In this episode of Do This, Not That, host Jay Schwedelson shares simple but overlooked email and social tactics—from skipping preheaders to breaking up text for more white space—and gets honest about his doctor’s visit.

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Best Moments:

(00:13) Easy tactics you’re not using for email and social

(01:22) Have you ever tested no preheader?

(02:04) No preheader lifts open rates by 12–14%

(03:26) Try just one call to action button

(03:56) One CTA = 3x more clicks

(04:38) Four+ lines of text drops clicks by 20%

(05:16) LinkedIn: use enters to force “more” clicks

(06:39) Instagram carousels: add minimalist slides

(09:15) Why do I lie to my doctor?

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We are back for do this, not that podcast presented by Marigold. And today we're gonna rip through some tactics that are so easy to do for your email marketing and your social media that you're probably not thinking of that can be game changers. And it's all about thinking about what people see rather than what people read White space.

In our marketing is a game changer. And I'm not just talking about making sure that you have a lot of white space around your call to action buttons. No, no, no. Everybody knows stuff like that. I'm talking about little tactics that you're probably not thinking of that can really give you a boost. So first I wanna rip through some email marketing tactics for you to try and then some.

So social media ones, and this is all about testing. If we have five different things in here and you test them all, some will work, some won't work, but you gotta test it all and see what happens. So the first one is the pre-header. Everybody knows that in email marketing, when you send out your promotional email, you have your from name, you have your subject line, then you have that second subject line that kind of grayed out text that is your pre-header, and everybody messes around with a pre-header.

They put their offer information in there. They'll do all sorts of stuff. But have you ever tested Absolutely no preheader? At all. Why would you want to do that? When people are going through their inbox and they're scrolling, they're doing that social scroll in their inbox, when there's a lot of white space surrounding your email message, it stands out whether it's in the subconscious or not.

It stands out. So when you have no prehead or whatsoever, and you'll see only 2% of emails that go out. Have no preheader whatsoever. So reverse that for a second. Now, think about your emails being one of only 2% of emails that are out there that have no preheader, and what we see is that when you have no preheader, okay, B2B business, open rates rise by about 14%, and consumer email open rates rise by about 12%.

If you've never tested no preheader, that is an easy, easy one. Now, you can't do this on every email, but you can mix it in there as part of your arsenal. And the key thing, when you do no preheader. Is to use a very short subject line. 'cause the shorter the subject line is, the more white space is gonna show up in that person's inbox.

So another one, as it relates to email bef, before we get into all the social stuff, there's always this question of how many call to action buttons should I have in my email? And in general, we always say, oh, have a bunch of them. 'cause you wanna give people the, the most amount of opportunities to click through from your email and go to your site, your landing page, your offer page, whether it's consumer or business offers.

But if you've never tested the complete opposite of that, just having one call to action button. Very visible, very simple, very clean. Just one. If you've never tested that, that is a must do. Word stream came out with some data recently, and this is kind of wild, they found that emails with just one call to action button had a three x increase in clicks.

That's a 300% increase in clicks. Now, that's really a large increase, but more important than if you're gonna get 300%, which you probably won't if you've never tested sending an email with only one call to action, that is a must do. Okay? That is a must do. Now, the other thing as it relates to inside of your email that I think we all know.

Is, you cannot have big blocks of texts. You cannot have, you know, 5, 6, 7 lines of text. Nobody's gonna read that. But the stat is this Emails with blocks of texts that are over four lines or more, four lines or more have see a 20% drop in their click-through rates. Nobody cares what you're writing. Nobody's reading four lines of text.

Break it up with whitespace. You need to be thinking about your content visually and not always about what you're trying to say. Now, let's get into social. I have a secret trick for you on LinkedIn that absolutely crushes it, that nobody ever does, but it works so well. So on LinkedIn. You know when somebody writes a bunch of sentences on their LinkedIn post, a company page post or a personal page post, and there's a bunch of words and sentences, if you wanna see the rest of the post of what they've written, what do you have to do?

