In this episode of Do This, Not That, host Jay Schwedelson answers listener questions in the "Ask Us Anything" segment. He addresses a work-related question from Micah in Boston about choosing or optimizing marketing technology platforms, offering practical tips on leveraging ChatGPT for vendor comparisons and maximizing existing platform use. In the ridiculous question segment, Jay shares his candid opinions on traditional Thanksgiving dishes and humorous anecdotes about holiday gatherings.

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Best Moments:

(01:08) Question from Micah about optimizing marketing technology platforms

(02:02) Using ChatGPT to compare vendors and generate RFPs

(04:18) Strategies for maximizing the value of current Martech platforms

(05:50) Sponsor message for Marigold email platform

(06:38) Ridiculous question from Lucy about Thanksgiving dishes

(07:03) Jay's opinions on various Thanksgiving foods

(09:18) Humorous anecdotes about guests bringing food to Thanksgiving

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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 we are back for Ask Us Anything from the do this not that podcast presented by Marigold. This is our short episode where we answer work questions and ridiculous questions that we get in.

If you want to submit a question, we would love that you go to jelson.com there's a button that says podcast, another one that says Ask us anything and and submit whatever you got. Let's do the work question first. We got a question this weekend from Micah from Boston. Boston's gotta be getting cold. I live in Florida.

I cannot wait to make fun of everybody that's cold because it's still in the 80s here, so too bad for all you people that are cold. Anyway. What is your question, Micah? Jay, we are frustrated with one of our marketing technology platforms that we are using.

Any secrets on picking a new platform or getting more out of the engagement we currently have? I feel like this is a common thing for everybody.

You know, whatever Martech platform you're using, whether it's for your CRM or analytics or who knows what, there's a million different things you need a platform for. You're always some version of either it's not bad or really frustrated and you think there's another one that's just going to be way better.

And by the way, the grass is not always greener. That's not always the case. But there are some things that you can do to either find a new vendor or get more out of the vendor you currently have.

So one thing I don't think people are doing enough of is using ChatGPT in this way that you can now use it, which has really only changed in the last month or two. So you can go to ChatGPT for example, and let's say you're thinking about three different platforms.

Let's say you're considering a new email sending platform as an example, right? And you're like, oh, well, we're thinking about, you know, one of these three different platforms.

You can go to ChatGPT now with the free version and you can do this. You can put in three URLs.

So let's say you're between Klaviyo, you'd put in Klaviyo.com, mailchimp.com and let's say Braze.com, let's say those are the three different platforms that you're thinking about potentially using, right? You can go to ChatGPT, you put those URLs in there and then you write a prompt like this. I'm trying to find a new email sending platform.

Can you review these different company websites and provide back a table with each one's strengths, weaknesses, questions you would ask them and what industries or markets they focus on.

And instantly ChatGPT is going to analyze those websites and give you back a table like a spreadsheet that is giving you all that information, the strengths, the weaknesses, questions to ask what industries they focus in on. And you could do this.

Let's say you usually try to find a new billing software system and you're putting quickbooks versus freshbooks versus whatever, whatever category you're looking for for a vendor. This is a great way to get some instant review of who you are considering.

And then coming out of that, you could do a follow up question and you say, okay, now I want you to take this information and turn it into an RFP or request for proposal. And we're really trying to keep our budget in between this and this.

We're going to, we really specialize in these industries, these categories we focus on, you know, these employee sizes. Can you build an RFP that we can send to these different companies that then we can leverage?

And then the other thing I would tell you about, that's if you're trying to go out and get maybe a new vendor, okay, but what can you do with your current vendor to really get the most out of it? Number one, you should go back to your current vendor and say, listen, our relationship is almost up for renewal.

I want to set up a call and I want you to repitch me and the entire team on your platform because there's a lot of new bells and whistles that you have, there's new members of our team and I want you to pitch us again.

And you will be shocked about what you learn about the platform that you didn't know, you didn't know it could do this, you didn't know, had this advancement, this thing, whatever it is. But going through that process is super value, it is not a waste of time.

All right, and then the other big thing I do with all of our platforms is every year our teams go back to all the different platforms that we are subscribed to that we are using and we say to them the following thing. We say, listen, please review how we are using your platform because they have all the analytics and how they're how you're using it.

Please review how we're using your platform. We want to sub meeting.

We want you to tell us for the amount of money that we're currently spending, what things are we not taking advantage of that we have access to currently? And number two, is there a better way to price out our relationship knowing how we use the platform?

Because what you do, when you sign that first initial thing with the platform, it always winds up being different on how you actually use it once you start to get it onboarded.

So doing those two things, a you probably save a boatload of money because you're going to find out you're not using a lot of the stuff, you can cut down your costs or B they have the functionality that you're actually looking for from some other platform and you didn't even realize it. So I would think about doing all of that stuff.

