wefind things like, and I don't
know if you guys noticed this,but things around, um, uh,
software on the recipient sidewhere they're just opening all
of the emails and clicking allthe links.
And I can see that right?
Where I go through the activitylogs and it's like, person
(11:38):
received it and then one secondlater they've clicked all of the
links and then email within halfa second.
Right?
So it's just, it's kind of like,Those metrics really, I, I'm
looking at it more from a trendperspective as opposed to like
an individual email perspective.
What I really care about islike, are they hitting the
landing page at what, you know,how long are they spending on
it?
Are they filling out the form?
Um, are they then going to otherareas of our site?
(12:00):
Those are the things that I'mcaring about more.
Um, and so just making sure thatwhen I have conversations with
my business partners that it'snot just the email, right?
Like the email is an invitationto consume the content.
It's not the content.
That's kind of like the messagethat I've been giving.
Michael Hartmann (12:15):
Yeah.
I mean, that resonates with me,Jay like your perspective too.
I mean, one of the things I, Idunno that I would say learn,
but maybe a little bit of olderschools, like to me the purpose
of an email is to get someone toread it and click through and do
it next step.
Right?
And I see a lot of people try toshove a lot of content in the
email and I think it actuallydeters people from doing that
next step to what I think Naomiwas hitting it.
(12:36):
Right.
Do they get to that next stepand then do they stay engaged at
that point?
Is do you think, what's yourperspective on how you measure
the effectiveness of email, Iguess is the question about
Jay Schwedelson (12:46):
Well, you know, a couple things.
and I only touched on somethingwhich is, uh, uh, uh, bot bot
activity, uh, uh, and, andmetrics being impacted by, you
know, different, uh, networkintrusion software or apples iOS
15 changes and how that'simpacted inflated.
Things like open rate metricsand whatnot.
And, you know, uh, what you'llhear out in the world is, you
(13:06):
know, open rates are right?
Don't track open rate anymore.
It's not relevant metric.
And all this stuff.
Focus on the click.
And it kind of drives me bonkersbecause, um, to Naomi's point,
she's, she's, she's correct inthat.
um, email metrics really shouldbe used for directional
purposes, right?
You should have the mostimportant metrics for any email
(13:27):
marketing program are your own,uh, where you wanna benchmark
the different types of emailsyou send out.
So you have your newsletteremail, you have your, your offer
related promotional emails, youhave your winback strategy
emails, you know, you have thesedifferent buckets of types of
emails, and then you wannabenchmark your own metrics.
Okay?
Our newsletter is an average ofa 35% open rate and a 4% click.
(13:48):
You know that that's not real.
You know that that's not anabsolute number.
Cause there's bots and there'sgarbage out there.
But next week when you send outyour newsletter, you tweak the
subject line, you change the dayof the week, and all of a sudden
you're a 47% open rate.
You know that you did somethinggood, right?
You beat yourself.
So, uh, directional metrics, uh,to me are.
Are where it's at, uh, in email,um, and incredibly valuable.
(14:13):
And I, I would not, I wouldnever discount, you know, open
or any other thing that's outthere.
Uh, but it is just, you know,it's one piece of the overall
pie.
Michael Hartmann (14:22):
Yeah, it's, it's interesting you bring out
the Apple thing.
We actually were, as anorganization where I'm at now,
we, we spent a lot of time sortof prepping for that and trying
to identify who were the likelypeople that were using the Apple
devices to open emails and, um,anticipating we might have to
start splitting them out to getbetter metrics.
And it turns out like ouroverall open rates really didn't
(14:44):
change.
Jay Schwedelson (14:45):
Yeah.
I, I, it was a big nothingburger.
I mean, some people still freakout about the apple iOS,
whatever, but, um, yeah, itinflates things a little bit,
but you're naive to think it'san absolute metric anyway.
Right, right.
And then what people then sitdown, like, what do I do if I'm
gonna do an automation campaign?
Do I send out, you know, youwould send out the first email
and then do I send out toopeners and non-op openers and
(15:08):
do I know who really opened?
And it's like, who care?
Just send it out.
Nobody is sitting back beinglike, holy cow, they just sent
me a second email.
Who are these people?
Right?
Anybody?
that's on the fence about tounsubscribe.
They're not about to buy.
Right?
They're not like gonna fill upyour funnel, be a great, you
(15:28):
know, M Q L.
All of a sudden they didn't likeyou that much.
They changed their role, theydon't need you.
Right?
They've moved on.
Life happens.
People unsubscribe.
and so, uh, uh, the whole iOSthing took people down this
rabbit hole of not knowing whatto do with their automation
program I was like, dude, relax,send another email to everybody.
It's okay.
Michael Hartmann (15:49):
Yeah, it was, I'm gonna steal that term.
Nothing.
Burger.
I've probably heard it before,but first time in a long time.
I chuckled a bit
Mike Rizzo (15:57):
too.
I was like, I like this.
I want to use that.
I'm gonna have to note thatsomewhere.
Michael Hartmann (16:01):
I had to quickly hit mute.
I
Mike Rizzo (16:05):
agree though.
I, I think, uh, I think it wasa, a bunch Of inflated, like
kinda hoopla.
We didn't see a bunch of change.
And we, we certainlylike@marketingapps.com, we're
communicating with individualsmore so than a business email.
Like the majority of ourdatabases made up of
professionals which use personalemail, right?
(16:25):
Yeah.
Because they're here as aprofessional Um, and we didn't
like, so you would expect thaton those personal emails, you
might, you might see a biggerright?
Because they're using their ownpersonal devices to manage their
email.
Yeah.
Um, but yeah, we didn't see aton.
It was a big nothing burger.
after to create
Jay Schwedelson (16:43):
Right?
Yeah.
Life went on.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Michael Hartmann (16:47):
like, like so many things.
Um, so, uh, continuing on thistheme, I guess, of like, how do
you know if it's effective?
Right?
So one of the things, so let'ssay you get your open rate and
compared to last time you'redoing well or, or worse, but you
get people to open it and youwant them again from my
perspective.
Right.
I think the goal is to get themto take that next action, which
(17:08):
is typically clicking onsomething to go somewhere.
Um, what, what are you seeingout there that is maybe causing
marketers to have challengeswith people doing that next
step?
Right?
Getting to say a landing page.
And if you wanna go a stepfurther, right?
If, assuming there's.
sort of call to action or stepto take on those landing pages?
(17:28):
What's,
Jay Schwedelson (17:29):
yeah, that's a great question.
So the first thing I would thinkabout is who you're marketing
too, right?
So you have your bo your bucketof prospects or, or, or people.
fairly cold, you know, and notpeople that are truly engaging.
And then you have your eitherexisting customers or people
that you know do engage with youguys quite a bit.
Those are two very differentpopulations of people, and you
can't market to them with theWay.
(17:50):
What I mean by that is, and we,and we see it all the time in
the data, if you're marketing toa prospect or somebody who's
basically a prospect, uh, theamount of words that you could
have in that email, uh, theamount of words that you could
have in a paragraph, the amountof lines that could be in a
paragraph, it has to be soincredibly tight and short, as
opposed to somebody that likesyou, that buys from you, that
interacts with you.
You can be more verbose becauseif they're a prospect, they
(18:12):
barely open to that email.
They barely care about you.
So if you have just, it's likegetting a text from a friend or
something.
If it's a big block text, you'relike, oh, you know, you're like,
I'll read that, you know, later.
I do not have the mind share tolook at that thing, right?
It's the same thing with email.
If you open it up and there's abig chunk of text, you're like,
Nope.
(18:33):
Piece out nothing.
I don't want, this is zero.
I'm not interested.
So you have to make it forprospects.
Super fast.
Couple bullet.
One hero image, and then yourcall to action button.
People don't spend enough timein their call to action button.
They're call to action button.
You don't wanna say things like,like, register, right?
You wanna say things like, savemy seat.
When you talked, you know, Miketalked earlier about, you know,
(18:54):
commitment.
It's this idea of commitment orbenefit, and that call to action
button is so important.
You know when you are, let'ssay, talking about a webinar an
event and it says, save my seat,instead of register, like, yeah,
want them to save my seat.
Right?
Or it's, uh, let's say you'repromoting a report, it's
download or it's get my freereport.
Right.
What is, what are you writingthat call to action button,
(19:16):
which is a super importantvariable, and the closer that
you can have that call to actionbutton be, uh, uh, describing
the awesome offer that you'regiving the person, right?
The, the more active, the more,the higher the clickthrough that
you're gonna receive, and thenyou take into the landing page
and you do it again.
right?
The worst word in the world ofmarketing is submit.
I don't know how the hell thatshowed up in the marketing
(19:37):
vernacular, but it's like someweirdo out there probably
started this like 20 years ago.
I'm gonna put submit, and that'sthe word or worse click here,
right.
is time.
What are we talking about?
You know what I mean?
And so thinking about theselittle things, they may seem
like but it is the differencemaker between success and
failure for these campaigns.
Uh, these little things add up.
You know, what you put in thesubject line, what you put in
(19:59):
your friendly from, it shouldn'tjust be your regular, you know,
from name, you know what you'redoing in the pre-header, what
you're doing.
at cold action buttons.
It all adds up to, to massivechange in performance.
Mike Rizzo (20:10):
I think those are all really, I've, I have other
questions and uh, for youopinions that I want to hear
from you, but, um, I, I.
Specifically at one point triedto because I, like, we were
struggling with this idea oflike, what do you put in a cta?
Um, and I think it was like todownload some ebook or something
like that.
(20:30):
And so I, I like hand coded my,my, my button, right?
I didn't use whatever tooloffered the button, and I like
hand coded this button.
And then I like put in likesmaller texts underneath the
primary call to action, whichwas like, download your copy.
or something.
Right?
Right underneath that.
I was like trying to cater tothe audience and there's no form
(20:51):
on this Like I tried to be, likeyou said, like be as specific to
the like, thing that you can be.
I was like, no form
Jay Schwedelson (20:57):
fill required.
un gated ungated would be theright way to say that.
Yeah.
As a matter of fact, that wordright now is trending more like
any other word on B2B marketing.
If you use that in your subjectline as the number one word,
it's like increasing open ratesmore than like any other word
right.
Wow.
to your point.
Mike Rizzo (21:13):
That's crazy.
so, that's so, that's sofascinating.
Um.
my, my, my follow on to, youknow, this, the friendly sender
and stuff like that that youwere sharing is, Yeah.
um, your email sender persona.
what is your, what is your takeon whether or not someone should
(21:34):
have a sender persona?
do not reply.
Right, That's the best.
Jay Schwedelson (21:41):
Yeah.
Mike Rizzo (21:42):
Should it be a real person?
Should it be a made up person orshould it be?
Do not reply.
