In this episode of Do This, Not That, host Jay Schwedelson discusses managing marketing expectations for the start of the new year and shares insights on effective strategies for January marketing campaigns.

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Best Moments:

(01:07) Why marketing performance is poor in early January

(01:51) Data on email click-through rates in January

(03:17) Increased unsubscribe rates in early January

(04:14) Effective content types for January marketing

(05:12) Examples of successful list and checklist content for B2B marketing

(05:59) Examples of successful list and checklist content for consumer marketing

(06:37) Introduction to Marigold, the podcast sponsor

(07:32) "Since You Didn't Ask" segment: A personal anecdote about a social interaction

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Check out this free content from marigold that Jay has loved digesting, 5 Steps For Selecting The Right Email Marketing Platform.

Foreign.

Welcome to do this, not that the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins and pitfalls to avoid. Also dig into life, pop culture and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that.

And you need to manage the expectations internally for the marketing efforts that you're putting out there for your team, for yourself, for your company. Because the start of the year, the first few weeks of January stink for marketing.

Doesn't matter if you're a business marketer or you're a consumer marketer. Why are they so bad? They're so bad because, number one, you have no money left. You bought all the holiday gifts.

You're not in the market to buy more stuff. You have no more money to spend. Right.

And on the business side, the first two weeks of the year, the first few weeks of the year, are you really looking just to onboard like a new CRM system? No. You're epically miserable that the holidays are over and we see it in the data.

So before I share with you some data things that you can do to get really good engagement at the start of the year, let's talk about the bad stuff. What's going to happen those first few weeks of the year with your marketing, whether you're a business or a consumer marketer.

So for email in the first two weeks of January, if you compare, okay, the click through rates for the first two weeks of January versus the last two weeks of January, first half of January versus second half of January, the second half of January. Email Click through Rates are 30% higher for consumer and 40% higher for business to business marketers than the first half of January.

And that's according to subjectline.com why? Because the first two weeks were like I can't do it. I don't even want to look at anything. I don't want to look at an offer of some consumer product.

I don't want to look at anything related to business stuff because I don't even want to be working. I am miserable. Right.

So if you are trying to come out of the gate strong, like we're going to crush it in January and you're starting to send out those emails that first week, that second week of January and you're seeing really, really bad performance. It's okay. It is okay. That is what everybody sees is really bad performance those first two weeks.

But the good news is the second two weeks everything starts to kick in and we start to see great performance. The other thing to manage your own expectation during that time period, those first few weeks of January is that your unsubscribes.

The number of people removing themselves from your list, whether you're a business or a consumer marketer, is over 40% higher during that period of time than any other normal week. Why? Because people are done with all the offers they got during the holiday season. Like, all right, take me off that list.

I don't need that thing anymore. I don't need that special discount anymore. And on the business side, we're trying to, you know, get our mind right for the year.

We don't want all the clutter. So we're still unsubscribing from so much stuff.

So if all of a sudden you see your, you know, your click through rates on your social media posts on your email sends that you're doing start to drop significantly in those first two weeks of January, you don't stink as a marketer. It's just you need to always try to get into the mindset of who it is that you are communicating with.

So what are the things at the start of the year, okay. That people actually do want to engage with?

There's a specific content type for business and consumer marketers that gets consumed more now in the start of the year than any other time of the year. And that is list and checklist content. List and checklist content.

See over a 50% higher average engagement rate on social media posts for both business and consumer marketing efforts in January than any other time of the year. Okay. And email, we see over 60% higher click through rates in January for list and checklist related content according to World Data Research.

Why is that? We're, we're in this mode of like, okay, I'm going to start the year off, I'm going to do a new me.

I'm going to get organized, I'm really going to hit the ground running. I'm going to do all those things I said I was going to do. And these lists and these checklists allow us to organize how we are thinking.

What can you do on the consumer side? How about 12 mindful practices to start the year out? Common focused. I need that. I'm never calm and I'm really never focused.

How about your morning routine checklist for a healthier you? I would download that. How about declutter and organize your checklist? Great. I'm a disaster. This is where you're at.

You need to get into the mindset of everybody that you're marketing to and realize your performance might be a little lower to start the year. That's okay. And you want to get in the place and send out the content of what people want to consume at the start of the year. Okay.

So before we get into since you didn't ask the ridiculous portion of this podcast, I want to let you know that this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold. Marigold is my email marketing sending platform.

My agency, Outcome Media sends out billions of emails, consumer and B2B emails and I'm telling you they're awesome.

They're a roll up of Sail through campaign monitor, my Emma Cheetah Digital Live clicker and they have a piece of content they just came out with that is free. Is this loyalty marketing guide. And if you're not doing loyalty marketing, this is the year to do it. It is exploding.

It is driving massive engagement and you need to at least understand the basics if you're not doing it. If you want this guide, all you got to do is go to jelson.com marigold it is free. It is awesome.

I am telling you, Marigold is the way JSON.com Marold learn all about the loyalty marketing world. It is where it is at.

All right, let's get into since you didn't ask which is the ridiculous portion of this podcast, I I don't even know why I'm going to talk about this, but I just had the weirdest encounter yesterday with some dude I bumped into. So I was out. I was out of this sporting event, okay? And I bump into this guy who I've known for years, but I haven't seen him in a long time.

And we were like, buddies and stuff. So I bump into him and he comes over to me, and right as he's walking up to me, we're both like, look at each other in the eye.

Like we were excited to see each other as we were walking towards each other. And. And then right as he's about to, like, shake my hand, he wipes his nose.

But, like, aggressively, like, he got up in there and then he puts his hand out with that hand to shake my hand. And I go, whoa. He goes, what? What? I go, you just. You see the little something over there with the. With your nose? I go, let's go with the old.

Just wave. And the guy was so offended, he's like, what are you talking about, man? I was like, you. You just rub your nose with your finger.

I don't want to shake your hand. And I was very direct about it. And he goes, wow, you've really. What's wrong with you? I don't remember you like this.

I'm like, you don't remember like this? What? Me not wanting to have my finger shoved up your nose? Now, I'm not like a germaphobe or whatever.

It was just disgusting and I didn't know what to do.

I was going to go with the fist pump, which maybe in retrospect, I should have just gone with a fist pump because I don't think then I would have interacted with his nose finger thing. But I didn't. And this is part of my new way. I'm trying to be more direct with people, and it's not going particularly well.

Then I'm just trying to actually share, like, what I'm thinking as opposed to just trying to be, like, nice or whatever. And I know most people probably just shook his hand and then go wash your hands. Which is another very, very good move.

But I didn't do either of those. And you know what? I think I'm fine with it because this dude got so angry at me. He. I then said to hey, man, so who cares about that?

What's going on with you? And he was very cold. He goes, I'm fine, dude. I'm fine. You know, we'll catch up another point. And he just like left and he walked away.

And I was like, did I do something wrong? I go, I don't think so. I go, I replayed it back in my head. I go, I think I do the same thing all over again.

This is the type of really important content that you get on this podcast. You're getting my innermost thoughts. But you know what? If you run into that same situation, I really hope you do what I did.

Or at least give me some advice on what I should be doing. I don't know what I'm talking about. Anyway, listen, I hope you check out certifiedguru.com that is our free email certification program.

It is awesome. We are opening up spots in January. If you're on the waitlist now, you'll get a spot and then we close it down really fast.

So check out certifiedguru.com and also check out our new giant event, eventtastic.com for free and virtual.

It's gonna be the world's largest event about all things events, webinars, in person events, virtual events that is eventtastic.com and don't shake hands with anybody that wipes their nose later.

You did it. You made it to the end. Nice, but the party's not over.

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