October’s serving up some wild marketing data, and Jay Schwedelson is here for it. From why company-name personalization suddenly skyrockets email open rates this month, to why it’s officially time to ditch your Instagram posts for reels, Jay breaks down the trends that actually move the needle. Plus, a surprising stat about ChatGPT content that’ll make you rethink your next prompt—and a hilarious detour into celebrity weirdness that you didn’t know you needed.

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Best Moments:

(00:59) Why using company names in subject lines boosts B2B email opens by over 30% right now

(01:59) The right time to drop “Black Friday” in your emails for maximum engagement

(02:43) Why regular Instagram posts are basically dead and reels dominate reach

(03:37) Instagram’s upcoming redesign proves it’s all about reels and DMs

(04:29) The top 50 AI phrases killing your engagement (and how to un-AI your writing)

(06:49) Kristen Bell’s bizarre anniversary caption that broke Jay’s brain

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Jay Schwedelson: We are back for what's up this week from the Do This, not That Podcast presented by Marigold. And this is our short episode where we break down what's going on this week in business and marketing in life. So let's jump right into it. We got stuff about email, Instagram, all sorts of stuff. So first off, October is such an interesting time for email marketing and people don't realize there are certain tactics that work incredibly well.

Jay Schwedelson: In October and early November that don't do as well other times for some reason. And this is some data from subject line.com. So one of those tactics. First on the business side, business to business. Is in your subject line. The personalization that does actually the best this specific time of the year is company name personalization.

Jay Schwedelson: There's something about seeing your company, uh, in the subject line and it's getting your mind thinking about what's, what's coming next, what's the outlook for the upcoming year, whatever it may be. But if you've, first of all, if you've never tested company and the subject line, you're missing out. But this is the time of year that it does particularly well.

Jay Schwedelson: So that's a really great personalization tip this time of year. And then the other one, which is so obvious on the consumer side, but I don't think people realize it enough, is actually talking about Black Friday, saying Black Friday, do not wait for mid-November to say Black Friday. Do not wait for, you know, post Thanksgiving.

Jay Schwedelson: Or obviously that would be totally ridiculous. I mean, that's outta control now. Literally right now, these next 10 days is when you want to be. Doubling down using Black Friday. 'cause Black Friday, actually the last week of October and the first week of November. If you put that in your subject line for either consumer offers or small business offers, we also see that lift open rates well over 25%.

Jay Schwedelson: Uh, this big study where they revealed that basically posts on Instagram are dead. It's all about right. I'm talking about regular posts. It's all about reels. Reels are where it's at. You shouldn't even be wasting your time with regular posts pretty much anymore. They should all be reals. And their study showed that.

Jay Schwedelson: Reels now have an average reach of over to reach about 30% of users as compared to 14% for regular posts that are carousels or even 13% for photo posts. And the engagement rates from another study that just came out from vidi CO said that reels get almost double the engagement rates versus regular posts.

Jay Schwedelson: And this makes a lot of sense 'cause Adam Ari, who's the head of Instagram, came out this week. And he actually talked about the fact that Instagram is going to be changing, um, the format on Instagram. We go on there, what the little icons are that we can move around and, and be able to toggle when we're looking at our feed.

Jay Schwedelson: And they're going to actually now change the tabs. So he said the first tab is still gonna be stories. And your feed. But then the second tab is gonna be your reels, and the third tab is gonna be your dms. And now you'll be able to swipe between the tabs And they're organizing, this is what he said, they're organizing the app around what people use for it most, which is reels and dms.

Jay Schwedelson: So it's all about reels on Instagram, period. End of story. Let's talk about some AI stuff that's going on. So chat, pt. Um, we all go to chat GBT, right? And we ask it for help with content. All this stuff. Well, there's some new data actually out from World Data Research that shares that. The top 50 phrases that chat GBT gives back when asked for content generation help in marketing efforts actually causes a drop.

Jay Schwedelson: Engagement by over 15%. What does that mean? You go there, you ask it for help with a blog or content for a landing page or an email or a social post, and it's giving you back certain phrases, right? So now it's now the top 50 phrases, the most common ones that it gives back. Actually, if you use any of them, you're dropping by about 15% because it's like wallpaper when people see it.

Jay Schwedelson: So. What can you do? Um, there's one simple prompt that you want to do, uh, when you are getting any content back from chat gt or you've written any content or anything like that. And the prompt is basically this. And it doesn't have to be exactly this, but this is what you wanna do. You wanna go to chat GBT with whatever copy of content, whatever you have.

Jay Schwedelson: And then you want to say, take this copy. Rip out anything AI normally gives back that lowers engagement, generic phrases, corporate tone, force positivity, fake hype, or anything that sounds too polished or predictable. You wanna use a prompt like this with any content that you're about to put out there, especially any content that you've gotten from Chat GT or any other AI tools because basically we now need to.

Jay Schwedelson: Even go further with this idea of un AIing, uh, our writing because we are all just turning all of what we're putting out there into generic garbage. So this data that the top 50 phrases that it's giving back are actually hurting your performance is really important stuff to consider with everything you're doing out there.

Jay Schwedelson: Alright, let's get into useless, meaningless stuff that's going on. So I saw that nobody wants this. Season two is coming out and the next day or so, that's that romantic comedy thing on Netflix with Adam Brody and Kristen Bell, which is fine. Season one was good. Everybody likes season one, season two, whatever.

Jay Schwedelson: But I, Kristen Bell is strange. No offense to her, but she's actually a strange human man. I'm gonna tell you why I said she's a strange human. So Kristen Bell is married to Dax Shepherd. Okay, whatever. I don't even know if I care about them. Whatever. I don't know why I follow these people on Instagram, but I do.

Jay Schwedelson: So they just celebrated their 12th wedding anniversary. Who cares? Whatever. It doesn't matter. Everybody puts their anniversary online. Great. So they put a picture of themselves on Instagram and then Kristen Bell wrote this caption, which I thought was. Really strange. This is a caption she wrote on the post about her and Dak Shepherd wedding anniversary.

Jay Schwedelson: She wrote Happy 12th wedding anniversary to the Man. Wait a minute. Happy 12th wedding anniversary to the man who once said to me, I would never kill you. A lot of men have killed their wives at a certain point, even though I'm heavily incentivized to kill you, I never would. What? What is like, dude, just right.

Jay Schwedelson: I love you. 12 years have been amazing. I can't wait for the next 12 years. What are we doing? Why do we have to say the most bizarre things? So what? Just so you get some people to share it and to talk about it. Like idiots like me on podcasts. What is going on? Every, it makes me wanna unfollow people. Just stop.

Jay Schwedelson: Be, be reg. Come on. Enough. Enough with me. What am I talking about? I don't know. Listen, you're awesome. You gotta check out Guru Conference coming up, it's free. It's virtual guru conference.com. Uh, I don't know, just I would tell you all these reasons why you should register, but I'm too lazy, so just go register.

Jay Schwedelson: Who cares? All right, thanks for being here later.