And I know the answers to thesepersonally, the way that I feel
about it, but
Jay Schwedelson (21:53):
I would love your opinion.
Well, first of all, I mean, itcan never be a fake person.
I mean, that's just an epic failfor so many reasons.
It's an epic
Michael Hartmann (22:00):
fail.
I cannot you like, I was soworried you were not gonna say
that.
Oh, no, no.
I,
Jay Schwedelson (22:05):
it, it's, it is unacceptable.
It's also just not, it's just sobad.
It's just so bad.
And do not reply.
Actually from a, from a realmetric standpoint, it will just
crush your campaign and it'llcrush your soul.
It's, it's very, very bad.
Um, but in terms of stuff comingfrom a person, um, it depends.
(22:26):
I like and the friendly fromand, and to me by the way, the
friendly from, so we talk aboutthe friendly from, for everyone
that's listening and most of youknow this, but you have your
from address and I'm not tellingyou to mess with your from
address.
So if I email you my fromaddress is, you know, jayson
corp wbb.com.
Don't mess with your fromaddress.
Your friend you're from namethat you send it from, you could
change every single mailing.
(22:47):
It costs you nothing.
It takes five seconds.
Can be done on any.
Is one of the biggest factors inwhether or not an email gets
opened or not, and people don'tmess around with it enough.
And what I mean by messingaround with it, you wanna have
it.
If it's not a person, we'll talkabout the person in a second.
It should be tied to your offer,right?
So if you're promoting, uh, anevent, it should be, you know,
Acme event.
(23:08):
If you're promoting, uh, a demo,Acme demo, you know, Acme in a
white paper, that should be inthe from name.
Cuz the sooner you're describingthe offer that's tied in the
subject line, the higher openrates are.
We see it all day long.
Um, but the thing that worksthat friendly from is like Jen.
From Acme, literally writing outthe word from Jen from Acme
(23:30):
works really, really wellbecause now you got brand.
Now you got a person when youjust go with the person, unless
you're a very well known person,right?
Like if you're, I don't know,mark Zuckerberg and he wants to
send out a thing cause it's avery important email.
Great, good for him.
But unless you're a very wellknown person, it's gonna look a
little spammy just coming from astraight up person.
Cuz the game, what are youreally doing?
(23:52):
You're really trying to confusea person and be like, do I know
that person?
Do I go to high school withthem?
Who is this person?
Right?
And then God help you.
If you start the subject linewith the fake forward or the
fake reply, I'll never talk toyou ever again.
And that's how you're trying toget, you know, the emails open.
Cuz that is literally the end ofsociety that that is being used
at all in email marketing in.
Mike Rizzo (24:14):
All right.
Quickly go delete the re colonin the second
Michael Hartmann (24:19):
I'm just kidding.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
Okay.
So yeah, I can't tell you howglad I am.
You said that, like, I've hadpeople ask me like, can we do
fake name?
I'm like, we can.
But we shouldn't.
Right.
Mike Rizzo (24:32):
my, my hope is that there's, there's some marketer
somewhere listening to thisepisode and they're gonna go
grab that like clip
Jay Schwedelson (24:40):
and send it to their boss one.
We changed one person.
Right.
And be like,
Michael Hartmann (24:44):
see, look, someone else is saying
Jay Schwedelson (24:46):
this right, right.
Absolutely.
You know, and one thing you dohave to think about if you are
gonna send from a person a lotof, uh, uh, uh, when you're
sending out from whateverplatform you're on, anytime you
send from a person, you have tobe set up to receive actual
replies, right?
We've seen this a million timeswhere you send out a campaign.
I don't care if it's abeautifully structured HTML
campaign.
(25:07):
And when it comes from a person,people are inclined to hit reply
and think they're talking to ahuman.
And so many times you set it up,those replies go into the ether,
go nowhere cause it's being setup like a regular campaign.
So if it's gonna come from aperson, make sure you are
infrastructurally set up tohandle replies.
Michael Hartmann (25:23):
Yep.
I'm in the process of doing thatwith our sales teams right now,
so that we can send stuff fromhim that I should come back.
Mike Rizzo (25:30):
yeah, that is one of the hardest ones that I, I've
had to try to tackle in mymarketing ops career is, um,
setting up the inbox.
Right?
So like we would set up analternate, uh, email Elliots for
the CEO or the executive thatthe email was coming Uh, and
then, you know, there's toolscertainly that can look for the
types of replies that are comingin.
(25:51):
So you can unsubscribe somebodyor whatever now, which is
wonderful.
But there's still this problemof like, what if somebody asks
like an actual importantquestion right?
and they're like, who's, who'sin charge of that inbox?
you know?
That's right.
Uh, cuz like you don't want tojust hand off the ability to,
uh, have somebody manage thisinbox to just.
Because like they could, mean,you know, heaven forbid they had
(26:13):
a bad day and they just want tolike, pretend like they're the c
e o of the company and go, youknow, mess with someone and say
like, yeah, here's your freesoftware for life.
It's like, uh, hundred
Michael Hartmann (26:22):
percent.
I think it needs to be, ifyou've got like a BD R S D R
function, like for inbound,that's who I would do.
Maybe just, and I've done thatbefore, just do that.
They're also, they're alsoequipped to handle like someone
who's pissed off, you know?
Right, right.
But it feels like
Mike Rizzo (26:36):
it, like you can't give them the control, right.
To manage the inbox directly.
You have to like find a way toroute it and then, you know,
that's a different challenge.
Like,
Naomi Liu (26:45):
I don't know about you guys, but we also get quite
a few like GDPR and datadeletion requests, um mm-hmm.
and replies to emails.
So it's not something we wouldwant to just farm out to people
who wouldn't necessarily followthe right steps
Michael Hartmann (27:01):
Yeah, totally.
Mike Rizzo (27:03):
I have only had a handful of those in my career,
same, um, so far, but I mean,
Michael Hartmann (27:09):
it's actually like I'm actually getting a
little nervous that we're, thatwe're not paying attention to
that.
Naomi Liu (27:14):
We've probably got a handful of weeks, to be honest.
Michael Hartmann (27:17):
Interesting.
Mm-hmm.
Jay Schwedelson (27:18):
Very interesting.
Yeah.
I, I, uh, I always, I feel badwhen people get, you know, nasty
gram unsubscribes, which if youdo email long enough, you'll get
some, you know, why are yougetting, this is illegal.
You're a terrible person.
You should, you should go tohell, you know, whatever.
Um, And it's always funny to mebecause what happens is somehow
when those nasty grams come in,they'll get circulated up to the
(27:39):
highest ranks of the company.
Like the CEO always got, alwayswinds up in like highest ranks
of the company and then itfilters back down to the
marketing person.
Like, so-and-so got this,they're freaking out and it's
the end of the world.
And then the reaction is likeyou're call meeting like, all
right, let's scale back ouremail marketing efforts, cuz
some schmo out there, this oneperson sent a nasty gram in and
(27:59):
it's.
I mean, it's like drives menuts.
That one dude who had a reallybad day, some out there in the
world, is gonna now impact themarketing program of some
massive organization, and ithappens every day.
Oh yeah,
Michael Hartmann (28:10):
for sure.
Mike Rizzo (28:11):
Uh, yeah, I've, uh, I've always toyed with when the
nasty Graham comes in.
I don't know I dunno about you,you three.
But, um, when I was managingthat reply inbox, I was like, do
I respond and say they've beenremoved, or do I just re like
how do I handle this?
And then on, to top it all off,like, should I let them know
(28:35):
that, like, while you may havebeen able to click the link that
says unsubscribe in the emailthat we sent, you.
I have subsequently adhered likeacquiesced to your request and
deleted your, you know,subscription data from our
system or whatever.
But like even then, it's like Ijust sent an email to tell you
to not email me, and it's like,am I, am I supposed to email
you?
Like, I don't know how to dealwith your request right now.
(28:57):
Uh, can
Jay Schwedelson (28:58):
I text you?
Maybe that's the answer.
Well, I got one the other dayand I was, so I, la it was
through my newsletter was in soI screenshotted and I put on
LinkedIn.
I'm like, there you go.
Look at this.
Dude wrote and I wrote back tothe person I just wrote back.
It was terrible.
I just wrote back smell youlater cause that's what I wrote
back.
Oh,
Michael Hartmann (29:15):
See you later.
see, I think I would just tendto just ignore it.
Like take the action, be donewith it.
Oh know.
Jay Schwedelson (29:20):
Yeah.
It made me laugh.
It makes me feel, it makes, I,it doesn't bother, eh, right.
Well,
Mike Rizzo (29:24):
it, it just makes me chuckle that people can't click
a link like it is there.
And if you're a good emailmarker and you leave it there
and you don't try to bury it inlike almost white text and
you're being genuine about it,
Jay Schwedelson (29:36):
Like uns are good.
Not bad.
Un spent, length are bad.
Un help me help.
Yeah, help me
Mike Rizzo (29:42):
help you.
Michael Hartmann (29:43):
Yeah.
I think, I think, I think someof it also depends on what you
know about your organization.
So like, um, maybe part of why Iwould, wouldn't respond like.
in kind so to speak, or close toit, right, is because I also
recognize it.
Yeah.
Maybe they actually have clickedthe link that said unsubscribe.
But in one of my other, like weactually have two instances that
(30:04):
we use of our platform foremails and people could be in
both, right?
And we are not great aboutkeeping that up to date between
the two, let alone the otherbusiness units that were within
this big company.
Right.
So, That's, that's, I thinkthat's part of, like if we, and
I've had been in other bigorganizations where similar kind
(30:25):
of stuff could have happenedwhere just because of the nature
of things.
So, um, so I think we of that, Iwas like, we need to move on
from this one.
Or we like, it's like, like Ican imagine the kinds of stuff
we're gonna get from this.
Um, uh, so, but I do wanna getyou, you were talking a little
bit Jay, about.
(30:45):
I think you've already hit on acouple things, like the, the
from name, uh, some, maybe some.
I think the way I took it waslike, al like always be testing
new stuff in your subject lines,right?
To see what actually affectsgrades.
And then, um, the way, I guessthe way I'm going is like, I
think of like the way you lookat this overall, right?
(31:07):
Is what's the full journey?
And there's lots of places whereyou could lose people along the
way.
Yeah.
Are there any other kind ofsmall, like cuz of what you
described, but really not,they're not that hard, right?
Like none of that's really hard,but it's like, are there other
things like that with thecontent or landing pages or
things like that that you'veseen that.
Like we should be, we shouldencourage our listeners to be
(31:28):
trying.
Yeah.
Jay Schwedelson (31:29):
Okay.
So small wins, right?
That could have big results.
So let's talk about the subjectline for, for example, you know,
it's so backwards.
It usually happens withmarketers.