All right, before we get into the absolutely ridiculous portion of this podcast, I wanted to let you know that this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold. Speaking about email sending platform.

The reason I don't need to do an RFP for an email signing platform because I use the best email sending platform on earth, Marigold, which is a roll up of Sail through and Emma and campaign monitor and live clicker. If you are not thrilled with your email setting platform, you need to check out Marigold, get a demo from them. And here's the good news.

I got a huge great discount offer only for the listeners of this podcast. If you go to jschwettleson.com save S A V E there's an up to 50% discount right there for the listener to this podcast.

You can should take a demo because you'll find out that your platform probably stinks. Marigold is awesome. You should check them out@jschweddelson.com Save all right, let's get into the ridiculous question.

We got a question in from Lucy from Austin, which just in Austin. They have great tacos in Austin, but I don't understand why only Austin has great tacos. Like I was eating the tacos there.

I'm like, I can make this at home. I don't get it. But anyway, they do have great tacos. Lucy, what is your question? Okay, Jay, Thanksgiving is almost here.

What do you think about these Thanksgiving dishes? Would you eat them? And what are your thoughts about Thanksgiving in general? Okay, so first, let's look at the dishes that Lucia sent over.

First one is macaroni and cheese all day. You need to have macaroni and cheese at your Thanksgiving. If you don't, you're a big, fat loser. You might not be fat, but you're a loser. Sorry.

Mashed potatoes again, 100%. I don't even understand this question. Like, you would not have mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving. What's wrong with you? Cranberry sauce.

Now, cranberry sauce is actually disgusting. It straight up is. I don't think it should be at Thanksgiving. It's super weird. I don't know why.

It's like, the only time of year you even have cranberry sauce. And the reason that is is because it's gross and nobody actually likes it. It's the only thing that nobody wants to take home. It's disgusting.

Still don't eat it. All right. Stuffing. Stuffing and stuffing, slash dressing, whatever that means. All right. Stuffing. All right.

I am a very big fan of stuffing, but it has to not be dry. If you have dry stuffing, it's horrendous. So somehow you need to make sure it's good. Green bean casserole. I like it. Nobody else does. I'm a big fan.

Coleslaw. That's not a thing. That's not a Thanksgiving thing. Nobody eats coleslaw. I don't think. I mean, that's disgusting. Why would you. Coastline. Thanksgiving.

That's really weird. Jell O salad. Oh, my God. Somebody brought jell O salad. Like, it's like, jello with, like, weird stuff in it.

The last Thanksgiving we had, and I looked at that person, I was completely judging them. I'm like, that's gross. I will not be trying that. And then, of course, I did try it, and I. Of course I lied and said, oh, my God, so good.

It's absolutely amazing.

One thing that is probably something I shouldn't say out loud, but about to anyway, is, you know, at Thanksgiving, you have people bring over, like, food that they made to put on the table. Like, somebody will make the green bean casserole, or somebody will make the mashed potatoes.

And that's part of what everybody eats, because it's really hard for one family to cook everything for everybody. My problem, which hopefully nobody's coming to my Thanksgiving, is listening to, is when we have people bring over the Food that they made.

I get grossed out because I'll be like, oh my God, that person's kind of gross. And now they're making food and I have to eat it. And so I know this is terrible. I should be thankful. It's Thanksgiving.

I'm so thankful to bring over food that's so nice that took the time. None of that. I'm completely grossed out for the majority of food that people bring over to my house. Unless it's something like they bought it.

Oh, we got the best cake and we bought it from this bakery. When all day do that. If you make it your house, you're gross. I don't want to eat it.

The other weird part is when it comes to leftovers, people like, I don't know about your house, but my house, people pack up leftovers and they take more than their fair share. And it's wild to me. They're like packing up as if they're. There's like, this is it.

This is the food that they're going to eat because it's Thanksgiving at my house. So they pack it up and then they don't leave me enough of the stuff that I want.

And my wife's always giving me the look, like, dude, you got to let them take the stuff. We're the hosts. You got to let them take the food. And I'm always like, that sucks. Like, we're having Thanksgiving at my house.

I want the leftovers so I could be a disgusting animal for the next three days. This is ridiculous. So I get screwed on the leftovers, but hopefully this year that won't happen. We've talked about a lot.

I don't know what we talked about, but I appreciate you all listen. Go to Jay Shwettleson.com I want to work with you. That's where you could find me. That's we could figure out what we could do together.

And you can leave me a note saying, this is the worst podcast. We could do all sorts of stuff. And because it's Thanksgiving, please leave this thing Review. Tell me this is a horrible podcast. Or maybe you like it.

That would be great too. And yeah, thanks for being here. And don't eat cranberry sauce later. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.

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