In this episode of The Bathroom Break, hosts Daniel Murray and Jay Schwedelson blend practical marketing tactics with fun personal anecdotes. They share strategies for improving email open rates and dive into the quirky world of childhood collections and creative hobbies.

=================================================================

Best Moments:

(00:51) Discussion about childhood collections

(02:32) Tactic: Indicating content reading time in subject lines and preheaders

(04:18) Daniel's strategy for maintaining high email open rates

(07:24) The importance of focusing on engaged subscribers rather than total list size

(08:23) Various ways to implement the reading time tactic in marketing

(09:49) Current collecting habits and hotel key card art project

(11:24) Wrap-up and podcast recommendations

=================================================================

Check out our FREE + VIRTUAL EVENTS! -> 

EVENTASTIC.com

GuruConference.com

DeliveredConference.com

=================================================================

MASSIVE thank you to our Sponsor, Marigold!!

FREE Guide → The Loyalty Program Optimization Guide

Building customer loyalty today means going beyond traditional rewards. Successful programs engage customers at every touchpoint, creating experiences that feel personal, valuable, and worth returning for. With nearly 70% of consumers willing to pay more for brands they love, your loyalty program can significantly drive engagement and revenue.

In The Loyalty Program Optimization Guide you will learn:

• Customer Loyalty Today: Explore the latest loyalty trends and why customer loyalty remains a crucial growth driver in today’s market.
• Key Strategies to Optimize Loyalty Programs: Discover must-know tactics to craft a loyalty program that’s engaging, personalized, and impactful.
• Turning Loyal Customers into Superfans: Learn how to cultivate emotional connections that make customers feel more like brand advocates than just shoppers.

Get the FREE Guide today and create better loyalty programs that drive revenue and engagement:

jayschwedelson.com/marigold

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 topics. And if you want to be in the bathroom, fine. Just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out.

It's time for another bathroom break with Jay Schwedelson. That's me and Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials.

And before we get into the topic of the day, which I think is going to be super useful, Daniel, I have the most random question ever for you. Did you ever, like, collect anything as a child or whatever? I know you grew up in South Africa.

I don't know if you collected, like, rocks or something. Did you ever, like, have baseball cards or something?

I actually had a lot of collections, so I had baseball cards, I had Pokemon cards, Beanie Babies.

Wow.

Beanie Babies were the thing. And the most annoying thing about this is. The most annoying is my mom threw all that stuff away when I went to college.

And I'm still so annoyed because that's worth so much. I probably had some valuable things in those collections because I used to love going to the store and opening that fresh pack of cards or.

I really think that I need to make fun of you about the Beanie Babies thing.

I mean, sports cards, great Pokemon cards, mildly random, but Beanie Babies is like, you need to be judged in a very bad way for, like, what does that mean? Would you go on ebay and, like.

You'D buy a stuff when you're like, seven years old? You just get little stuffed toys and they had cute little names with birthdays and. But I also liked the.

You know what?

This is a random tangent. But also I love when the Snapple had the fun facts.

And those are cool. I liked when Coca Cola also would have your name on it, although it never said J. I bet you there's like a Daniel Coca Cola bottle.

Oh, no. I did. My cousin once sent me. And I'll share this picture it had in a store. It had Daniel on one cocoa and Murray on another cocoa together on the.

And I'm that the chances of that very.

That's huge. That's huge. All right, well, we've really covered a lot already. But we're going to jump into this.

This is super tactical and this was something I stole from Daniel's newsletters. Really I stole from Ari, his wife's newsletter go to millions which is awesome if you don't subscribe to it.

And that is this idea of, and it works so well telling people how much time they're about to invest in a piece of content.

So there would be an email that Ari would send out and in the subject line of the email after the topic was discussed it would put in brackets, you know, three minute read. It would say three min read and it would let me know the recipient that hey, if I open this thing up it's not going to take a lot of my time.

And I've been testing that a lot and it crushes it. So Daniel, what's this tactic all about?

I mean it's exactly how you described. Gets people expectation up front and also it's better to be more specific with that number. So 4 minute, 3 minute, 6 minute read.

Because people believe specifics even if it isn't a three minute read. It's probably a three minute read or four minute read. So it just sets expectation up front and people love expectation up front.

And I, I have two tested it and it probably, it probably boosts my sends like 15 to 20% for open rate when I do that. So like go from a 51 operate to like a 54 operate just by adding that in the pre header.

Look at you flexing your open rate right there with your over 50% open rate. Look at that. He just subtly drops, you know, 50 to 54. Like everybody has that.

But you know why I have that is I cut my list.

So wait, let's talk about that. Let's, let's go into that tangent for a second. What do you mean you cut your list?

People who are not active within the last 90 days. I will send them like a win backflow 3 emails. If they don't do that, they're off the list.

I really want to keep people who are invest in the newsletter. Also it helps be in the inbox when you have a newsletter that has a high open rate and click through rate.

So I try to remove all the people who are not interested not in my icp. Ideal customer profile for people who don't know icp.

But I try to get the most valuable readers there and then you actually know who the valuable readers are because they're, they're in your list. So every month we cut people off our list.