They'll, they'll spend all thistime on what's our offer gonna
be, and then, you know, what'sour creative, and then finally,
you know, it gets approved bylegal and oh, it's finally ready
after like all this time.
And then like, what's thesubject line?
And like, oh, I'll do it inthree seconds.
(31:50):
Right?
Which is totally back
Michael Hartmann (31:51):
every, every time, every time.
Jay Schwedelson (31:54):
Right.
And so without a great subjectline, who cares?
You know, what your offer is andall that stuff.
And so, uh, what you can do inthe subject line is so powerful.
And a lot of times, markers, asI mentioned in the beginning,
get held back because they thinkthat if they put a word, a
specific word in the subjectline, they're gonna go to the
junk folder.
If they use a symbol in thesubject line, they're gonna go
to the junk folder.
It's not reality.
The majority of senders are onwhat's called shared ips.
(32:16):
Right.
Which has like, you know, 50senders on one set of I.
The word that you put one wordin that subject line is not the
reason you're going to the junkfolder or the spam folder.
Okay?
You're sharing your, your, your,your, your sending reputation
with, with all these othersenders.
So liberate yourself and knowthat it's all about generating
engagement, opens and clicks,and that's how you stay in the
(32:37):
inbox.
And by the way, about 20% of allemail that any B2B marketer
sends out, I don't care ifyou're the biggest brand in the
world, will go to the.
So deal with it.
That's part of life.
It's fine.
But in the subject line, forexample, what are things that
you could do?
You could use things likebrackets.
For example.
You start out your subject linewith brackets and you put the
most important thing that wordin the bracket, right?
(33:00):
Like reserve my spot.
Put that in brackets.
So start out your subject line.
It's not like somebody's gonnasee that and like, oh wow,
brackets are really cool.
I'm gonna open up this email.
Nobody's ever said that.
It's that millisecond though,where they'll stop and see your
email and they'll open your.
And, uh, things like brackets tocall it out work really well.
Some of the other things arepersonalization, but I don't
mean name personalization.
(33:21):
Name personalization is socheesy and old that it's
actually.
Pulling back performance, it'sactually hurting performance.
Personalization on the subjectline, but personalization on the
B2B side that crushes it in thesubject line right now is job
function personalization.
Okay.
So if you're marketing to, youknow, human resource
professionals, right?
Let's say I'm a human resourceprofessional, and I get an email
(33:42):
that says, just for HR Pros, I'mlike, I'm an HR pro.
I gotta check this out.
Actually taking the targetaudience, you know, this is just
for small business owners or youknow, small business owners need
to see this.
Taking the target audience thatyou are marketing to and putting
that in the subject line is ahome run win to generate
(34:03):
engagement.
Another home run win,personalization wise is the
company name of the company thatyou are marketing.
The person's app, you know, isAcme at.
right?
You put that in the subject lineof, oh, oh, that's my company.
You know, I need to understandwhat's going on.
What do they think is happeningwith, with my company?
So oftentimes personalizationgoes well beyond, you know, just
(34:26):
your name.
Uh, it could be your industrytoo.
What is the most important fivemost important things in the
automotive sector of 2023?
But I'm in the automotive.
I gotta check that out.
And another thing that peopleoften think is ridicuLius in B2B
is emojis.
When I say emoji, it soundsmoronic.
My teenage kids, you know,they'll send me emojis.
I dunno what they mean, right?
(34:46):
But emojis for B2B can workreally, really well.
94% of all receiving emailinfrastructures can, can view
emojis just fine.
And when we say emoji, I'm nottalking about putting a smiley
face, you know, in there I'mtalking about use the check
mark, use a calendar symbol,something like that at the start
of your subject line.
it'll work really well.
You know, if emojis in the B2Bworld were called, you know,
(35:07):
business icons instead ofemojis, we would use them.
They just have a stupid name, sowe don't use them.
But it works phenomenally wellfor b2b.
So there's a lot of littlethings that you could do, and I
could just talk forever.
I need to shut up.
No, it's
Michael Hartmann (35:19):
so good.
This is all good.
Like this is really good.
Like, I like, I'm gonna comeback and listen to this and take
notes next time.
Mike Rizzo (35:26):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I, I, yeah, I think those aresuper strong call outs, emoji.
business icons.
I'm in, I'm calling thembusiness icons from
Jay Schwedelson (35:34):
now on.
Well, Especially if you're anewsletter, you know, one friend
that we've seen really in thelast 12 months, so newsletters
are wallpaper.
They're basically the same word,right?
You send me down a newsletter,and really the emotion when you
send down a newsletter is, thankGod we gotten it out.
It's not like, oh, I hopesomebody reads it.
You're just, it's like, I justhad a colonoscopy.
It's like having a colonoscopy,like, oh, I had it great.
I'll do it again in a few years.
You know, like you don't really,that resonates.
Michael Hartmann (35:58):
Resonates so much.
Right.
Jay Schwedelson (36:00):
Like I gotta do that thing.
Darn it, right?
I gotta do it.
I gotta get it out.
And so, uh, but one thing that'sworking well for newsletters
actually ties with emojis isthat, uh, for so long,
marketers, B2B marketers willhave their newsletter.
The subject line will be likethe name of the newsletter or
the addition like with the datein it, right?
That's your subject line, whichis like, who cares?
Nobody cares what is workingreally well.
(36:22):
But you want a level ofconsistency.
So what if you look at a lot ofthe best, uh, B2B email
newsletters.
Now what they're doing isthey're picking an Could be like
a check mark or a calendar orwhatever it is.
It's the first character ofevery time they send out a
newsletter and then they havethe topic of the newsletter or
the most important trend or statas, uh, the thing that they
(36:43):
write.
So the consistent element isthat emoji and they, they, they
then just write a differentthing for what's after the
emoji.
And that is working really wellin terms of generating opens.
Uh, so you have a consistentthing and an inconsistent thing
for your newsletter subjectline.
So little things like that makea big differe.
Um, so yeah, I don't know,emojis.
Michael Hartmann (37:03):
Yeah, I was curious about emojis cuz one of
the ones they get all the time.
Okay, so what about, um, god, Igot so many things I wanna ask
about, but the, one of the one,I'm gonna guess that every one
of us here on this call is, uh,has, has had the question, is it
okay if we send an email onFriday afternoon?
Like, so what day of the week?
What time of day?
(37:23):
Like, does it, does anyone, doesit even.
Well, well, it does
Jay Schwedelson (37:27):
matter cuz a hundred percent you should.
Uh, but also you have to matchyour own expectations.
Uh, I'm a big believer insending out more, not less.
I don't believe that marketerssend out enough.
If you look at your inbox, um,it's all about being relevant if
you're sending out relevantstuff.
The most successful marketers onthe planet, ironically, happen
to be the most frequent send.
(37:48):
That is the irony of emailmarketing and what we have done.
We've one collective brain asmarketers, we, we've believed
that nobody wants an email onMonday cause they're dreading
life at their work, that nobodywants an email on Friday cuz
they're ready for the weekend.
So collectively as marketers,we've compressed all of our B2B
email to Tuesday, Wednesday, orThursday.
And so like 90% of all B2Bemails Tuesday, Wednesday, or
(38:09):
Thursday, when on Monday and.
You have the ability click, therates can be really high, your
open rates may be lower, but itis an excellent time, you know,
to be, to be testing out emails.
You may not get the exact samemetrics, but you'll actually
also reach different audiences,I was gonna say, right, so the
sending out, you're alwayssending out at 6:00 AM send out
(38:30):
an email at 4:00 PM you know,send out an email on Sunday,
you're going to get opens andinteraction with people you
don't normally get it from.
So yeah, don't hold back, youknow, send more, not.
less.
Michael Hartmann (38:40):
Yeah, I, I remember, I think some of it
depends on your audience too.
I remember if your audience islike senior executives, when I,
I, and this is probably datednow, but at that point in time I
heard this, there was a studyabout this that said one of the
best times to reach them throughemail is late Friday afternoon.
whatever their time is becausethey're cleaning up their inbox.
Mm-hmm.
(39:00):
and they're getting ready forthe next week.
And so if you get something inthere when they're doing that,
they'll actually pay attentionto it, more likely to pay
attention to it.
Which I thought was reallyinteresting.
So your point, like try, it's,it's really interesting.
So it feels like there are thesethings that you talked about,
right, about subject lines and,um, when we can send, when we
can't send, as B2B marketers inparticular, that feels like
(39:21):
they're uh, you used the wordbest practices.
These guys know that, I hatethat term, but like, like these
rules of thumb almost that arebased on maybe not even data
that's old.
It reminds me there's a, uh, ifyou're familiar with the books
of Freakonomics books, they havepodcasts, data podcasts, couple
of episodes years ago called,uh, bad Medicine.
(39:42):
And one, the, one of the thingsI remember about it was, you
know, if you ask most people,would they.
they want an older doctor, moreexperienced doctor or a newer
doctor to treat them.
People tended to go with theones with more experience
because it was anecdotal, but ifyou really wanted the best,
newest information, cuz it's sohard to keep up with it, you
need, you would probably want ayounger, newer doctor, someone
(40:05):
who's, cuz they just can't keepup with the advances.
And it feels like this has asimilar corollary where like
there's a lot of stuff that'schanging on a regular basis and
we're just not all keeping upwith it.
We're just trying to survive.
Right.
Get the next email out.
Jay Schwedelson (40:21):
Well, I, there I uh, that I agree with a
hundred percent.
I think there's another piece toit where, uh, we're fighting the
consultant army.
What I mean by that is, soanytime you have any, anything,
oh my God, we're wrong withemail.
We don't know if we're using ourplatform.
Right.
let's bring in an emailconsultant, email expert.
Great.
And it'll be probably from likeyour automation platform.
(40:42):
They'll bring in theirconsulting person, whatever that
means.
Right?
And these people, all of them,they are, they don't live in the
real world.
They don't.
They come in and they'll say,well, You don't have, I know you
got these names from a tradeshow, but they didn't explicitly
say they wanted to hear fromyou.
So throw those people out,right?
(41:04):
And uh oh, these people haven'tdone this.
Throw those people out anddefinitely don't do these seven
things and they don't live inthe real world.
And the reason I say that isthese consultants try to create
this environment where you,everything's an absolute,
everything is a must do or amust avoid.
Um, and it becomes impossible todo real market.
(41:26):
.And so it's a combination ofpeople being stuck in the past,
like you talked about, and thenpeople getting, uh, input from
people that don't actually livein the real business world of
trying to actually generatesales and interest.
And the combination createspeople that can't do email
marketing properly, that fail,Yeah.
Uh, before they even getstarted.
(41:47):
At least that's how I take it.
Michael Hartmann (41:48):
No, it's interesting.
Okay.
One, one more topic that Ithought of as we were talking
here.
