In this episode of The Bathroom Break, hosts Daniel Murray and Jay Schwedelson discuss marketing strategies and personal reflections for the new year. They share insights on email performance trends, tackling low-hanging fruit tasks, and leveraging unique marketing opportunities in January.

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Best Moments:

(00:41) New Year reflections and motivational posts

(01:53) Jay's holiday trip to Japan

(02:34) January marketing strategies and performance metrics

(03:23) Focusing on low-hanging fruit and conversion rates

(04:35) Discussion about "Blue Monday" marketing campaigns

(05:41) Capitalizing on January trends like Dry January

(06:02) LinkedIn connections and networking in January

(07:09) Reigniting cold leads after the holiday season

(07:42) Personal New Year's resolutions update

(09:37) Podcast recommendations and wrap-up

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Foreign. Welcome to a new special series called the Bathroom break. That extra 10 minutes you either have to listen to marketing tips or use the bathroom.

Or both. But I don't recommend both. But that's your choice.

This collab is going to be super fun.

We have Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials and me, Jay Schwetelson from the do this, not that podcast and subjectline.com each episode in the series we are going to go over quick tips about different marketing top. And if you want to be in the bathroom, fine, just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out. We are back for the Bathroom Break.

This is Jay Schwedelson. I'm here with the marketing millennial, Daniel Murray. And it is a new year, new calendar. Daniel, is it a new year, new you?

Do you love that saying or what?

Oh, I love when people say new year, new me. It's the best timing. I do think though, it is a good mentality switch for yourself.

Even though it's kind of funny, it's just like another day, but people's heads just switch during this time period. It's very interesting.

But do you, when you see motivational posts and stuff like that, does it hype you up or you're like, come on, this is ridiculous?

I think this is one of the best times to put out inspirational things because people are need that inspiration to do things. So I don't get annoyed, but I think the best.

I know this is a little late to say this, but the best time to start that habit is probably a month before the year.

Well, that would have been helpful a month ago. I mean, we could do that now.

Let me ask you a question before we get this. What did you do over this holiday break?

I took my family. We went on a massive trip to Japan and we crushed it. I ate an incredible amount of sushi. I learned to be a samurai.

I had a man bun on the top of my head to be a samurai. I even did this thing with a falcon that landed on my arm. I mean, I did it in Japan, so that was what I did.

For people who don't know, Jay's an experienced traveler. He likes to set his vacation jobs based on the experiences he could do. So he did every experience you could do in Japan.

That's true. I did. I like that. I like the experiences more than historical stuff, which makes me a horrible, not intellectual person.

But we're about to get intellectual right now. We are going to talk about what you can do in the month of January.

In marketing and overall for your business that maybe you can't do any other month. I'll kick it off and then. And then we'll see what you got.

So one of the things that we always look at is performance metrics and especially in the world of email.

And one of the things that we know is the first two weeks of January stink for regular promotional email performance and even newsletter performance for the most part. But the second two weeks of January do really, really well.

And I think marketers get confused by that because they send out stuff in the first two weeks because they're hyped about the new year. It does terrible. And they think that that's because their marketing stinks. It's just the mentality that people are in.

And so what is it about that mentality? How else should we factor that into what we're doing?

Daniel I think so if you're in that mentality of things are not working. I think the best things to start right now is the low hanging fruit. And I like to look at middle of levers you can pull of conversion rate.

So that landing page that needed tweaking that you spent all year not doing that or that email sequence that should have been revived, this is the best time to start doing those little tweaks because those little tweaks start adding up and then you're going to have so many big campaigns going on. So right now we'd focus on those conversion metrics. We're lagging behind.

I think it's a really good point because the start of the year people actually have a little bit more free time than normal. Their inboxes are a little bit more empty than normal.

And so this is a time to do the little changes that you've been planning on doing from last year and also do things like letter format emails because they're going to show up more in a person's inbox than they normally would because they will stand out. Because people's inboxes are particularly low. We are setting up to do the most random test. You're going to make fun of me about this.

So I don't know if you know this, but the do you know Blue Monday is the third Monday of every January that's called Blue Monday. It's supposedly the saddest day of the year. That's what it's called, like a thing.

