In this episode of Do This, Not That, host Jay Schwedelson tackles questions from listeners in an "Ask Us Anything" segment. He provides insights on marketing tactics, discusses annoying but effective strategies, and shares his thoughts on reality TV shows.

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Best Moments:

(01:05) Work-related question from Alex about LinkedIn messaging tactics

(03:44) Effective but annoying tactic of sending meeting invites directly

(05:08) Discussion on curated offers based on activity and their effectiveness

(08:01) Promotion of Marigold email platform and special offer for listeners

(08:54) Ridiculous question about which reality TV show Jay would like to participate in

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MASSIVE thank you to our Sponsor, Marigold!!

Marigold is a relationship marketing platform designed to help you acquire new customers and turn them into superfans with their best-in-class loyalty solutions. Don’t take my word for it though, American Airlines, Honeybaked Ham, Title Boxing, and Notre Dame University are also customers!

Regardless of your size, check out Marigold today to get the solution you need to grow your business!

Check out this free content from marigold that Jay has loved digesting, 5 Steps For Selecting The Right Email Marketing Platform.

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 Marigold. This is our short episode where all week long we get in questions, we get in work questions, and we get in really ridiculous questions, and.

And we try to tackle one of each, and it'll be awesome. If you submitted a question, all you got to do is go to jschwettleson.com you click podcast, and then you click Ask Us Anything.

And you could submit anything you got. So let's jump into it. Let's do our work question first. We got a question in from Alex from Boulder, Colorado. Man, is Colorado amazing.

It is so beautiful. Although I know everybody loves, like, lots of snow. I'm not a big snow dude, but Colorado is great. All right. Anyway, Alex, what is your question?

Jay, I'm starting to get something really annoying on LinkedIn, and I'm wondering if it works or what's going on here.

I'm getting these two time DMS from people that I'm connected to, meaning I get a message from somebody I'm connected to that I really don't even remember who they are, and they're promoting their product or service. And then a few days later, I get a second DM that says, hey, did you see that message I sent you? Is this actually working?

Well, this is an interesting topic. So I want to talk about annoying tactics that we all hate that actually kind of work that you might want to consider. But they are annoying.

So let me preface by saying they're super annoying.

So the first one, Alex, I want to talk about the one that you are referencing, which has been surging in the last 60 days, which is this thing where on LinkedIn you probably have gotten them, where you may have connections that you don't even know who they are. Okay, maybe they're not even connections.

They go to that other inbox and you get this message that says, hey, would love to set up a call and take you, talk to you about our product or service. And then you don't reply to it. You don't even, like, read the whole thing.

And then a few days later, you get a message from that same person and it says, I'm like, hey, do you have a chance to check out that message I sent you? Now when you get that second message, you're like, wait a minute, was that important? Should I have checked it out?

And sadly, sadly, these are working.

So World Data Research came out with some data that when you do a resend on that initial cold LinkedIn DM, a resend within five days of the initial send, it increases the reply rate over 50% than if you didn't do one at all. Meaning that if you do that secondary touch, say, hey, did you check out my message I sent you? It actually does really well. That's super annoying.

That's doing well because that means more and more people are going to do it. But it's something we have to be aware of because it works.

What's something else that works that's slightly annoying that maybe you're not aware of that it works? Well, a lot of sales folks and BDRs and people out there, they're always trying to get people to reply to emails, right, that they're sending.

And, you know, maybe they're close to getting that meeting or maybe somebody opened or clicked on something but they didn't reply. And maybe, you know, you think you're about to get a meeting, but you don't. What's a tactic that works really well?

Well, instead of sending just another email to that contact saying, hey, you want to check this out? Hey, can we book a meeting? Blah, blah, blah, blah.

If you skip that and you literally just send a meeting invite, okay, you send a meeting invite to the person that you want to get the meeting with. All right, I know how annoying this is. I know how much you're like, jay, that's not cool. But you have a relationship.

You're going back and forth, the person, whatever, you're just trying to get on their calendar and they're kind of ghosting you on the meeting. If you just send them the meeting invite out of nowhere, okay?

The you see a very, very strong acceptance rate, acceptance rate on that meeting invite and the reply rate to a meeting invite solicitation as opposed to just another email, we see the reply rate be over 35% higher because, number one, you have to react to it to get it off your calendar. And you may say, no, I don't want to meet with you, or say, you know what? That time's not good. This time's better.

If you've never tried the final push as a meeting invite as opposed to just another email, I'm Telling you it actually really, really works. And then the last super annoying tactic. I'm going to make so many enemies from this episode.

Like Jay, you're giving out tactics that I would never want to do. This last one I think you probably will do and you probably have done, but maybe you haven't really thought about it.

And it's more about the offers that we are sending out. Whether you're a business or a consumer marketer. And this idea of curated offers based on activity, I'm not talking about abandoned cart stuff.

You got something in your cart and then you get emails say hey, 20% off if you buy the thing in your cart. That I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about curated offers based on activity. So let me give you examples.

When you email out curated offers based on activity, we see click through rates rise on consumer over 30% versus a standard offer. And on business they rise over 40% versus a standard offer. What are we talking about?