It's a little bit top of mindfor me.
Nurture.
Mm-hmm.
nurture programs, are they stillrelevant?
Like, or are they not Like, I,I'm, I sort of on the fence,
like, cuz I, I, something yousaid triggered me is like, I've
(42:09):
always, I say oh a lot of times,like nobody's sitting there
waiting like, oh, I just, I gotthis latest email from this
company.
I can't wait till they send methe next.
Jay Schwedelson (42:18):
Right, right.
uh, I, I nurtures are great ifyou're great at nurtures.
Um, I'll give you an example ofmy own company.
We just blew up our nurturing,right?
Because, uh, I, I, I, I got, Iactually was getting some of
our, some of our newsletterswere coming out and I was
skipping over them.
We opening up and I'm like, ifI'm skipping over them, uh, who
(42:38):
the hell's reading them?
Right?
And then we got into ournurtures and some of our
nurtures were, you know, older.
Like, what, what are we sendingout?
You know?
So you have to.
be On top of your game with yournurture or all you're doing is
you re, you're reemphasizing howbig of a loser you are, right?
So it's like, yeah, if you can,if you can crush it and you're
(42:59):
nurture, you have somebodythat's on it, updating the
content, it's awesome.
Everything's happening, great.
You're gonna do great.
Your funnel's gonna be awesome,you know, everything's gonna be
magic land.
But if you have like stuff goingout there from like, you know,
2019, the digest that you sendout, and that's part of your
nurture stream.
You're hurting yourself, right?
So your nurture's as good asyour nurture is, in my opinion.
(43:20):
You know
Michael Hartmann (43:21):
that, ma, that makes sense.
Okay.
Yeah, I've, I've been on thissort of back and forth about
whether or not I thought it wasuni important.
Uh, what would I, would I have.
kind of, I guess where I've beenleaning is like less of a, like,
I think of like a quote, fullnurture, right?
Air quote, full nurture, whichis, you know, I think what
typically five, six emails orsomething like that to one, that
(43:42):
would be, I could, I think itmakes more sense maybe to,
especially for content relatedones, right?
You know, the next best.
Two.
One or two, right.
And then kind of done, right.
Then maybe go to newsletters orsomething like that For ongoing.
Jay Schwedelson (43:54):
Yeah.
I just gotta make sure.
Nurture is really not a torturestream, right?
Nurture is not.
oh, let's send the same personthe same email five times and
say, Hey, you didn't respond tomy last one, so I'm sending you
another one.
That's not a nurture, you know,stream.
That's a torture stream, right?
There has to be some benefit ofwhat you're saying, you know, to
the person.
(44:15):
Uh, but I also believe, uh,what, when we set up these
marketing automation scores andall this stuff, I, it's really
important to focus more on notwhat the person does, right?
So it's not as important.
somebody goes and watches threewebinars, they click on two
social posts, they open up fouremails.
that is not nearly as important.
(44:38):
Um, if they're not the rightperson, if they're like a low
level, you know, staff or, youknow, not even a manager level
person in the organization thatyou're trying to get business
from.
Whereas if the vice president ofwhatever at that same business,
who's the decision?
maker?
B clicks on one thing, opens onething, watches one does one
thing.
That's way more important thanif somebody who can't make a
(44:59):
decision does 12 things, right?
So I just encourage everyonethat's listening that when
you're setting up your scoresand your whatever, your streams,
all this stuff, think about whothe person is.
Not just what they do, becausethat's where a lot of these
nurture streams go to fail.
and that's how your salespeopletake these qualified leads and
they call you up and you say,these suck.
(45:20):
These are terrible, right?
Because we're feeding peoplethat are just the wrong people
because they did a bunch ofstuff.
Michael Hartmann (45:27):
This is great.
Uh, Wow.
Uh, this has been packed full ofgreat, like, I think actually
actionable things for ouraudience.
So thank you for that.
So Jay, appreciate you and sharesharing all that.
Um, what if people want to, uh,follow you, keep up with you or
learn more, what's the best wayfor them to do that?
Jay Schwedelson (45:46):
Yeah, no, I, I'm, I'm on LinkedIn more than I
should be.
Uh, so find me on LinkedIn.
I post stuff on LinkedIn all thetime.
It's my favorite social mediacause it's a place where
everyone's nice and doesn't talkabout like politics or any of
that stuff.
So hit me up on LinkedIn.
That's the best place to findme.
And um, yeah, this has been ablast.
Thanks for having me.
Michael Hartmann (46:06):
That was our pleasure.
So, Naomi, Mike, thank you asalways keeping it dishonest.
Yes, thank you.
Yeah, it was fun.
And thank you for all of our, toall of our listeners, uh,
continuing to support us andcontinue to, uh, subscribe, rate
review, send us your feedback,suggestions for topics or.
And if you wanna be that person,join, you know, hit, hit Mike,
(46:27):
Naomi, or me, up on, uh,LinkedIn, or in the marketing
ops.com community.
Until next day, everyone.
Bye.
Hello, everyone.
Welcome to another episode ofOpsCast, brought to you by
marketing ops.com, powered bythe MO Pros.
I am your host, MichaelHartmann.
Joined today by both co-hostNaomi Liu and Mike Rizzo.
Naomi coming fresh off of herrecent solo hosting job.
Nice job, Naomi.
Naomi Liu (00:15):
Thank Thank you.
It was much more difficult thanit appeared.
Isn't that the case that I madeit always for sure.
I was like, yeah.
is it recording?
Am I getting everything correct?
Can they hear me?
Mike Rizzo (00:26):
Oh my gosh.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I remember when I had to hostone by myself and I was like, I
don't even know how to intromyself.
I, I hiccuped up, I hiccuped,and I was like, I am not Michael
Hartman.
Like that, that, that was whatcame outta my mouth.
Naomi Liu (00:38):
Mm-hmm.
Michael Hartmann (00:39):
Uh, makes, yeah.
so rough.
So rough.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, joining us today with thiscraziness is Jay Schwedelson.
Jay fender of subjectline.com,uh, which is a subject line
rating tool.
If you haven't used it, it's agood thing.
We do use it.
Jay is also the president andCEO of World Data Group and
multi-brand marketing servicescompany.
(01:01):
The port portfolio includessubject line.com, outcome media
and guru events, which puts on aconference called Guru
Conference, the world's largestemail marketing event.
So he's also been a keynotespeaker and presented for many
organizations.
So Jay, thank you for joining ustoday.
Jay Schwedelson (01:17):
Yeah.
Fired up to be here.
This is gonna be fun.
Michael Hartmann (01:19):
Yeah, let's I, we'll try to keep it light.
Um.
But you know, if you saysomething, you know, that we
wanna question, we will.
Especially Naomi, nothing getsby her.
All right.
So, uh, you know, one of thethings I wanted to start out
with cuz since clearly you're anemail advocate, right?
So yeah, there's a lot of thingsthese days about things like
(01:43):
dark social and social media andemails dead.
you know, what is your take onkind of the current state of
email marketing as it comparedto other channels?
Like what are you hearing do andif you have any data even
better.
Jay Schwedelson (01:59):
Yeah, look, I mean, I obviously always stand
on the email soapbox cause theworld that I'm in, uh, but I
don't think there's ever been abetter time to be, uh, really
focused in.
On your email marketing effortsfor, for a couple reasons.
Number one, um, a lot of usspend a lot of time doing, you
know, content creation and, andputting these out on social.
But we, you know, we have tolive by the, the algorithms,
(02:21):
right?
You put something on social,maybe 10% of your audience sees
it.
Who knows?
Um, you run display ads.
Nobody's interacting with thatemail is the only channel that
exists that you are in controlof getting in front of your
entire.
Uh, in some sort of long form,uh, way that you want to
communicate, and it's the onlychannel where you're, you know,
(02:43):
fully owning, uh, that data set.
You know, uh, look what'shappened with Twitter.
Twitter's changed in the matterof 30 days.
The dynamic has totally changedthere.
And if your go-to-marketstrategy has been Twitter as
your primary outlet, it's like,uh oh, what does that mean?
Right?
But so email allows you a, anability to control things, and
then the people that say email'sdead or it doesn't work, in my
(03:04):
humble opinion.
We're just not using it theright way or not staying up to
late date with the little thingsthat, that make email work.
So, so, uh, to not invest timein email I think is, is an epic
fail.
Michael Hartmann (03:17):
Yeah.
I mean, I, there's a part of methat also thinks a similar story
could be told about like, directmarketing, which is kind of
where I cut my teeth inmarketing was direct and
database marketing.
So I think it's anunderutilized.
uh, although it's making alittle bit of a comeback, I
guess, But I'm curious then, um,you, you mentioned right, not
using things well or, or allthat, so what are, what do you
(03:40):
see as some of the biggestchallenges out there for people
when they're, you know, emailmarketing is, and, and we talked
a little bit about this beforewe start recording, but like,
uh, we know, I think theprimary, the majority of our
audience is probably a littlemore B2B than b2c, but if you
see, are those differences inwhat you're seeing between those
as.
Jay Schwedelson (03:59):
Yeah, I think the biggest thing that, that
holds marketers back when itcomes to email is that they rely
on, uh, information from emailexperts, which I never, you
know, pretend to, to say that Iam one.
And what I mean by that is thereis so much legacy information on
the internet about email.
Best practices or what is anemail best practice?
You know, there, there arethings out there like, you know,
(04:20):
avoid spam trigger words.
That's why you go, uh, into thejunk folder or you can't send
this many times cuz you'll getunsubscribes and that's a
horrible thing, which also isnot true.
Or a series of of other, youknow, myths that are just
perpetuated.
Frankly, very lazy email expertsthat are out there that continue
to share information that's from10 years ago.
(04:43):
And so marketers rely on thisridicuLius information and they
don't use the latest strategiesand things that actually work
and their performance isterrible.
And then they say email is dead.
And, and that's, that's whatgoes on in the world.
And it frustrates me, obviously.
Michael Hartmann (04:56):
What, so I'm curious when, when you hear
people say that email's notworking or not effective, like
what do you think people arebasing that on?
Does it, do you think it's ametric based thing, or is it a
gut feel?
I mean, I have, I, I have mysuspicion on what your answer's
gonna be, but I'm curious whatyou see.
Jay Schwedelson (05:13):
You know, I think that they, they'll, let's
use webinars, right?
So a lot ofb, B2B marketers willuse a webinar as a content
vehicle.
They'll go out and say, okay,I'm gonna promote a webinar, and
they'll write a subject line.
Then the first word in theirsubject line will be webinar.
And then they'll be like, youknow, the five latest tips for
accounting software.
And they'll get, no, nobody openit.
Very few clickthroughs.
I'm like, ah, email sticks,right?
(05:34):
It didn't work for me.