The saddest day of the year because that's when Everyone gives up on their New Year's resolutions and all this nonsense.

So we are working with our clients to come up with campaigns around the saddest day of the year with subject lines like, you know, saddest day of the year, question mark. Well, don't be sad, we have this great offer. Or well, this is sad, but you don't have to be sad, blah, blah, blah.

So we're doing all these different campaigns around the saddest day of the year. Do you buy into this nonsense?

I think as a marketer we like to use any event. So I, and I think that's a low hanging fruit event because I didn't know what that was. I think it is a very.

So anything that you could say help them get through the first month of the year because that's.

They went from vacation mode, a lot of marketers to now I have to go into full steam until my next break is it's great to get that type of content out there. Yeah.

And you know, one of the things I saw that LinkedIn put out is that January is the month where people do more connections than any other month, which makes sense to me. It's like, okay, I'm going to build my personal brand and I build my network, I'm going to do whatever. So this is actually a great time.

People are more open to receiving those connections than they normally are. They have a little bit more time to look at them.

And absolutely, when you do send out more connection requests, use the custom note because that helps out a lot in terms of increasing your acceptance rate. But this is a great time to build your personal network. It's also a great time to reach out to people that maybe you've lost a little touch with.

It's the easiest thing in the world to reach out to somebody say, hey man, happy New Year. Just want to check in on you, see what your plans are for the year.

Do those things, as cheesy as they may seem, because this is the time, this is the month to do it.

I also think on that note is a lot of people probably had a lot of leads that went cold over the holidays and probably some of them weren't on purpose because they were out of office or this there was the holiday season. Their inbox got swamped. So this is one of probably one of the best times to do personalized outreach to leads that went cold. Do that offer.

You could do that Blue Monday offer. Prepare that Valentine's Day offer that's coming in the month. It's the best time to reignite these types of people.

That went cold two weeks, three weeks ago.

All right, before we wrap up, when we last spoke, you told me your resolution was, which was that you were going to be lifting weights consistently. Here we are. We're about a week into the year. How are we doing? Are we lifting weights? Are we Arnold Schwarzenegger?

What's happening with your resolution?

So I've lifted. I lifted twice. And everybody wait for this. Jay's going to laugh at this one. I did my first Pilates class.

Oh, my God, that's embarrassing. I want video of that.

I don't know. And I looked. You know, I feel like Pilates instructors likes to make fun of, like, the big guy in the room. Like, I literally.

The Pilates instructor was like, look, he's shaking. Look at him.

Daniel's like, 6 5. He's a giant dude. I mean, I want to see you on a Pilates reformer. That's what I think.

Oh, my goodness. It was rough. It was rough. It was rough. I give it to all the Pilates people out there. It's a hard exercise.

But I lifted into Pilates, so I'm starting off strong. I probably blew Mondays when I'm gonna give up. Started strong. What about you? What about your New Year's resolution?

Well, my resolution was to not eat the entire world. And unfortunately, Japan does no longer exist because I ate it all. So I need to. I need to. I got a lot of work to do, so.

So it's hard when Boca Food Talk is always in your.

That's right.

Feed all the new restaurants popping up.

Oh, you got to try them all. You gotta. You gotta help out your community, help out the local economy by ordering all new pizza, which is what I do.

All right, we've covered a lot, as usual. Everybody go and follow Daniel's show the Marking Millennials. It is an incredible podcast.

Leave that guy a review, tell him how great he is, and we'll see you at the next one.

And make sure you update your Apple software, because if you go into the Apple podcast, you'll see in marketing Podcast Jay's do this. Not that podcast is in the most popular podcast.

Yeah, it's something Apple that. That's happening. Obviously, all right. Later, Daniel. Come on, man. I gotta get back to work. Get out of there. All right, while he's still in there.

This is Jay. Check out my podcast, do this, not that, for Marketers.

Each week we share really quick tips on stuff that can improve your marketing and hope you give it a try. Oh, here's Daniel. He's finally out.

Back from my bathroom break. This is Daniel. Go follow the Mark and Milan podcast, but also tune into this series. It's once a week, the Bathroom Break.

We talk about marketing tips that we just spew out. And it could be anything from email, subject line to any marketing tips in the world. We'll talk about it.

Just give us a a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out.

Later.