You have to click that little button that says more. It says MOR e.dot, and then it opens up the post and makes it a lot bigger. Now, when you click on that button more to see the rest of that LinkedIn post, you're actually sending a signal to LinkedIn saying, Hey, I'm interested in this content. And when you do that, that post from that person or that company page, it then circulates it further.

The algorithm likes when people click on that little thing that says more so the trick is this, if you can write a really great hook. As your LinkedIn post, and then you hit the return button three times. Enter, enter, enter, and then you put in the rest of your content. What you're doing is twofold. Number one, you are going to create a lot of white space, so it's gonna stand out in that person's feed.

But the other thing that's gonna happen, okay, is that it's going to make somebody click on that thing that says, more's gonna open it up and your. Post will actually circulate a lot farther. We see this increase, uh, circulation by about 15%. So an example of this would be if you did a post and you wrote something like this only for marketers.

Dot, dot, that would be everything. And then you hit the enter button three times, 1, 2, 3, and then you put everything below that, the rest of your content, it forces people to hit that more button. It gets your post circulated more. This is a great easy test that I don't think enough people really think about.

On Instagram with your carousels. Carousels are it right? Carousels is the best type of content on Instagram other than doing a reel right now, carousels are crushing it, but what you wanna think about doing is within your carousel, like every other, uh, carousel page, you wanna have either minimalist or one word.

Pages, right? So you might have something like you have your big regular image first. Then your second image in your carousel might say, now this dot, dot dot. Or it might say, guess what? Question mark. And what it's doing there is, number one, it's getting the person to go to actually the third image or the fourth image, right?

You wanna do this every other image. And that is a signal to Instagram that people are engaging with this post and they circulate it further. But in addition to that, it also breaks up kind of. The rhythm, if you will, in a good way. It gets people a little bit more interested, more engaged. It's very easy to consume.

It's easy on their mind. So if you haven't done this I format of a carousel with minimalist inserted into your posts, you're really leaving some great stuff on the table. Alright, before we get into the absolute ridiculous portion, this podcast called, since you didn't Ask, I wanna let you to know. This podcast is exclusively, uh, presented by Marigold.

Marigold is the email setting platform I use. They have something called Emma. It is. Awesome. And just for listeners, this podcast, they're giving us a special offer, 50% off for the first three months if you wanna try out their Emma platform, which is incredible for loyalty, for retention, for tracking, you name it, business Consumer, you go to J schon.com/emma, that's j sch.com/ema and you can get the 50% off for three months.

It is. Awesome. Alright, let's get into, since you didn't ask, this is a portion of the podcast where, I don't know what I talk about, but I talk about whatever's going on in my life. So I just had my physical at the doctor, which I, I don't know, I shouldn't put it off. I know it's very important, but I, I did it.

Okay. Don't even, don't even start. I did it, but I realized something when I'm at the doctor and I feel like everybody does this. Why do I lie to the doctor? I don't understand why I lie. I'm there. This person is trying to help me make sure that I can continue to live. And yet they ask me questions and I am not truthful like the he said to me, um, alright, so how much water are you drinking every day?

And I thought in my head, okay, I drink like, you know, one. Maybe one of these big waters that I bring that I fill up in this water bottle. And I said I drank three of them. And after it came out of my mouth, I said to him, I just lied to you. And he starts laughing and he goes, what are you talking about? I go, I drink one.

He goes, well, you should drink more. I go, I know. I go, why did I lie? He goes, everybody lies. And then, and then he says to me. Let's talk about your stress levels. He goes, do you have a lot of stress? I go, no, I don't. I go, oh, I just lied again. I just lied again. And he's like, losing. He goes, what's wrong with you?

He goes, why? He goes, either tell me the truth or whatever. Just lie. I, I couldn't take it. And then he is like, do you drink coffee late in the day? And I'm like, uh. I want to lie to you. I wanna say, no, I do not drink coffee late in the day, but that would be a lie I do. And he goes, good. We're making progress.

You're not a liar anymore. Like, like, what's wrong with me? Like, so this is my new thing when I go, I'm now going to be honest. That's it. It's over. What are we talking about? I don't know. I never know. Anyway, I appreciate you being here. Don't lie to your doctor and uh, keep it real later.