Whatever.
And.
As an example of, of how to makethat work, you know, what we're
seeing, for example, uh, in datain the last, let's say six
months, is the word webinarsreally stink.
Nobody wants webinars anymore.
They're epicly boring, don'twanna put'em on their calendar.
So what we found is marketers,for example, that are promoting
webinars in email when theyleave the word webinar out of
(05:54):
their subject line.
and they're just promoting thetopic.
The topic says the five latest,you know, accounting software
tools, and they go into themessage and then it's promoting
the webinar in the message.
It's exponentially higher.
Uh, increase in performancetactics like that, uh, uh,
really work.
And that's when it's changed inthe last 12 months cuz webinars
(06:15):
become like a stained word.
So the people that just rely on,okay, I'm gonna do the same
thing like a robot webinar, putin the subject line, blah, blah.
that's the people that are, thatare seeing failure, uh, because
it's always changing.
A year from now will bedifferent, and that's you've
gotta constantly be doing thelatest, newest thing,
Mike Rizzo (06:33):
That resonates greatly with me.
Uh, we,
Michael Hartmann (06:36):
we, we strategically
Mike Rizzo (06:38):
try to keep the word webinar out of as many of the
types of things that, that wetalk about all the time.
Michael Hartmann (06:44):
Right?
That's funny.
I don't get, I don't get it.
Like, cuz what else do you use?
Like I get, I get the, I getthat it's a, something that
maybe people are averse.
Two because they've been on somany virtual things, but like,
what other word do you usebesides.
Can't be discussion.
Okay.
Yeah.
fireside chat.
But it's still But it's still awebinar, right?
Mike Rizzo (07:05):
It is.
It is.
It still is.
But I, like today, I was on afireside chat with Darrell.
Right.
We did that for an hour.
Um, and, and we do paneldiscussions and we do, uh, group
workshops.
Right.
And even a workshop can be a oneway conversation.
uh, that's presenting a thing onhow to do something that is like
(07:25):
one video, one way conversation.
Uh, and, and, and so to thatpoint, like not to dive too far
into, you know, what, whether ornot to use a webinar or not.
Um, coming back to this emailthing, like we, we strategically
try to keep it out and part ofit is like, I personally anchor
on webinar sounds like a.
right?
Like I, like, I don't even knowwhen it is that it's gonna
(07:48):
happen, but I know that it takestime That's, and right, there's
time that I do not have.
And so when I see the wordwebinar, I'm anchored on
commitment and I immediately go,I have no time for that
commitment.
Jay Schwedelson (07:59):
You know?
And it's, it's to, and, youknow, playing off of that, uh,
so webinar is a commitment,which is a problem.
So what's been working reallywell, these same, in the same
boat of people that think, youknow, email doesn.
on demand.
Video content used to behorrible.
Right?
Three years ago, if you said ondemand, it was like, ugh, that's
like old legacy, bad.
on demand video content becausewe've all been like, Netflix,
(08:22):
right?
Is killing it.
It does so well.
But when we promote on demand,we don't say on demand.
We actually just say, watch now.
Cause on demand sounds old watchnow sounds active and new and
things like that.
So it's literally an email.
There's no silver bullet,there's no one thing that you're
gonna do.
You know, to, to Mike's pointabout trying to call it
something different and testingthat all out, those little
(08:43):
things have a, have a hugeimpact on your overall
performance, and that's, that'show you get emailed to work,
Yeah.
Mike Rizzo (08:50):
Yeah.
And, and this ties into theoverarching, you know, I, I feel
like the overarching theme here,is the webinar isn't the
problem, it's the content.
Yes, you can do the, thestrategic initiative to put
content into the world throughthe lens of, uh, whatever.
(09:13):
Watch now on Demand Live,discussions.
Is a, is a, is an approach,email is a delivery mechanism to
try to get that content in frontof somebody, but at the end of
the day, you omitting the wordwebinar is gonna impact your
emails, open rates, but whetheror not you're actually
resonating with your audience onthe content that they care about
is sort of the next layer,right?
(09:34):
So like email's not dead,webinars aren't dead, but your
content strategy might need tobe reworked a little bit.
Michael Hartmann (09:41):
Yeah, that makes sense.
that's kind of what it comes
Mike Rizzo (09:43):
down to for me.
But, I do like removing thosewords and I really appreciate
the tip Jay.
Unfortunately, now everybody inthis community who listens to
this episode is gonna be like,oh, I'm not using on demand
anymore.
I'm using
Michael Hartmann (09:56):
Watch
Mike Rizzo (09:58):
Cause like, I'm about to go like, send that to
our team and be like, oh yeah,let's start using watch now.
Cause I've been using
Jay Schwedelson (10:04):
On Demand and I've been bothered by it.
Right, right, right.
Totally.
Michael Hartmann (10:08):
So i, I wanna go back to, I think the question
about what, what maybe whatconstitutes success.
And naomi, I'm gonna put you alittle bit on the spot here
because I know, I admire whatyou've described, how you work
with your organization and givethem feedback about what's
worked and what's not.
I'm curious, like do you wait,from your perspective, what do
you usually look at when itcomes to email performance?
(10:30):
Or are you looking at that asjust a part of an overall
performance for, say, a generalcampaign?
Naomi Liu (10:35):
I I would definitely say a, a part of a larger
picture, right, because it.
I mean, I guess it depends onwhat the email campaign's for,
um, at least in our industry,you know, we're, we're generally
not generating, um, sales orconversions from an email,
right?
When you're talking aboutproducts that are in the six, 7
(10:56):
million.
Six or$7 figure range, right?
So for us it's, a lot of it isawareness, brand building, um,
customer testimonials, uh, totalcost of ownership, things like
that.
Um, when it comes to things likeclick through rates and open
rates, it's been definitely aneducation piece for myself and
(11:17):
my business partners over thepast.
Um, I would say like, Year orso, but solidly within the last
six months, especially when wefind things like, and I don't
know if you guys noticed this,but things around, um, uh,
software on the recipient sidewhere they're just opening all
of the emails and clicking allthe links.
And I can see that right?
Where I go through the activitylogs and it's like, person
(11:38):
received it and then one secondlater they've clicked all of the
links and then email within halfa second.
Right?
So it's just, it's kind of like,Those metrics really, I, I'm
looking at it more from a trendperspective as opposed to like
an individual email perspective.
What I really care about islike, are they hitting the
landing page at what, you know,how long are they spending on
it?
Are they filling out the form?
Um, are they then going to otherareas of our site?
(12:00):
Those are the things that I'mcaring about more.
Um, and so just making sure thatwhen I have conversations with
my business partners that it'snot just the email, right?
Like the email is an invitationto consume the content.
It's not the content.
That's kind of like the messagethat I've been giving.
Michael Hartmann (12:15):
Yeah.
I mean, that resonates with me,Jay like your perspective too.
I mean, one of the things I, Idunno that I would say learn,
but maybe a little bit of olderschools, like to me the purpose
of an email is to get someone toread it and click through and do
it next step.
Right?
And I see a lot of people try toshove a lot of content in the
email and I think it actuallydeters people from doing that
next step to what I think Naomiwas hitting it.
(12:36):
Right.
Do they get to that next stepand then do they stay engaged at
that point?
Is do you think, what's yourperspective on how you measure
the effectiveness of email, Iguess is the question about
Jay Schwedelson (12:46):
Well, you know, a couple things.
and I only touched on somethingwhich is, uh, uh, uh, bot bot
activity, uh, uh, and, andmetrics being impacted by, you
know, different, uh, networkintrusion software or apples iOS
15 changes and how that'simpacted inflated.
Things like open rate metricsand whatnot.
And, you know, uh, what you'llhear out in the world is, you
(13:06):
know, open rates are right?
Don't track open rate anymore.
It's not relevant metric.
And all this stuff.
Focus on the click.
And it kind of drives me bonkersbecause, um, to Naomi's point,
she's, she's, she's correct inthat.
um, email metrics really shouldbe used for directional
purposes, right?
You should have the mostimportant metrics for any email
(13:27):
marketing program are your own,uh, where you wanna benchmark
the different types of emailsyou send out.
So you have your newsletteremail, you have your, your offer
related promotional emails, youhave your winback strategy
emails, you know, you have thesedifferent buckets of types of
emails, and then you wannabenchmark your own metrics.
Okay?
Our newsletter is an average ofa 35% open rate and a 4% click.
(13:48):
You know that that's not real.
You know that that's not anabsolute number.
Cause there's bots and there'sgarbage out there.
But next week when you send outyour newsletter, you tweak the
subject line, you change the dayof the week, and all of a sudden
you're a 47% open rate.
You know that you did somethinggood, right?
You beat yourself.
So, uh, directional metrics, uh,to me are.
Are where it's at, uh, in email,um, and incredibly valuable.
(14:13):
And I, I would not, I wouldnever discount, you know, open
or any other thing that's outthere.
Uh, but it is just, you know,it's one piece of the overall
pie.
Michael Hartmann (14:22):
Yeah, it's, it's interesting you bring out
the Apple thing.
We actually were, as anorganization where I'm at now,
we, we spent a lot of time sortof prepping for that and trying
to identify who were the likelypeople that were using the Apple
devices to open emails and, um,anticipating we might have to
start splitting them out to getbetter metrics.
And it turns out like ouroverall open rates really didn't
(14:44):
change.
Jay Schwedelson (14:45):
Yeah.
I, I, it was a big nothingburger.
I mean, some people still freakout about the apple iOS,
whatever, but, um, yeah, itinflates things a little bit,
but you're naive to think it'san absolute metric anyway.
Right, right.
And then what people then sitdown, like, what do I do if I'm
gonna do an automation campaign?
Do I send out, you know, youwould send out the first email
and then do I send out toopeners and non-op openers and
(15:08):
do I know who really opened?
And it's like, who care?
Just send it out.
Nobody is sitting back beinglike, holy cow, they just sent
me a second email.
Who are these people?
Right?
Anybody?
that's on the fence about tounsubscribe.
They're not about to buy.
Right?
They're not like gonna fill upyour funnel, be a great, you
(15:28):
know, M Q L.
All of a sudden they didn't likeyou that much.
They changed their role, theydon't need you.
Right?
They've moved on.
Life happens.
People unsubscribe.
and so, uh, uh, the whole iOSthing took people down this
rabbit hole of not knowing whatto do with their automation
program I was like, dude, relax,send another email to everybody.
It's okay.
Michael Hartmann (15:49):
Yeah, it was, I'm gonna steal that term.
Nothing.
Burger.
I've probably heard it before,but first time in a long time.
I chuckled a bit
Mike Rizzo (15:57):
too.
I was like, I like this.
I want to use that.
I'm gonna have to note thatsomewhere.