Okay, so people listening right now are like, well, that's great that you're kind of off. But one of my metrics that I'm being held accountable for is to grow our newsletter file or to grow our database.

And if I cut people off the way that you do, I'm going to be seen as failing.

What do you say to somebody who has, you know, this KPI, this, you know, key performance indicator about their job role in terms of that kind of garbage growth metric as part of what they're being held accountable for?

I would say that you still can have that growth metric because it's net new people added to the list. It should be your, your growth metric thing. So we're still growing the newsletter even though we're cutting people.

So if you can stay above the positive of people subscribing, you're doing a great job that you want to see that growth is higher than churn and is a great way to keep your newsletter really fresh. If you start dipping in into your newsletter stuff your newsletter. So that's one thing I would say.

Second of all, like, I would go flip the script and talk to your leadership and say, hey, this is how much of my customers are opening this email and this is how much I'm growing of those customers opening emails and clicking emails and engaging of emails.

So that should really be the important metric is how many net new people add to the list that are cut and are engaging and how, how are you retaining those people over time?

Because we notice with our newsletter is if you keep someone on your newsletter for over six months, they become like really loyal lifetime members of that newsletter and will do other stuff with you, like attend your events and ultimately maybe buy from you.

So if you can keep people for through six to nine months, that should be more of a metric you're looking at than I know some people are going to still have that growth metric, which is just, it's arbitrary because if people aren't opening, if you look at your numbers going up and your open rate going down, it's not a good sign as well.

So, yeah, I think that there's all these metrics that are kind of like vanity metrics that just take people down a rabbit hole and waste their time, energy and money. And one of those is just the size of your database.

If your company has an ego about the size of their database, you are, you're on a loser path because that's, that's irrelevant.

Also you. It's not like I'm cutting them from my.

I'M not removing them from the database, but I, I still could remarket to those people on paid social on other platforms. I just don't keep them in the list because they're not interested, they're not engaging.

There's no point of keeping them in the list, but you could still use those people. So I'm not remov removing them from my database, but it's no point of keeping people who are not doing anything with your list. So it's that.

That's a misconception. Unless they tell me that they want to be out of the list, then I'm deleting them off my data database, but I'm not deleting them from the database.

I'm just deleting them from receiving a newsletter.

Yeah.

And before we wrap up, I just want to take back to the original tactic of different areas that you could use it in this idea of putting in like 3min read, literally the number 3 and then min read you could.

At the end of your subject line, you absolutely should test putting this in your pre header, which is that gray text under your subject line, letting people know, hey, three men read. So when they open it up, they'll know how long it is.

And then if you have blocks of text, and this is for business or consumer marketers, you have blocks of text and you're trying to get people to click through and then go to a page to read further whatever it is.

It could be a blog or whatever, you put the three lines of text leading into that topic and then at the end of that three lines of text, you put 3min read within your newsletter, letting them know if they click through, how long it's going to be once they get there to read it. These are three great tactics that really ramp up engagement in a big, big way.

I add one more added to your landing page if you're trying to capture someone for a newsletter or on that blog post that you're doing already.

Like if you say this is five minutes to get the best tips for email marketing, like it'll only take you five minutes to get smarter at email marketing Today people were willing to invest five minutes to get better at email marketing every day. So add it to those landing page too. The conversion will skyrocket on landing pages if you add that to a landing page.

All right, so before we wrap up, are you collecting anything weird now?

No, I'll tell you, I'm decluttering because our. Oh actually I do have. I do do something. But Ari is a very doesn't like, hoarding stuff. Like, doesn't is not sentimental with items.

She gets rid of things easily.

But I have been doing this since we have been dating, is every time we go to a hotel, I keep the hotel the card because I want to, like, make a piece of art of all, like, the hotels we stayed at. And what are you collecting? You haven't told me anything. You collect hair products?

Yeah, hair products. First of all, the reason you want to keep those hotel cards is not because of some sort of weird art project.

That is the strangest art project I've ever heard of. But you're not supposed to just throw those things out because they have, like, all of your data is on your hotel card.

And so the thing is, you can't just throw them out.

You have to, like, really chop them up and get rid of them or whatever, because there are scanners that could, like, pull your contact info or something off of that. I read that somewhere. I don't know if that's true, but that's scary.

Well, I've been doing the secret way of doing that, but I keep every hotel card key because I. I just want to, like. That's something we like to do. So just.

I steal pens at every hotel I go to.

Oh, I used to do. I used to do that, too. Only if it's a good pen, I'll steal it.

Oh, no, no. Pens, pencils. I don't take, like, pillows or towels. I'm not a super weirdo.

You walk out with the robe.

In the robe. All right, well, we've definitely covered a lot today.

I have no idea what we talked about, but follow the Marking Millennials podcast and leave it a review. Do it a solid Leave Daniel review.

Tell him how awesome he is, and if you're really bored, you can check out do this, not that, and we'll see at the next one, right? Yeah.

See ya.

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 Market Millennials podcast, but also tune into this series. It's once a week, the Bathroom Break.

We talk about marking 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 shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out.

Later.