So on the consumer side, you may take the activity of somebody every people that have visited, you know a section where you're selling home goods on your site or something, and you send everybody who is in that section in the last 30 days an email that says hand picked just for you. And then in that email will be stuff similar to that. You don't need to do this on a one to one basis.

You can if you have a super sophisticated platform, but you could literally take people that have like a whole bucket of people that visited a page on your site or a whole bucket of people that went to some sort of an offer page.

And then you send them an email that says hand picked just for you on the consumer side that crushes it because the recipient's like, oh, this isn't just for everybody. This is based on what I did. Okay? On the business side, I don't think we use this anywhere near enough this curated offers based on activity.

But it's about being super direct and super transparent.

So that subject line would be something like, let's say somebody, you know, visit, you know, a product page or a service page on your site, or they attended a webinar or whatever. You then send them a note that says you, you viewed this product or service, here's what's next.

Or because you engaged with this, this might also be useful.

Whatever it is, you take the activity that the person did, they downloaded a piece of content, they went to a webinar, they went to this page on your site and you are transparent about it. Like listen, you check this out. So now we want to send you this. And it is a little bit annoying because it's like, well, why?

Why are you watching what I'm doing? Leave me alone. You're annoying.

But actually, when you are transparent about the fact that you're sending them this because they did this, it does really, really well.

So if you're not doing curated offers based on activity, and this is not a marketing automation stream thing, this is calling it out and being transparent thing. Listen, all of this stuff is annoying. I get that. But it works. So you might want to think about incorporating some of it.

All right, before we get into the ridiculous question, I wanted to let you know this podcast is presented by Marigold. Marigold is the greatest email sending platform on earth. I send out billions of emails, business to consumer. And you know what?

You can save a ton of money right now because you listen to this podcast. So this is not going to be found elsewhere. This is wild. Okay, if you're thinking about a new platform, you got to check this out.

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So their role, Marigold's got Sail through and Cheetah Digital and Live Clicker and Emma and all these platforms, they're offering 50% off to listeners of this podcast or you can get your implementation fee waived.

All you got to do is go to jelson.com Save S A V E J schweddelson.com Save I am telling you, you want to save some money on your email sending before the end of the year, you got to check out this offer. Save money, use the best platform. Check out Marigold. They're awesome. All right, let's get into the ridiculous question.

We got a question in from Mia from Waco, Texas. Waco, Texas. That's where Fixer uppers from that show with Chip and Joanna Gaines. Love that show. You know what?

I tried to get Joanna Gaines to do Guru conference. It's true. I was close. Didn't happen. She's cool, though. Anyway, Jay. All right, this question from Mia. Jay, which reality show?

Because I know you love reality tv. Would you like to go on? Okay, here we go. And there's a list. First one is Real Housewives. Well, I would not want to go on Real Housewives.

I'm gonna assume for a second this is like in my days when I'm single or whatever back in the day. First of all, I wouldn't want to go in there because I don't even know if they let dudes go on there. But assuming dudes Go on there.

Everybody on there winds up, their relationships fall apart. They get angry at each other. My favorite, Real Housewives. Real Housewives of New York with the newer cast, not the old cast like Ramona and all them.

I love the new cast. I'm on Team Brin. Real Housewives is a great, great. If you've never watched it, start with Real Housewives in New York. Excellent show.

All right, the next one, she said, would you want to go in Love is Blind? I mean, if I was single, would I go on Love is Blind?

I would go on Love is Blind knowing that if I got engaged, the person I wasn't really getting engaged. I was getting a free trip to whatever cool place they were going to go to in Europe and hang out for a week. So I would do it under that lens.

But Love is Blind is a wild show to go on. All right, next one Survivor. Oh, no, absolutely not. Because I'm the least, you know, manly man or whatever that there is. I would last a day. I just.

I would be. I couldn't make a fire. I couldn't make shelter. Although I would lose a few pounds, that wouldn't be so bad. So I don't think I would do well there.

All right, below deck.

Oh, if I could go on Below Deck as one of the guests that, you know, I say, hey, I want to eat this for dinner, and I want you to do the inflatable water slide and all of that. I mean, 100. Anybody that's going on that show and you want to invite somebody, invite me. I want to go. That's awesome.

And then the last one, the Great British Baking Show. I love that show. That is the most relaxing show to watch on television. Now I would like to go on it because I want to be in the tent.

I want to make some weird British dessert. I never know. They go, and today, everybody here is going to make a Snuffleupagus cake. I'm like, I never heard of a Snuffleupagus cake. What is that?

And then they show a picture of it. I'm like, I don't know what that is, but I'd eat it. And so if I had a bake one, I don't know, it wouldn't go well.

I can make, like, cookies when you put them in the oven, that's about it. The ones that you know in the cookie dough. So I go on it, they probably kick me out right in the first week. But sign me up.

I want to make a Snuffleupagus cake. Anyway, what are we talking about? Who knows? Listen, two things. One, go to jswaltzen.com let's connect. Drop me a note there. Let's partner.

Come on. Who cares? All right, have a great day. Talk to you later.

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

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