Michael Hartmann (16:01):
I had to quickly hit mute.
I
Mike Rizzo (16:05):
agree though.
I, I think, uh, I think it wasa, a bunch Of inflated, like
kinda hoopla.
We didn't see a bunch of change.
And we, we certainlylike@marketingapps.com, we're
communicating with individualsmore so than a business email.
Like the majority of ourdatabases made up of
professionals which use personalemail, right?
(16:25):
Yeah.
Because they're here as aprofessional Um, and we didn't
like, so you would expect thaton those personal emails, you
might, you might see a biggerright?
Because they're using their ownpersonal devices to manage their
email.
Yeah.
Um, but yeah, we didn't see aton.
It was a big nothing burger.
after to create
Jay Schwedelson (16:43):
Right?
Yeah.
Life went on.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Michael Hartmann (16:47):
like, like so many things.
Um, so, uh, continuing on thistheme, I guess, of like, how do
you know if it's effective?
Right?
So one of the things, so let'ssay you get your open rate and
compared to last time you'redoing well or, or worse, but you
get people to open it and youwant them again from my
perspective.
Right.
I think the goal is to get themto take that next action, which
(17:08):
is typically clicking onsomething to go somewhere.
Um, what, what are you seeingout there that is maybe causing
marketers to have challengeswith people doing that next
step?
Right?
Getting to say a landing page.
And if you wanna go a stepfurther, right?
If, assuming there's.
sort of call to action or stepto take on those landing pages?
(17:28):
What's,
Jay Schwedelson (17:29):
yeah, that's a great question.
So the first thing I would thinkabout is who you're marketing
too, right?
So you have your bo your bucketof prospects or, or, or people.
fairly cold, you know, and notpeople that are truly engaging.
And then you have your eitherexisting customers or people
that you know do engage with youguys quite a bit.
Those are two very differentpopulations of people, and you
can't market to them with theWay.
(17:50):
What I mean by that is, and we,and we see it all the time in
the data, if you're marketing toa prospect or somebody who's
basically a prospect, uh, theamount of words that you could
have in that email, uh, theamount of words that you could
have in a paragraph, the amountof lines that could be in a
paragraph, it has to be soincredibly tight and short, as
opposed to somebody that likesyou, that buys from you, that
interacts with you.
You can be more verbose becauseif they're a prospect, they
(18:12):
barely open to that email.
They barely care about you.
So if you have just, it's likegetting a text from a friend or
something.
If it's a big block text, you'relike, oh, you know, you're like,
I'll read that, you know, later.
I do not have the mind share tolook at that thing, right?
It's the same thing with email.
If you open it up and there's abig chunk of text, you're like,
Nope.
(18:33):
Piece out nothing.
I don't want, this is zero.
I'm not interested.
So you have to make it forprospects.
Super fast.
Couple bullet.
One hero image, and then yourcall to action button.
People don't spend enough timein their call to action button.
They're call to action button.
You don't wanna say things like,like, register, right?
You wanna say things like, savemy seat.
When you talked, you know, Miketalked earlier about, you know,
(18:54):
commitment.
It's this idea of commitment orbenefit, and that call to action
button is so important.
You know when you are, let'ssay, talking about a webinar an
event and it says, save my seat,instead of register, like, yeah,
want them to save my seat.
Right?
Or it's, uh, let's say you'repromoting a report, it's
download or it's get my freereport.
Right.
What is, what are you writingthat call to action button,
(19:16):
which is a super importantvariable, and the closer that
you can have that call to actionbutton be, uh, uh, describing
the awesome offer that you'regiving the person, right?
The, the more active, the more,the higher the clickthrough that
you're gonna receive, and thenyou take into the landing page
and you do it again.
right?
The worst word in the world ofmarketing is submit.
I don't know how the hell thatshowed up in the marketing
(19:37):
vernacular, but it's like someweirdo out there probably
started this like 20 years ago.
I'm gonna put submit, and that'sthe word or worse click here,
right.
is time.
What are we talking about?
You know what I mean?
And so thinking about theselittle things, they may seem
like but it is the differencemaker between success and
failure for these campaigns.
Uh, these little things add up.
You know, what you put in thesubject line, what you put in
(19:59):
your friendly from, it shouldn'tjust be your regular, you know,
from name, you know what you'redoing in the pre-header, what
you're doing.
at cold action buttons.
It all adds up to, to massivechange in performance.
Mike Rizzo (20:10):
I think those are all really, I've, I have other
questions and uh, for youopinions that I want to hear
from you, but, um, I, I.
Specifically at one point triedto because I, like, we were
struggling with this idea oflike, what do you put in a cta?
Um, and I think it was like todownload some ebook or something
like that.
(20:30):
And so I, I like hand coded my,my, my button, right?
I didn't use whatever tooloffered the button, and I like
hand coded this button.
And then I like put in likesmaller texts underneath the
primary call to action, whichwas like, download your copy.
or something.
Right?
Right underneath that.
I was like trying to cater tothe audience and there's no form
(20:51):
on this Like I tried to be, likeyou said, like be as specific to
the like, thing that you can be.
I was like, no form
Jay Schwedelson (20:57):
fill required.
un gated ungated would be theright way to say that.
Yeah.
As a matter of fact, that wordright now is trending more like
any other word on B2B marketing.
If you use that in your subjectline as the number one word,
it's like increasing open ratesmore than like any other word
right.
Wow.
to your point.
Mike Rizzo (21:13):
That's crazy.
so, that's so, that's sofascinating.
Um.
my, my, my follow on to, youknow, this, the friendly sender
and stuff like that that youwere sharing is, Yeah.
um, your email sender persona.
what is your, what is your takeon whether or not someone should
(21:34):
have a sender persona?
do not reply.
Right, That's the best.
Jay Schwedelson (21:41):
Yeah.
Mike Rizzo (21:42):
Should it be a real person?
Should it be a made up person orshould it be?
Do not reply.
And I know the answers to thesepersonally, the way that I feel
about it, but
Jay Schwedelson (21:53):
I would love your opinion.
Well, first of all, I mean, itcan never be a fake person.
I mean, that's just an epic failfor so many reasons.
It's an epic
Michael Hartmann (22:00):
fail.
I cannot you like, I was soworried you were not gonna say
that.
Oh, no, no.
I,
Jay Schwedelson (22:05):
it, it's, it is unacceptable.
It's also just not, it's just sobad.
It's just so bad.
And do not reply.
Actually from a, from a realmetric standpoint, it will just
crush your campaign and it'llcrush your soul.
It's, it's very, very bad.
Um, but in terms of stuff comingfrom a person, um, it depends.
(22:26):
I like and the friendly fromand, and to me by the way, the
friendly from, so we talk aboutthe friendly from, for everyone
that's listening and most of youknow this, but you have your
from address and I'm not tellingyou to mess with your from
address.
So if I email you my fromaddress is, you know, jayson
corp wbb.com.
Don't mess with your fromaddress.
Your friend you're from namethat you send it from, you could
change every single mailing.
(22:47):
It costs you nothing.
It takes five seconds.
Can be done on any.
Is one of the biggest factors inwhether or not an email gets
opened or not, and people don'tmess around with it enough.
And what I mean by messingaround with it, you wanna have
it.
If it's not a person, we'll talkabout the person in a second.
It should be tied to your offer,right?
So if you're promoting, uh, anevent, it should be, you know,
Acme event.
(23:08):
If you're promoting, uh, a demo,Acme demo, you know, Acme in a
white paper, that should be inthe from name.
Cuz the sooner you're describingthe offer that's tied in the
subject line, the higher openrates are.
We see it all day long.
Um, but the thing that worksthat friendly from is like Jen.
From Acme, literally writing outthe word from Jen from Acme
(23:30):
works really, really wellbecause now you got brand.
Now you got a person when youjust go with the person, unless
you're a very well known person,right?
Like if you're, I don't know,mark Zuckerberg and he wants to
send out a thing cause it's avery important email.
Great, good for him.
But unless you're a very wellknown person, it's gonna look a
little spammy just coming from astraight up person.
Cuz the game, what are youreally doing?
(23:52):
You're really trying to confusea person and be like, do I know
that person?
Do I go to high school withthem?
Who is this person?
Right?
And then God help you.
If you start the subject linewith the fake forward or the
fake reply, I'll never talk toyou ever again.
And that's how you're trying toget, you know, the emails open.
Cuz that is literally the end ofsociety that that is being used
at all in email marketing in.
Mike Rizzo (24:14):
All right.
Quickly go delete the re colonin the second
Michael Hartmann (24:19):
I'm just kidding.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
Okay.
So yeah, I can't tell you howglad I am.
You said that, like, I've hadpeople ask me like, can we do
fake name?
I'm like, we can.
But we shouldn't.
Right.
Mike Rizzo (24:32):
my, my hope is that there's, there's some marketer
somewhere listening to thisepisode and they're gonna go
grab that like clip
Jay Schwedelson (24:40):
and send it to their boss one.
We changed one person.
Right.
And be like,
Michael Hartmann (24:44):
see, look, someone else is saying
Jay Schwedelson (24:46):
this right, right.
Absolutely.
You know, and one thing you dohave to think about if you are
gonna send from a person a lotof, uh, uh, uh, when you're
sending out from whateverplatform you're on, anytime you
send from a person, you have tobe set up to receive actual
replies, right?
We've seen this a million timeswhere you send out a campaign.
I don't care if it's abeautifully structured HTML
campaign.
(25:07):
And when it comes from a person,people are inclined to hit reply
and think they're talking to ahuman.
And so many times you set it up,those replies go into the ether,
go nowhere cause it's being setup like a regular campaign.
So if it's gonna come from aperson, make sure you are
infrastructurally set up tohandle replies.
Michael Hartmann (25:23):
Yep.
I'm in the process of doing thatwith our sales teams right now,
so that we can send stuff fromhim that I should come back.
Mike Rizzo (25:30):
yeah, that is one of the hardest ones that I, I've
had to try to tackle in mymarketing ops career is, um,
setting up the inbox.
Right?
So like we would set up analternate, uh, email Elliots for
the CEO or the executive thatthe email was coming Uh, and
then, you know, there's toolscertainly that can look for the
types of replies that are comingin.
(25:51):
So you can unsubscribe somebodyor whatever now, which is
wonderful.
But there's still this problemof like, what if somebody asks
like an actual importantquestion right?
and they're like, who's, who'sin charge of that inbox?
you know?
That's right.
Uh, cuz like you don't want tojust hand off the ability to,
uh, have somebody manage thisinbox to just.
Because like they could, mean,you know, heaven forbid they had
(26:13):
a bad day and they just want tolike, pretend like they're the c
e o of the company and go, youknow, mess with someone and say
like, yeah, here's your freesoftware for life.
It's like, uh, hundred
Michael Hartmann (26:22):
percent.
