In this episode of Do This, Not That, host Jay Schwedelson discusses recent Black Friday trends, email marketing tactics, and shares entertainment recommendations. He analyzes sales data, the impact of AI on conversion rates, and surprising findings from email subject line performance. Jay also provides TV and movie suggestions and announces the upcoming Certified Guru email certification program.

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Best Moments:

(00:56) Black Friday sales data and AI impact on conversion rates

(02:28) Email marketing trends for Black Friday 2023 vs. 2022

(04:54) The surprising effectiveness of the word "wicked" in email subject lines

(06:17) TV and movie recommendations

(07:38) Announcement about the upcoming Certified Guru email certification program

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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 what's up this week from the do this not that podcast presented by Maragold. This is our super short episode where we break down what's going on this week in business and marketing and life.

And then we still have our short Ask Us Anything later in the week and our big tips episode at the end of the week. So we what's going on? Well, Black Friday went well. People bought a lot of stuff. What did I buy? I bought socks and a phone case.

Oh yeah, I'm a wild dude. But there's always these big numbers that come out. And Salesforce came out and said on Black Friday, online sales in the US rose 7% to $17.5 billion.

Woohoo.

Way to go. Really?

That's all fine, but the most interesting thing about all the data points that have come out, and this one also came from Salesforce, is about AI and how that impacted sales this year. And this to me was the most interesting thing. Retailers employing generative AI had a 9% higher conversion rate than those that didn't.

And that is really everything.

When you're going to these sites now, it's giving you recommendations for products and things based on your experiences online and things that you visit, things that you've searched for. And those brands and those sites that are using AI have a 9% higher conversion rate on Black Friday. And there's very tight margins this time of year.

This really, really matters.

And Adobe came out and said chatbots powered by AI during Black Friday were super impactful as bot driven clicks to retail sites rose by over 1,800% compared to last year. That is all AI generated traffic. So AI is everywhere.

So let's talk about some cool data points released from subjectline.com about this year's Black Friday email marketing trends versus a year ago on Black Friday. So emojis. Do you think there were more emojis used in email subject lines this year versus last year?

Well, there were emojis were used 14% more in email subject lines for Black Friday email promotions this year than last year. How about emojis in pre headers? You know that's that second Subject line. Yes, you could have put emoji in your pre header.

Was that used more by marketers this year? Big time emojis and pre headers of emails promoting Black Friday offers were up 70% this year versus last year.

Some other interesting tactics and you always want to be thinking about these for your own marketing. Nine percent of emails had at least one full word capitalized. That doesn't mean the first letter capitalized.

The entire word was capitalized in their subject line in Black Friday emails. And this is up almost 100% versus last year. What does that mean? You might capitalize the full word of the word sale or the F.

The full word of the word, you know, in stock. That phrase. That is up almost 100% versus last year. And no, it does not cause you to go to the junk folder or go to the spam trap, whatever.

None of that. The other interesting things that we were seeing is the volume of emails that brands were sending out.

Brands weren't just sending out one email on Black Friday. They're sending out multiple emails. So Brands sending out two times on Black Friday versus just one time on Black Friday.

Brand sending out at least two times or up over 300% this year versus last year. A lot of brands are sending out early in the morning, later in the afternoon or that night saying it's almost up, Black Friday is almost over.

So this idea of sending out multiple emails in one day was up significantly. What about business to business marketing, especially emails on Black Friday?

Believe it or not, business to business promotional email volume was down about 15% versus last year on Black Friday. You know, business marketers just say, nope, not going to send out in that day. And I get it.

But we did actually some sends on Black Friday business to business sense and they did really well. Why? Because they stand out.

So it's one of those things that no, you don't want to be sending out the holidays, but yeah, you might want to be sending out the holidays because volume is so low for business promotional stuff that you actually have the opportunity to stand out in that inbox.

So I wouldn't do what you normally do, which is avoid the whole Christmas period and New Year's period and not send out your promotional stuff if you're a business marketer, because this is an opportunity to stand out.

What else is going on related to email that I thought was super interesting is there's one word right now in all of email marketing that is normally not a word that has any impact. That's crushing it. And that word is Wicked. Yes. There's the movie Wicked. That's everywhere. And that's the talk of all pop culture is Wicked.

Everybody's singing the song. Popular, great. But believe it or not, we're seeing it bleed into regular marketing for both business and consumer marketers.

When you start your subject line, okay, and this is in the last week, if you start your subject line with the word Wicked, okay, it is increasing email open rates, 90% the consumer side, according to World Data Research, and 15% on the business side. So you could start your subject line like Wicked Smart Strategy or Wicked New Guide for Finance Pros.

Now, you may be sitting out there saying, that is ridiculous. I am not going to use the word Wicked because Ariana Grande is running around out there with a new movie. That's fine.

But that's the edge that you get in marketing by tapping into being of the moment. And Wicked is of the moment. So if your brand has any kind of, like, fun spin to it, this is a great opportunity to jump on the Wicked train.

It'll probably last for another, you know, week to two weeks. So in completely useless information, there's so much good new TV and movies on TV that's out right now.

And normally I'm only locked in on reality tv, which I am, because a lot of good Real Housewives seasons that are out right now that I'm all in on. But I have a non reality TV recommendation I'm watching that I like very much. Ted Danson is in a new show on Netflix called A Man on the Inside.

It's the number one TV show right now on Netflix. A Man on the Inside. It is great. He's like this undercover dude at this home for elderly people. And it is fantastic. I give it two thumbs up.

It makes you feel good. So that is a non reality TV recommendation. I. I like Ted Danson. He's funny.

And then the other one which just came out is Lindsay Lohan's new holiday movie, Our Little Secret, which has jumped right to the number one spot on Netflix as the number one movie in the world right now. Our Little Secret. Lindsay Lohan is doing great. This movie is very good. And when I say very good, it's very good.

In the Hallmark movie category of very good. It's not like, you know, the Godfather. It's going to be like, oh, my God, this is the best movie I've ever seen.

But it is solid and I'm very happy that Lindsay Lohan is doing good things. Very important episode today. We covered a lot of ground. You're going to stick Wicked in your subject line.

You're going to watch a Lindsay Lohan movie and I don't have any idea what's going on. Listen. Later this week though we are opening up Certified Guru.

That is free email certification program that my organization is putting out there and only people on the waitlist are going to be able to do it and that is opening up later in this week. So to get on the waitlist it is free. You go to certified guru.com we're really excited about making this available, working really hard on it.

So check that out and see you later. You did it.

You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.

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