In this episode of Do This, Not That, host Jay Schwedelson shares actionable marketing tips for the holiday season, focusing on both B2B and B2C strategies. He discusses the effectiveness of email marketing during this period, the importance of lo-fi content, and various tactics to engage customers and grow your brand.

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Best Moments:

(01:16) B2B email marketing effectiveness in late November and December

(02:38) The importance of lo-fi content during the holiday season

(05:37) Gathering auto-replies for retargeting purposes

(06:39) The effectiveness of "thank you plus bonus" offers

(08:04) Promotion of Marigold email platform

(08:52) TV show and movie recommendations for the holiday season

(11:35) Announcement of upcoming free email certification program

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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 here.

It is do this not that podcast presented by Marigold.

And no, you cannot turn off your marketing brain yet.

We have a lot of Runway left in this year and there are things that you can be doing and I'm going to share specific things that you could be doing for business to business marketing and business to consumer marketing that are not just Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

And for all you business marketers out there who've turned off your brains, turn them back on.

Because this is a magical time of year to drive a lot of engagement and a lot of stuff.

So let's dig into these different things.

Let me first throw out a business to business one.

So what a lot of people don't realize is that email sending volume, for example, targeting business decision makers, is about 70% lower in the second half of November and in the month of December.

Why?

Because everyone thinks that everyone's brains are turned off, that budgets have already been allocated so they don't do the same promotional offers.

So this makes it an amazing time of year to send out emails, especially when letter format emails.

If you send out letter format emails to contacts on the business to business side that are director level and above.

So directors, VPs, C level from December 1 through December 15, for that two week period, we see a 28% higher average reply rate.

That's not open rate, that's not click through rate, that's reply rate to those letter format emails, okay.

Than any other time of the year for those senior level decision makers.

Why?

Because they have some time on their hands, right?

They don't have the same amount of meetings, they're not getting the same volume of email.

So targeting that audience right now is amazing.

Now, for business and consumer marketers, this time period of the year, right?

This November and December time period of the year, this is the Lo Fi Super Bowl.

What does that mean?

Lo Fi content right now, regardless of this time of year is crushing it.

But this time of year, it is the form of content we want to consume.

What is Lo Fi content?

And this applies to your emails?

It applies definitely to all social media platforms.

Okay.

Lo Fi content is content that is intentionally Created with a raw, authentic and less polished aesthetic.

Meaning basically, you're pointing that camera at yourself.

You're taking that picture, that video, posting a picture of you and your family dressed up for the holidays.

You're posting a picture of the turkey that you made for Thanksgiving.

You're posting a picture of your holiday decorations.

You're posting pictures of your team dress up in their funny, ugly sweaters for the holidays.

Anything.

Okay, that is not some sort of polished, green screen, boring, you know, piece of nonsense that nobody's going to care about.

That's total wallpaper.

This is not the time to go and buy images off of Shutterstock and just post them online with some sort of logo.

No, we want the lo fi content.

Now.

Why does that matter?

So, first off, lo fi content across all social media platforms, from World Data Research, over the last 12 months, lo fi content is up 42% in terms of engagement across all social media platforms, specifically on LinkedIn.

And in the last 12 months, lo fi content on LinkedIn has 72% more likes and comments than what we call hi fi content, which is the polished stuff.

And on Instagram, it gets 64% more likes and comments.

And now is the moment, okay, because now is when we want to, like, kind of take that deep breath and see who you are as a person.

We want to see your family, we want to see your friends.

We want to see if you're going out.

We want to see what you're eating.

We want to see the shows that you're watching.

This is the time to show the humanity of who you are.

And that's what stands out, and that's what we want to engage with this time of year.

And you can do this from your brand account.

Go ahead, go on.

Cisco's the big IT networking company.

Go on their pages.

You'll see them posting pictures of cat photos or Semrush.

They're always posting lo fi content.

Or big influencers.

Alex Lieberman, the founder of Morning Brew, always posting lo fi content.

Everybody's posting lo fi content.

And you know what?

Maybe it makes you uncomfortable.

And that's okay.

That means you're on the right track.

And if you don't want to do this, it's okay.

You can be generic.

You don't have to post a lo fi stuff.

You don't have to stand out.

You don't have to get engagement.

But when you're sitting there saying, how come my followers on my company page won't grow?

How come my personal brand won't grow?

Because you're not letting anybody see who you are or what's interesting about you.

What's not interesting about you is the logo of your company.

Stop it.

All right, what else works this time of year?

You must have a plan to gather up auto replies.

This is for everybody out there, especially my business to business marketers that are out there.

All right, a lot of times marketers avoid sending emails, for example, this time of year.

That couldn't be a bigger mistake.

What you want to do is the day before Thanksgiving, the day before, you know, Christmas, the day before New Year's, you want to send out that email to your database.