I think it needs to be, ifyou've got like a BD R S D R
function, like for inbound,that's who I would do.
Maybe just, and I've done thatbefore, just do that.
They're also, they're alsoequipped to handle like someone
who's pissed off, you know?
Right, right.
But it feels like
Mike Rizzo (26:36):
it, like you can't give them the control, right.
To manage the inbox directly.
You have to like find a way toroute it and then, you know,
that's a different challenge.
Like,
Naomi Liu (26:45):
I don't know about you guys, but we also get quite
a few like GDPR and datadeletion requests, um mm-hmm.
and replies to emails.
So it's not something we wouldwant to just farm out to people
who wouldn't necessarily followthe right steps
Michael Hartmann (27:01):
Yeah, totally.
Mike Rizzo (27:03):
I have only had a handful of those in my career,
same, um, so far, but I mean,
Michael Hartmann (27:09):
it's actually like I'm actually getting a
little nervous that we're, thatwe're not paying attention to
that.
Naomi Liu (27:14):
We've probably got a handful of weeks, to be honest.
Michael Hartmann (27:17):
Interesting.
Mm-hmm.
Jay Schwedelson (27:18):
Very interesting.
Yeah.
I, I, uh, I always, I feel badwhen people get, you know, nasty
gram unsubscribes, which if youdo email long enough, you'll get
some, you know, why are yougetting, this is illegal.
You're a terrible person.
You should, you should go tohell, you know, whatever.
Um, And it's always funny to mebecause what happens is somehow
when those nasty grams come in,they'll get circulated up to the
(27:39):
highest ranks of the company.
Like the CEO always got, alwayswinds up in like highest ranks
of the company and then itfilters back down to the
marketing person.
Like, so-and-so got this,they're freaking out and it's
the end of the world.
And then the reaction is likeyou're call meeting like, all
right, let's scale back ouremail marketing efforts, cuz
some schmo out there, this oneperson sent a nasty gram in and
(27:59):
it's.
I mean, it's like drives menuts.
That one dude who had a reallybad day, some out there in the
world, is gonna now impact themarketing program of some
massive organization, and ithappens every day.
Oh yeah,
Michael Hartmann (28:10):
for sure.
Mike Rizzo (28:11):
Uh, yeah, I've, uh, I've always toyed with when the
nasty Graham comes in.
I don't know I dunno about you,you three.
But, um, when I was managingthat reply inbox, I was like, do
I respond and say they've beenremoved, or do I just re like
how do I handle this?
And then on, to top it all off,like, should I let them know
(28:35):
that, like, while you may havebeen able to click the link that
says unsubscribe in the emailthat we sent, you.
I have subsequently adhered likeacquiesced to your request and
deleted your, you know,subscription data from our
system or whatever.
But like even then, it's like Ijust sent an email to tell you
to not email me, and it's like,am I, am I supposed to email
you?
Like, I don't know how to dealwith your request right now.
(28:57):
Uh, can
Jay Schwedelson (28:58):
I text you?
Maybe that's the answer.
Well, I got one the other dayand I was, so I, la it was
through my newsletter was in soI screenshotted and I put on
LinkedIn.
I'm like, there you go.
Look at this.
Dude wrote and I wrote back tothe person I just wrote back.
It was terrible.
I just wrote back smell youlater cause that's what I wrote
back.
Oh,
Michael Hartmann (29:15):
See you later.
see, I think I would just tendto just ignore it.
Like take the action, be donewith it.
Oh know.
Jay Schwedelson (29:20):
Yeah.
It made me laugh.
It makes me feel, it makes, I,it doesn't bother, eh, right.
Well,
Mike Rizzo (29:24):
it, it just makes me chuckle that people can't click
a link like it is there.
And if you're a good emailmarker and you leave it there
and you don't try to bury it inlike almost white text and
you're being genuine about it,
Jay Schwedelson (29:36):
Like uns are good.
Not bad.
Un spent, length are bad.
Un help me help.
Yeah, help me
Mike Rizzo (29:42):
help you.
Michael Hartmann (29:43):
Yeah.
I think, I think, I think someof it also depends on what you
know about your organization.
So like, um, maybe part of why Iwould, wouldn't respond like.
in kind so to speak, or close toit, right, is because I also
recognize it.
Yeah.
Maybe they actually have clickedthe link that said unsubscribe.
But in one of my other, like weactually have two instances that
(30:04):
we use of our platform foremails and people could be in
both, right?
And we are not great aboutkeeping that up to date between
the two, let alone the otherbusiness units that were within
this big company.
Right.
So, That's, that's, I thinkthat's part of, like if we, and
I've had been in other bigorganizations where similar kind
(30:25):
of stuff could have happenedwhere just because of the nature
of things.
So, um, so I think we of that, Iwas like, we need to move on
from this one.
Or we like, it's like, like Ican imagine the kinds of stuff
we're gonna get from this.
Um, uh, so, but I do wanna getyou, you were talking a little
bit Jay, about.
(30:45):
I think you've already hit on acouple things, like the, the
from name, uh, some, maybe some.
I think the way I took it waslike, al like always be testing
new stuff in your subject lines,right?
To see what actually affectsgrades.
And then, um, the way, I guessthe way I'm going is like, I
think of like the way you lookat this overall, right?
(31:07):
Is what's the full journey?
And there's lots of places whereyou could lose people along the
way.
Yeah.
Are there any other kind ofsmall, like cuz of what you
described, but really not,they're not that hard, right?
Like none of that's really hard,but it's like, are there other
things like that with thecontent or landing pages or
things like that that you'veseen that.
Like we should be, we shouldencourage our listeners to be
(31:28):
trying.
Yeah.
Jay Schwedelson (31:29):
Okay.
So small wins, right?
That could have big results.
So let's talk about the subjectline for, for example, you know,
it's so backwards.
It usually happens withmarketers.
They'll, they'll spend all thistime on what's our offer gonna
be, and then, you know, what'sour creative, and then finally,
you know, it gets approved bylegal and oh, it's finally ready
after like all this time.
And then like, what's thesubject line?
And like, oh, I'll do it inthree seconds.
(31:50):
Right?
Which is totally back
Michael Hartmann (31:51):
every, every time, every time.
Jay Schwedelson (31:54):
Right.
And so without a great subjectline, who cares?
You know, what your offer is andall that stuff.
And so, uh, what you can do inthe subject line is so powerful.
And a lot of times, markers, asI mentioned in the beginning,
get held back because they thinkthat if they put a word, a
specific word in the subjectline, they're gonna go to the
junk folder.
If they use a symbol in thesubject line, they're gonna go
to the junk folder.
It's not reality.
The majority of senders are onwhat's called shared ips.
(32:16):
Right.
Which has like, you know, 50senders on one set of I.
The word that you put one wordin that subject line is not the
reason you're going to the junkfolder or the spam folder.
Okay?
You're sharing your, your, your,your, your sending reputation
with, with all these othersenders.
So liberate yourself and knowthat it's all about generating
engagement, opens and clicks,and that's how you stay in the
(32:37):
inbox.
And by the way, about 20% of allemail that any B2B marketer
sends out, I don't care ifyou're the biggest brand in the
world, will go to the.
So deal with it.
That's part of life.
It's fine.
But in the subject line, forexample, what are things that
you could do?
You could use things likebrackets.
For example.
You start out your subject linewith brackets and you put the
most important thing that wordin the bracket, right?
(33:00):
Like reserve my spot.
Put that in brackets.
So start out your subject line.
It's not like somebody's gonnasee that and like, oh wow,
brackets are really cool.
I'm gonna open up this email.
Nobody's ever said that.
It's that millisecond though,where they'll stop and see your
email and they'll open your.
And, uh, things like brackets tocall it out work really well.
Some of the other things arepersonalization, but I don't
mean name personalization.
(33:21):
Name personalization is socheesy and old that it's
actually.
Pulling back performance, it'sactually hurting performance.
Personalization on the subjectline, but personalization on the
B2B side that crushes it in thesubject line right now is job
function personalization.
Okay.
So if you're marketing to, youknow, human resource
professionals, right?
Let's say I'm a human resourceprofessional, and I get an email
(33:42):
that says, just for HR Pros, I'mlike, I'm an HR pro.
I gotta check this out.
Actually taking the targetaudience, you know, this is just
for small business owners or youknow, small business owners need
to see this.
Taking the target audience thatyou are marketing to and putting
that in the subject line is ahome run win to generate
(34:03):
engagement.
Another home run win,personalization wise is the
company name of the company thatyou are marketing.
The person's app, you know, isAcme at.
right?
You put that in the subject lineof, oh, oh, that's my company.
You know, I need to understandwhat's going on.
What do they think is happeningwith, with my company?
So oftentimes personalizationgoes well beyond, you know, just
(34:26):
your name.
Uh, it could be your industrytoo.
What is the most important fivemost important things in the
automotive sector of 2023?
But I'm in the automotive.
I gotta check that out.
And another thing that peopleoften think is ridicuLius in B2B
is emojis.
When I say emoji, it soundsmoronic.
My teenage kids, you know,they'll send me emojis.
I dunno what they mean, right?
(34:46):
But emojis for B2B can workreally, really well.
94% of all receiving emailinfrastructures can, can view
emojis just fine.
And when we say emoji, I'm nottalking about putting a smiley
face, you know, in there I'mtalking about use the check
mark, use a calendar symbol,something like that at the start
of your subject line.
it'll work really well.
You know, if emojis in the B2Bworld were called, you know,
(35:07):
business icons instead ofemojis, we would use them.
They just have a stupid name, sowe don't use them.
But it works phenomenally wellfor b2b.
So there's a lot of littlethings that you could do, and I
could just talk forever.
I need to shut up.
No, it's
Michael Hartmann (35:19):
so good.
This is all good.
Like this is really good.
Like, I like, I'm gonna comeback and listen to this and take
notes next time.
Mike Rizzo (35:26):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I, I, yeah, I think those aresuper strong call outs, emoji.
business icons.
I'm in, I'm calling thembusiness icons from
Jay Schwedelson (35:34):
now on.
Well, Especially if you're anewsletter, you know, one friend
that we've seen really in thelast 12 months, so newsletters
are wallpaper.
They're basically the same word,right?
You send me down a newsletter,and really the emotion when you
send down a newsletter is, thankGod we gotten it out.
It's not like, oh, I hopesomebody reads it.
You're just, it's like, I justhad a colonoscopy.
It's like having a colonoscopy,like, oh, I had it great.
I'll do it again in a few years.
You know, like you don't really,that resonates.
Michael Hartmann (35:58):
Resonates so much.
Right.
Jay Schwedelson (36:00):
Like I gotta do that thing.
Darn it, right?
I gotta do it.
I gotta get it out.
