In this episode of Do This, Not That, host Jay Schwedelson tackles both work-related and lighthearted questions in the "Ask Us Anything" segment. He shares insights on effective marketing tactics inspired by political campaigns and discusses his personal Thanksgiving preparations.

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Best Moments:

(01:05) Work question from Sarah about political marketing tactics

(02:45) Discussion of bookend emojis in email preheaders

(04:12) Using emojis in email "from" names

(05:27) The rise of connected TV (CTV) in marketing

(07:55) Ridiculous question about Thanksgiving preparation

(08:24) Jay's experience with the Turkey Trot run

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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 Maragal. This is the super short episode where all week long we're getting questions, we getting work questions, we get in ridiculous questions.

We try to tackle one of each. And if you want to submit one, it's real easy. Go to Jay Schwedelson.com you click podcast, then you click Ask Us Anything. And we love it.

Anything you got. Let's hit it up. All right, let's jump right into it. Let's do our work. Question first. We got a question from Sarah from Short Hills, New Jersey.

Short Hills, New Jersey, has an incredible mall. A great, great mall, Very fancy mall. I have a nice mall here in Boca as well, where I live in South Florida.

I'll tell you, the weirdest thing in the world is going to, like, a mall that's, like, on the way out and meaning, like, not doing well in some random town, some random city, because you go in there and it's like a ghost town.

And you're scared to even eat in the food court because there's like two random places still open and they look like they're serving food from, like, 35 years ago. And they'll have, like, I don't know, like maybe a Claire's, you know, still in the mall and people getting, like, earrings, piercing, whatever.

And then they'll have one other store that's still open and. And the whole thing's, like, falling apart. So I don't know. I don't like malls that are closing down. They freak me out a little bit.

Sarah, what is your question? Jay, has anything useful come out of all these crazy tactics that the political marketing has thrown at us these last few months?

Well, that is a great question, and I will tell you, it has been pretty wild. Political marketing doesn't matter which if what party it is, doesn't matter. These political action committees, the aggressiveness is bananas, right?

I mean, they just. They'll do anything to get our attention. But what does come out of it is the political marketing on both sides. You know, both.

Both Republican, Democrat, independent, doesn't matter.

They're so aggressive in Their tactics that they're trying things now that will bleed into regular marketing in the next year or so because they're trying so many new and aggressive things. And some of those things that work, regular marketing is going to try to do those things. And we're already starting to see that happen.

So there's some random tactics that actually are working really well that we're already seeing go from the political world into the regular world. One of those which is so random is bookend emojis in your email pre header. What?

Okay, so you got your email, you send it out, you got your from address, then you got your subject line. We all know that the second subject line, that kind of gray line underneath your subject line, that is your pre header, right?

And you could write your pre header text, whatever you want to put in there. Generally speaking, you ought to keep it less than 85 characters.

But what a lot of the political emails have been doing is they've been not only just putting emojis in their pre header, which a lot of business and consumer marketers don't even realize that you can do, but they're doing bookend emojis. So they'll start their pre header with an emoji. They'll say whatever it is they want to say, like, you know, six or seven words and.

And they'll put the same emoji at the end of those six or seven words and they'll make these bookends within the pre header. And we're now not only seeing in the political emails, we're seeing in regular marketing.

And bookend emojis are lifting email open rates for both consumer and business to business email marketers lifting business emails about 14% and consumers about 18% because it stands out and it's very different than putting it in the subject line. So if you've never tested putting bookend emojis in your pre header, that is a super interesting random test that's working really, really well.

Another tactic that we don't have data on yet, but we're seeing it a lot.

And we believe it's going to be something that is going to bleed over into regular marketing is using actually emojis in the from name when you're sending out your email.

So when you send out your email, okay, if you're sending email addresses acme@special offers.com but the from name that it comes from is, you know, Acme Company, right? You could change the from name every time you hit send.

You could change it say, you know, Acme Events or Acme Sale or Acme whatever, you're not changing the actual delivery email address. So in that from name that you could change whenever you want to on any platform, doesn't matter.

A lot of the political emails are including an emoji in the from name itself. Right. Which is very different than putting the subject line or even the pre header.

Adding an emoji to the from name is a new tactic and we've already seen Groupon steal this tactic. And in almost all of their promotional emails, Groupon is now putting a green circle in their from name field.

And there's not enough data out there yet to say that this is working or not working. But I think it's super interesting and something we are definitely tracking.