And what's going to happen when you do that?

You're going to get flooded back with auto replies that say, hey, I'm out for the holidays, I'm taking time off.

Right?

But these three people are around and if you want to get in contact with them, reach out to them.

Now you can't just take those email addresses and just start sending to them because that's not cool.

But you take all of those auto replies, you could have somebody clerical do it.

You could have a system do it.

You take all of those auto replies that you get because people turn that on for the holiday period.

You, you gather them up, you use them as retargeting for all of your social media marketing and these are the exact right new people to target.

All right, let's talk about the another one that I think is an absolute no brainer and that is the thank you + bonus offer.

This is the time of year consumer marketers, this crushes it.

Business marketers, this crushes it.

You want to do the most basic form of a loyalty program.

You want to thank your customers.

Thank you for buying socks on our website.

Thank you for downloading and using our new CRM software.

I don't care what you sell, you want to send your customers a thank you.

Thank you for being loyal to us this year.

But with that you're going to say thank you and here's something just for you.

Here's another $10 off your next purchase only for our valued customers.

Thank you for your loyalty.

Here's a special treat for you.

We appreciate you enjoy this exclusive offer.

Your loyalty means the world to us.

Claim this special gift celebrating you special surprise.

Inside you want to acknowledge your customers and how loyal they've been.

This type of offer, a thank you + bonus offer has a 45% higher click through rate for email sends then standard offers in the month of November and December if you exclude Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers.

That's for business and consumer marketers.

So thank you.

Plus bonus offer is a no brainer.

So easy.

All right, before we get into since you didn't ask, which I will be breaking down all the garbage TV that I'm watching right now, I want to let you know that this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold.

Listen, you have time in your hands right now.

Your email sending platform stinks.

Mine does not.

Stake Marigold is my email sending platform.

Whether you're a business marketer or a consumer marketer, you got to check them out.

And I have a deal for you.

It's up to a 50% off savings only for the listeners of this thing.

All you got to do is go to jschwettelson.com Save S A V E.

That's where you can get this offer.

I'm telling you, it's a roll up of sail through and campaign monitor and my Emma and and live clicker.

It is the absolute best email platform on Earth.

Jschweddelson.com Save check out Marigold.

All right, let's talk about useless information.

Useless information.

What am I watching right now on tv?

So this is really not important.

Okay, first off, I just watched Meet Me Next Christmas on Netflix.

That's kind of like the Hallmark kind of movie with Christina Milian.

It was very good.

I would say it was about 30 minutes too long.

But if you're looking for like a Hallmark style movie on Netflix, Meet Me Next Christmas was, I would say, two thumbs up.

I give it an 8.5 little bit too long new movie that's coming out.

Hot Frosty on Netflix.

Another Hallmark style movie that's with Lacey Chabert.

The one from what it was a party of five.

Who's on all the Hallmark movies.

This movie looks terrible.

I will not be.

I will probably try it, but it actually looks like the dumbest movie alive.

So I can't give that a recommendation.

Hot Frosty.

I don't know about that.

Cobra Kai.

New seasons out.

I lost.

I lost interest.

Like by season four they should have stopped it in season four one.

Season six, enough with Daniel LaRusso and Miyagi do Karate.

It's over.

That well is dry enough with Cobra Kai.

Okay, now what I am excited for, very excited, is Lindsay Lohan has a new movie coming out November 27th.

27th called Our Little Secret.

Lindsay Lohan is back.

She's had a lot of good cheesy movies lately, holiday movies, and this one looks excellent.

It's called Our Little Secrets coming on Netflix.

I'm very into that.

I'm also very into season two of Silo.

This is a sci fi show and Apple tv.

I know it's out came out this week.

I have not watched it yet.

If anybody ruins it for me, I'll never talk to you again.

Silo.

Watch season one.

It is awesome if you like sci fi and season two is going to be incredible.

The other thing that I'm very focused on watching over the holidays is on Amazon prime.

They just released a new show called Cruel Intentions.

New TV show.

And Cruel Intentions is a movie about these high school kids that are super entitled that are doing crazy things.

And I'm telling you, first off, go ahead and watch that movie.

That movie is awesome.

Cruel Intentions.

But the new show on Amazon Prime, Cruel Intentions.

I've not tried it.

Very excited for all this.

I have no life.

Listen, I would love it if you left this review.

It would mean a lot to me.

It helps circulate it with the algorithms.

Please hit me up@jschwetelson.com so we can stay connected, talk about whatever.

And we are about to open up our free email certification program and it's gonna have a limited number of spots we're opening up.

Get on the waitlist.

All you have to do is go to certifiedguru.com it is going to be the ultimate email marketing certification program.

It's 100 free only to people on the wait list.

So check that out and thanks for being here.

Go watch all those shows later.

You did it.

You made it to the end.

Nice.

But the party's not over.

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