And so, uh, but one thing that'sworking well for newsletters
actually ties with emojis isthat, uh, for so long,
marketers, B2B marketers willhave their newsletter.
The subject line will be likethe name of the newsletter or
the addition like with the datein it, right?
That's your subject line, whichis like, who cares?
Nobody cares what is workingreally well.
(36:22):
But you want a level ofconsistency.
So what if you look at a lot ofthe best, uh, B2B email
newsletters.
Now what they're doing isthey're picking an Could be like
a check mark or a calendar orwhatever it is.
It's the first character ofevery time they send out a
newsletter and then they havethe topic of the newsletter or
the most important trend or statas, uh, the thing that they
(36:43):
write.
So the consistent element isthat emoji and they, they, they
then just write a differentthing for what's after the
emoji.
And that is working really wellin terms of generating opens.
Uh, so you have a consistentthing and an inconsistent thing
for your newsletter subjectline.
So little things like that makea big differe.
Um, so yeah, I don't know,emojis.
Michael Hartmann (37:03):
Yeah, I was curious about emojis cuz one of
the ones they get all the time.
Okay, so what about, um, god, Igot so many things I wanna ask
about, but the, one of the one,I'm gonna guess that every one
of us here on this call is, uh,has, has had the question, is it
okay if we send an email onFriday afternoon?
Like, so what day of the week?
What time of day?
(37:23):
Like, does it, does anyone, doesit even.
Well, well, it does
Jay Schwedelson (37:27):
matter cuz a hundred percent you should.
Uh, but also you have to matchyour own expectations.
Uh, I'm a big believer insending out more, not less.
I don't believe that marketerssend out enough.
If you look at your inbox, um,it's all about being relevant if
you're sending out relevantstuff.
The most successful marketers onthe planet, ironically, happen
to be the most frequent send.
(37:48):
That is the irony of emailmarketing and what we have done.
We've one collective brain asmarketers, we, we've believed
that nobody wants an email onMonday cause they're dreading
life at their work, that nobodywants an email on Friday cuz
they're ready for the weekend.
So collectively as marketers,we've compressed all of our B2B
email to Tuesday, Wednesday, orThursday.
And so like 90% of all B2Bemails Tuesday, Wednesday, or
(38:09):
Thursday, when on Monday and.
You have the ability click, therates can be really high, your
open rates may be lower, but itis an excellent time, you know,
to be, to be testing out emails.
You may not get the exact samemetrics, but you'll actually
also reach different audiences,I was gonna say, right, so the
sending out, you're alwayssending out at 6:00 AM send out
(38:30):
an email at 4:00 PM you know,send out an email on Sunday,
you're going to get opens andinteraction with people you
don't normally get it from.
So yeah, don't hold back, youknow, send more, not.
less.
Michael Hartmann (38:40):
Yeah, I, I remember, I think some of it
depends on your audience too.
I remember if your audience islike senior executives, when I,
I, and this is probably datednow, but at that point in time I
heard this, there was a studyabout this that said one of the
best times to reach them throughemail is late Friday afternoon.
whatever their time is becausethey're cleaning up their inbox.
Mm-hmm.
(39:00):
and they're getting ready forthe next week.
And so if you get something inthere when they're doing that,
they'll actually pay attentionto it, more likely to pay
attention to it.
Which I thought was reallyinteresting.
So your point, like try, it's,it's really interesting.
So it feels like there are thesethings that you talked about,
right, about subject lines and,um, when we can send, when we
can't send, as B2B marketers inparticular, that feels like
(39:21):
they're uh, you used the wordbest practices.
These guys know that, I hatethat term, but like, like these
rules of thumb almost that arebased on maybe not even data
that's old.
It reminds me there's a, uh, ifyou're familiar with the books
of Freakonomics books, they havepodcasts, data podcasts, couple
of episodes years ago called,uh, bad Medicine.
(39:42):
And one, the, one of the thingsI remember about it was, you
know, if you ask most people,would they.
they want an older doctor, moreexperienced doctor or a newer
doctor to treat them.
People tended to go with theones with more experience
because it was anecdotal, but ifyou really wanted the best,
newest information, cuz it's sohard to keep up with it, you
need, you would probably want ayounger, newer doctor, someone
(40:05):
who's, cuz they just can't keepup with the advances.
And it feels like this has asimilar corollary where like
there's a lot of stuff that'schanging on a regular basis and
we're just not all keeping upwith it.
We're just trying to survive.
Right.
Get the next email out.
Jay Schwedelson (40:21):
Well, I, there I uh, that I agree with a
hundred percent.
I think there's another piece toit where, uh, we're fighting the
consultant army.
What I mean by that is, soanytime you have any, anything,
oh my God, we're wrong withemail.
We don't know if we're using ourplatform.
Right.
let's bring in an emailconsultant, email expert.
Great.
And it'll be probably from likeyour automation platform.
(40:42):
They'll bring in theirconsulting person, whatever that
means.
Right?
And these people, all of them,they are, they don't live in the
real world.
They don't.
They come in and they'll say,well, You don't have, I know you
got these names from a tradeshow, but they didn't explicitly
say they wanted to hear fromyou.
So throw those people out,right?
(41:04):
And uh oh, these people haven'tdone this.
Throw those people out anddefinitely don't do these seven
things and they don't live inthe real world.
And the reason I say that isthese consultants try to create
this environment where you,everything's an absolute,
everything is a must do or amust avoid.
Um, and it becomes impossible todo real market.
(41:26):
.And so it's a combination ofpeople being stuck in the past,
like you talked about, and thenpeople getting, uh, input from
people that don't actually livein the real business world of
trying to actually generatesales and interest.
And the combination createspeople that can't do email
marketing properly, that fail,Yeah.
Uh, before they even getstarted.
(41:47):
At least that's how I take it.
Michael Hartmann (41:48):
No, it's interesting.
Okay.
One, one more topic that Ithought of as we were talking
here.
It's a little bit top of mindfor me.
Nurture.
Mm-hmm.
nurture programs, are they stillrelevant?
Like, or are they not Like, I,I'm, I sort of on the fence,
like, cuz I, I, something yousaid triggered me is like, I've
(42:09):
always, I say oh a lot of times,like nobody's sitting there
waiting like, oh, I just, I gotthis latest email from this
company.
I can't wait till they send methe next.
Jay Schwedelson (42:18):
Right, right.
uh, I, I nurtures are great ifyou're great at nurtures.
Um, I'll give you an example ofmy own company.
We just blew up our nurturing,right?
Because, uh, I, I, I, I got, Iactually was getting some of
our, some of our newsletterswere coming out and I was
skipping over them.
We opening up and I'm like, ifI'm skipping over them, uh, who
(42:38):
the hell's reading them?
Right?
And then we got into ournurtures and some of our
nurtures were, you know, older.
Like, what, what are we sendingout?
You know?
So you have to.
be On top of your game with yournurture or all you're doing is
you re, you're reemphasizing howbig of a loser you are, right?
So it's like, yeah, if you can,if you can crush it and you're
(42:59):
nurture, you have somebodythat's on it, updating the
content, it's awesome.
Everything's happening, great.
You're gonna do great.
Your funnel's gonna be awesome,you know, everything's gonna be
magic land.
But if you have like stuff goingout there from like, you know,
2019, the digest that you sendout, and that's part of your
nurture stream.
You're hurting yourself, right?
So your nurture's as good asyour nurture is, in my opinion.
(43:20):
You know
Michael Hartmann (43:21):
that, ma, that makes sense.
Okay.
Yeah, I've, I've been on thissort of back and forth about
whether or not I thought it wasuni important.
Uh, what would I, would I have.
kind of, I guess where I've beenleaning is like less of a, like,
I think of like a quote, fullnurture, right?
Air quote, full nurture, whichis, you know, I think what
typically five, six emails orsomething like that to one, that
(43:42):
would be, I could, I think itmakes more sense maybe to,
especially for content relatedones, right?
You know, the next best.
Two.
One or two, right.
And then kind of done, right.
Then maybe go to newsletters orsomething like that For ongoing.
Jay Schwedelson (43:54):
Yeah.
I just gotta make sure.
Nurture is really not a torturestream, right?
Nurture is not.
oh, let's send the same personthe same email five times and
say, Hey, you didn't respond tomy last one, so I'm sending you
another one.
That's not a nurture, you know,stream.
That's a torture stream, right?
There has to be some benefit ofwhat you're saying, you know, to
the person.
(44:15):
Uh, but I also believe, uh,what, when we set up these
marketing automation scores andall this stuff, I, it's really
important to focus more on notwhat the person does, right?
So it's not as important.
somebody goes and watches threewebinars, they click on two
social posts, they open up fouremails.
that is not nearly as important.
(44:38):
Um, if they're not the rightperson, if they're like a low
level, you know, staff or, youknow, not even a manager level
person in the organization thatyou're trying to get business
from.
Whereas if the vice president ofwhatever at that same business,
who's the decision?
maker?
B clicks on one thing, opens onething, watches one does one
thing.
That's way more important thanif somebody who can't make a
(44:59):
decision does 12 things, right?
So I just encourage everyonethat's listening that when
you're setting up your scoresand your whatever, your streams,
all this stuff, think about whothe person is.
Not just what they do, becausethat's where a lot of these
nurture streams go to fail.
and that's how your salespeopletake these qualified leads and
they call you up and you say,these suck.
(45:20):
These are terrible, right?
Because we're feeding peoplethat are just the wrong people
because they did a bunch ofstuff.
Michael Hartmann (45:27):
This is great.
Uh, Wow.
Uh, this has been packed full ofgreat, like, I think actually
actionable things for ouraudience.
So thank you for that.
So Jay, appreciate you and sharesharing all that.
Um, what if people want to, uh,follow you, keep up with you or
learn more, what's the best wayfor them to do that?
Jay Schwedelson (45:46):
Yeah, no, I, I'm, I'm on LinkedIn more than I
should be.
Uh, so find me on LinkedIn.
I post stuff on LinkedIn all thetime.
It's my favorite social mediacause it's a place where
everyone's nice and doesn't talkabout like politics or any of
that stuff.
So hit me up on LinkedIn.
That's the best place to findme.
And um, yeah, this has been ablast.
Thanks for having me.
Michael Hartmann (46:06):
That was our pleasure.
So, Naomi, Mike, thank you asalways keeping it dishonest.
Yes, thank you.
Yeah, it was fun.
And thank you for all of our, toall of our listeners, uh,
continuing to support us andcontinue to, uh, subscribe, rate
review, send us your feedback,suggestions for topics or.
And if you wanna be that person,join, you know, hit, hit Mike,
(46:27):
Naomi, or me, up on, uh,LinkedIn, or in the marketing
ops.com community.
Until next day, everyone.
Bye.
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