You're watching streaming, you see an ad on, you know, when you're watching on YouTube TV or wherever you're watching, right? Maybe it's on Peacock, whatever. And that ad is hyper targeted, right? To you, like specific to what you're interested in. That is a connected TV ad.

And there's been a massive explosion and in the use of this within all the political campaigns. As a matter of fact, 13% of all of the political ad budgets for this cycle of campaign have been spent on connected TV according to the current.

That is like a 600% increase from the last set of elections that took place two years ago. And this is both on the business of business and consumer side. We're seeing budgets rise significantly.

So for example, 65% of B2B marketers say their company has increased their sales using Connected TV along with their other paid channels. That's according to Madhive and that's super recent data. And you could run these connected TV ads using all the regular platforms.

You're already running ads on YouTube, Snap, TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, Spotify. They're all allowing you to run connected TV ads now.

All right, before we get into the ridiculous question, I wanted to let you know that this podcast is presented by Marigold. Come on now, listen, if you don't know Marigold, Marigold is my email sending platform. It's my esp. I've been using it for years.

We send out billions of emails, consumer and business.

Their roll up of sale through and Cheetah Digital and Emma and Live Clicker and campaign Monitor, all the best platforms on the planet are all part of Marigold. And they have a special offer only for listeners of this podcast. It's an up to 50% off offer.

Okay, you don't like your ESP, you don't like your platform, you got to at least check out Marigold. All you got to do is go to jschweddelson.com save jelson.com save and that is where this exclusive offer lives. Fill out the form, check it out.

I'm telling you, there's a better way to get your emails out. All right, let's get into the ridiculous question. We got a question from Billy from Dallas, Texas.

Jay, do you do anything to offset how much you're going to eat at Thanksgiving? Do you do anything now to prepare?

So you're basically saying that I'm going to be a disgusting animal Thanksgiving and I'm probably going to wear stretchy pants and I'm going to eat a lot and am I doing anything right now to prepare the fact that I'm disgusting? Oh, first of all, that's a fair assessment because that probably will happen. Let's see. I'll tell you one thing that my family does, which is super.

I'll tell you why it's embarrassing. We do a turkey trot.

So nearby where I live, they have one of these 5Ks that you could run a few days before Thanksgiving and they call it a turkey trot. And a zillion people show up and it's this 5k around this park and everyone's wearing like Thanksgiving like hats and ridiculousnesses and whatever.

And everybody I know shows up there. The reason I say it's super and I do this that way, you know, if I run a 5k, then maybe I'll offset some of the, the cornbread that I'm going to eat.

But then it's embarrassing because first of all, my wife goes and my teenage kids go, whatever. And then everybody I know is there and everybody else is bringing like their little kids and everything.

And, and then we all line up and they go, go now. Forget it. My wife absolutely crushes me. She's in incredible shape. She's gone. My two kids destroy me.

And they, I mean, they laugh at me like, you have no idea. But then I'm running and I run so slow. I mean, basically I'm walking.

I look like one of those people that are like running but you're like, are they walking? Like you're not sure?

And I wind up running in the same pack as like, you know, these like 10 year olds and 11 year olds and I can't even keep up with them. And everybody I know, my neighborhood is passing me by. They're like, what's wrong with you? Are you ill? Like, like it's so embarrassing.

And then what happens is then the final, I get to the finish line, like I'm going to, I'm going to keel over. It's not going well. And my family's already at the finish line. They're already like, have taken a nap and woken back up. They're laughing at me.

They're taking pictures of me. Everybody I know in this universe is there saying, hahaha, you're a loser. You're like in last place with people that are half dead.

And the whole thing is mortifying. I don't know why I go every year. I probably go because I like the free T shirt, but it's not even free because you have to pay 25 bucks to get it.

And then I never wear it again. What am I talking about? Like what am I actually talking about? Do I do anything else related to this to prepare?

I mean I should, I shouldn't be a disgusting animal. But whatever, it's coming, it's gonna happen. Everybody bring desserts to my house. I want to eat them.

And if you don't like sweet potatoes with marshmallows, then you should stop listening to this podcast because that is a Thanksgiving staple for me. And anybody that says otherwise is just flat out wrong. There you go. We covered a lot of ground. Listen, leave this thing a review.

If you don't stink, you'll leave it a review. You'll be an awesome human being. Go to jschwettleson.com give us a question for next week. You are awesome. And don't do a turkey trot later.

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

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