In this episode of Do This, Not That, host Jay Schwedelson discusses the latest developments in marketing, technology, and pop culture. He covers recent updates to iOS 18.1, new features in LinkedIn, and shares some entertainment recommendations.

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Best Moments:

(00:59) Introduction of iOS 18.1 and its implications for marketers

(02:29) Explanation of Apple's new "branded mail" feature

(04:41) Discussion on the importance of being verified on LinkedIn

(06:54) Mention of Crocs releasing pet shoes

(07:36) Entertainment recommendations and TV show updates

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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 what's up this week from the do this not that podcast presented by Marigold. This is our short episode where we break down what's going on this week in marketing and business and in 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 what is going on? Well, let's first talk about the change to our phones. IOS 18 has hit this week.

That is the big operating system update from Apple.

And it's a little confusing, right, because all the big stuff that they announced are tied to their AI Apple intelligence, where Siri is going to get a lot smarter and all this cool stuff is going to happen in your Apple Mail app and all sorts of stuff. But the reason you're probably not seeing it yet is it only applies for people that have an iPhone 15 and above.

So if you have like an iPhone 12, you're not going to be able you'll see some of the changes, but you're not going to see all the AI changes.

Some of the changes you're going to see, for example, if you have an older phone, are things that allow you to do much cooler, you know, imessaging and text messaging where you can underline and strike through and do all sorts of stuff within the app. But all the AI stuff is only going to hit. People have an iPhone 15 and above. Now what does this all mean from a marketing perspective?

It's gonna take a little while for the stuff that impacts marketing to really occur. Because we're gonna go through this whole holiday season, a lot of people are gonna upgrade their phones.

That's what always happens during the holiday season. They get em as gifts, they buy em for themselves, whatever.

So coming out of the new year, the number of people that are gonna be able to interact with iOS 18, all the AI stuff's gonna be a lot higher.

And the big thing for marketing is that within the Apple Mail app where all these big changes are occurring, we're going to want to make sure that our marketing is taking advantage of all the new things going on within that mail app. And so you've seen for a while now that within the mail app they're going to be bucketing emails. We know about that.

That automatically AI is going to be categorizing the emails that are received into an updates tab, a promotions tab, a transactions tab, all these tabs. Right. But that's not the thing that you should be thinking about right now if you're a marketer because that's for a little bit down the road.

The thing we want to think about right now is something called branded mail that Apple has also released at the exact same time that I don't think enough marketers are paying attention to.

So Branded mail is available right now and what it means is for the first time, Apple is allowing brands to have their logo show up when somebody opens up their email, right? Their mail app and all those emails are in the inbox right alongside the left hand side of all the emails that are there.

There's the opportunity to have your brand's logo appear next to your from address, next to your subject line before somebody actually opens up their email. This was not available before. It is called branded mail. It is free and it's super easy to set up.

And rather than me giving you some crazy URL, all you want to do is just Google. Google set up branded mail in Apple Mail app.

It takes you through the steps, it is free, it is easy to do and then once you do have it set up, your logo will appear next to the message that you send out. And we're already from some limited testing, we're already starting to see a pretty good uplift.

And if you look at what Google has done with Gmail, they have a similar thing with their BIMI program and Yahoo uses that as well. Those brands that have their logo showing up in the inbox see an average open rate increase of about 20%. Right?

So having your, your brand's logo show up is really valuable. And this is different than anything else that's been out there. This is not. Some people are aware of things called Bimmy. This is not Bimmy.

Apple has never had an opportunity for you to have your logo show up in the inbox until now. So I would check out branded mail that's pretty cool and pretty new. And then the other big thing that's going on is with LinkedIn.

So people are sleeping on something and this is going to become a big, big deal being verified on LinkedIn. This is free, this is easy to do. There's not like X where you have to pay for it or Facebook and Meta where you have to pay for it.

All this stuff being verified on LinkedIn is 100% free. And why does it matter? This is according. This is a lot of new data that's just come out.

This is According to LinkedIn, on average, verified members get 60% more profile views, 50% more comments and reactions on their posts, and 30% more connection requests. They're trying to get people to verify themselves so they can get rid of a lot of the bots that are out there.

And the way that you verify yourself is you go to this area on your profile page. Okay. And when you go there and you very, you have to upload your driver's license or some government issued id.

When you do that, you get this little badge that you are actually you.

And CNBC is reporting this week that LinkedIn will begin showing user verification badges within its primary feed in the, starting in the month of November. This, right now. Right.

And that matters because the verifications are going to even be a bigger driver in terms of people checking out messages and interacting with messages. So if you want to get yourself verified again, it's free, it's easy to do, it couldn't be easier. All you do is you go to your own profile page.

That's a page where you see a bigger picture of your own face. Okay? And then you should see a button that says resources.

If you don't see a button that says resources, you could look for the three dots that are right, like in the mid part of your, of your profile page. You click on that and then you look for resources and then you look for verification. It's really easy process.

And I'm telling you, people are sleeping on this. There's only 55 million out of the 1 billion users of LinkedIn that are verified.

So by doing this quick, easy, free thing, you're going to give yourself an opportunity to really see your engagement rise. And it's only going to go further because they're really pushing this. They're trying to get 100 million people verified by the end of the year.

So let's talk about useless information. Did you see this? Did you see that? Crocs this week they just put out, okay, they released pet Crocs. I am not making this up.

These are Crocs, you know, the shoes for pets. What is going on? Here's the craziest part. They sold out instantly of, of Crocs for your dogs and cats and whatever.

And then on ebay, right now they're being sold for $200 a pair to get your dog A pair of crocs. What is going on on this planet? Don't do that. Just don't do that.

All right, really useless information, because I know you're very interested in horrible TV that you should be watching. So on my list to watch, which I have not watched, but I heard it's very good, is Woman of the Hour with Anna Kendrick.

That's that movie on Netflix based on a true story, the serial killer thing. So I want to check that out. I heard that is very good. I've been watching Disclaimer on Apple. I'm like three or four episodes in. It's good but weird.

It's with Cape Blanchette, who's great. I give it a. I would watch it, but it's a little weird. But it's pretty good. And then shrinking two just came out. Jason Siegel and Harrison Ford.

I'm very excited to watch this and I'm sad to report the Golden Bachelorette is not doing well. I've been watching this, of course, and I love Joan. She's great. But the ratings are terrible.

They're half of what the Golden Bachelor did in terms of millions of people watching. And that's because that guy Gary spelled Jerry screwed it all up because he was a jerk. So I don't know what's going to happen there.

Anyway, that's the important stuff going on this week. Hey, leave this thing review. Hook it up. Why not? Visit jschwettleson.com let's do some stuff together. Thanks for being here.

Have a great week and go buy pet crocs later.

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