In this episode of Do This, Not That, host Jay Schwedelson answers questions from listeners in an "Ask Us Anything" segment. He covers both work-related and lighthearted topics, providing insights into marketing best practices and sharing entertaining tidbits.

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Best Moments:

(01:24) Why LinkedIn automation programs should be avoided

(02:50) The importance of sending regular emails to your database

(04:32) When to stop trying to win back unengaged email subscribers

(05:44) Brief mention of Marigold, an email sending platform

(06:42) A secret Netflix hack for finding more content categories

(08:13) Introduction to secretmenus.com for hidden restaurant menu items

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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. We'll 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 Marigold.

This is our super short episode where all week long we get in questions, we get in work questions, we get in ridiculous questions and we try to tackle one of each. And if you want to submit a question, you'd be my favorite person.

All you got to do is go to jschwettelson.com there's a button that says podcast, another one that says Ask us anything. And you can put anything you want in there. So let's jump into it. Let's do the work question first.

All right, we got a question in from Janiel from Dallas, Texas. Okay, Janiel, what do you got? Jay, what are three things you should never do in marketing?

Oh, well, I have like 300, but I'll give you some recent ones that have been on my mind. The first one is doing any type of LinkedIn automation program.

So there are these tools out there that you may or may not be aware of that are automating outreach on LinkedIn.

So on LinkedIn, if you ever get these messages that seem like spam and they're coming to you and even coming to you from your first degree connections and they're just filling up your LinkedIn inbox, or you're just seeing a lot of automated stuff on LinkedIn in terms of commenting and people sending you connection requests. You don't even know why. It's because they're using these LinkedIn automation platforms that can automatically do that for you.

And people are doing it to, to grow their following, to try to build up their pipelines. And according to sales flow, these tools have grown by over 85% in the last year. But do not use them. Number one, LinkedIn will penalize you.

They could ban your account. And I'm gonna give you some firsthand knowledge. I tried a couple of these tools because, look, it's hard to keep up with everything on LinkedIn.

You wanna grow, you wanna do all this stuff. I tried it out and I will tell you that the second I turned it on, it destroyed everything. It destroyed the circulation of my posts.

It destroyed the ability for me to connect and meet new people, it was terrible. So I am strongly against these LinkedIn automation tools because you gotta do it the old fashioned way.

You gotta connect with people the right way, reach out the right way. I'm not a fan. Don't do it. It really will hurt you.

Another thing that you don't wanna do ever is not send out enough to your database, your email database. Marketers make the mistake. Consumer and business marketers, they think they're sending out too much email to their database.

And that's why performance is bad. Performance is bad on your email list because you're epically boring and you're not relevant. But here's the important thing.

You need to be sending out at least one time a week if you're a business or a consumer marketer. Over 80% of business and consumer marketers are sending out at least one time a week, according to World Data Research.

Now here's the stat that's going to blow up your mind. Okay.

If you send out at least five times per month, your overall email open rate, the percentage of people are opening up, your email will rise by over 15% if you send out at least five times per month. Why is that? Because now the way that you stay in somebody's inbox is not based on if you write the word free in your subject line.

That's old news, that's garbage. Spam trigger words are not a thing. The way that you stay in somebody's inbox, whether it's business or consumer, is by engagement.

How often are people opening and clicking and replying to your emails?

And the irony is, if you don't send out enough email at least once a week, if you don't send out enough email, you can't generate enough engagement with that individual to actually stay in their inbox.

So when people think they're going to send out less email and it's going to improve things, it actually is the reason that you're going to go to the junk or spam folder because you're not generating enough engagement opens and clicks and activity with that individual. So you need to get more relevant because you can't send out garbage. Get more relevant. Send out at least once a week. And that is how you do it.

Now, the last thing that you should never do, before we get into the ridiculous question, the last thing you should never do is try to win people back who have not engaged with your emails in over 24 months. It should be a lot sooner than that, but 24 months for sure.

If you have people that have not opened or clicked on one of your emails in over 24 months. Do not try to win them back. They are gone, Goodbye, move on. And if they want your content again, they will come back. What's that saying?

If they love you, you set them free or whatever that nonsense is. That's the case. 24 months is that number.

And the reason being is if you try to re engage people that have not opened or clicked or engaged with your emails that are older than 24 months old, these are turned into spam traps. These are boat anchors. These are people that will complain. These are problem people for you. They don't want your stuff anymore.

So after 24 months, you need to move them to the side. That is the magic date. Stop. It's over. Move on. Okay, let's get on to the ridiculous question. But before we do that, let me tell you about Marigold.

Marigold is my email sending platform. It is the greatest ESP on earth. Your ESP is not nearly as cool as my esp.

They are a roll up of campaign monitor and Emma and sail through and live clicker. They got everything a mob you could want and you're just not using the right one. I'm telling you, you got to get a demo from them.

You got to go to meetmargle.com they're going to save you money. They're going to have you get in the inbox. You're going to have better sending reputation, loyalty programs, you name it. Meet marigold.com.

i've been using them for years and if you want introduction to them, you could DM me on LinkedIn. I will connect you with the most amazing people there. That is meet marigold.com. all right, let's get on to the ridiculous question.

We got a question in from Jim from Livingston, New Jersey. Jim, what do you got? Jay, Netflix has become super boring. I keep scrolling. I don't know what to watch. How do you find shows to watch?

Well, I'm going to give you a secret Netflix hack that I don't think enough people know about. Okay. So first off, there's all these random categories when you're on Netflix, right?

It'll have, you know, I don't know, romance or holiday movies or I don't even know what. Right. But people don't know. There's a million other categories beyond the categories that you're seeing.

So there's a website called netflix-codes.com that's netflix-codes.com. now, if you go to this site, you will see Literally hundreds of categories. Netflix categories.

And every category on Netflix has a number assigned to it, and you'll see it on this website, right? So, for example, if you were interested in movies, like, you know, gangster movies, all right, Netflix has a code for.

So this netflix-codes.com site is very, very, very cool. You know what?

Another site that has nothing to do with Netflix, but I was on just the other day, which I thought was pretty cool, is a menu, is a website called secret menus.com. i was reading an article about a secret menu at Taco Bell, and I was googling something, and I found Secret menus dot com. This site is bananas.

It has the secret menus for every restaurant that's out there. So any fast food place. Because every fast food place has, like a secret menu. Like Waffle House is a secret menu.

McDonald's has a secret menu that if you go up and try to order this stuff, even though it's not on the menu, they'll give it to you. So, for example, I didn't know this, but at Chick Fil A, did you know you could order a buffalo chicken sandwich that's on their secret menu?

I didn't know that. Anyway, so secret menus.com is a really cool site. Wow. We share some useless information on this podcast. Listen, you're awesome.

I would appreciate two things. Number one, leave this thing a review. It means a lot. It helps to circulate this thing, whatever.

And also hit up jschweddelson.com we're planning our schedule. If you want me on on your podcast or if you want to do something together or hang out, we're planning that right now for the rest of the year.

If you go to jschweddelson.com, drop us a note there. That would be amazing. Leave us a question. There you are. Awesome. And I hope you find something really gross to eat on a secret menu later. You did it.

You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over. Subscribe to make sure you get the latest episode each week.

For more actionable tips and a little chaos from today's top marketer. And hook us up with a five star review if this wasn't the worst podcast of all time.

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