In this episode of Do This, Not That, host Jay Schwedelson shares how marketers can capitalize on the Super Bowl to enhance their email marketing strategies—without directly advertising during the big game. From subject line tricks to understanding post-Super Bowl trends, Jay offers practical tips to take advantage of this massive cultural event.

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Best Moments:

(00:40) Introduction to leveraging the Super Bowl for marketing

(01:17) The importance of aligning with current events in marketing

(02:09) Using "MVP" in email subject lines to increase open rates

(03:17) Incorporating Super Bowl-related words in subject lines

(04:51) Using football and trophy emojis in subject lines

(06:05) Lower email performance on the Monday after the Super Bowl

(06:53) Interesting Super Bowl statistics (toilet flushes and chicken wing consumption)

(08:41) Personal anecdote about a supermarket incident

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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 do this, not that podcast presented by Marigold.

And we're talking about the super bowl now.

I just lost probably 70% of you, like, oh, I don't care.

I'm a business to business marketer.

I market in this regulated, boring industry.

The super bowl is irrelevant to me.

Or I'm a consumer marketer and.

And I don't have $10 million to run a 32nd Super bowl ad.

Who cares about the Super Bowl?

And that's where you're wrong.

I'm gonna share with you some super tactical things that you can do the week leading into the super bowl that will actually drive massive changes to your engagement and your performance in your marketing.

And why does it work and why does it matter?

Right?

Because we need to think about always what is in the minds of the people that we're marketing to.

And the super bowl is almost like a giant national holiday at this point.

It doesn't matter if you.

That's irrelevant.

It doesn't matter if you like the teams that are playing.

It's irrelevant.

It is everywhere.

People are going to be talking about, oh, what are the commercials that are going to be run, oh, what party are you going to?

You're going to bring nachos to that party.

Where are you going to watch the Super Bowl?

Who's performing at halftime?

It's everywhere.

It's on the news, it's on the Internet, it's in conversation.

And whether you like it or not, it is part of what goes on this moment.

And if you piggyback your marketing just slightly in slight different ways, you can benefit massively.

So what do I mean?

Let's get into some of the details for both business and consumer marketers.

First off, the simplest thing is the subject line of your email.

I know that this feels gimmicky.

I know this feels even a little cheesy.

But guess what?

That's what marketing is.

It's these little things that can move the dial a little bit.

So what do I mean by that?

Mvp.

Literally the letters MVP that stand for most valuable Player when you use them in your email subject line three days prior to the super bowl any of those days.

And also one day after the super bowl, we see email open rates.

The percentage of people opening up those emails go up 19% for business emails and 24% for consumer emails.

And that's from subject line.com.

so, for example, on the business side, your subject line might say, are you the MVP of your marketing team?

Right?

On the consumer side, MVP sale starts now.

Using mvp.

Why does that work?

Because that is part of like the whole mindset.

This most valuable player.

And just by inserting that little thing when somebody's scrolling in their inbox, they don't even realize it.

It gets them to pause this week because it aligns with what is going on.

Now, if you don't want to use mvp, you could do fun things, right?

You can go in the complete opposite direction with still piggybacking on the Super Bowl.

So, for example, you could just do fun subject lines like don't care who wins, question mark, check this out.

Or wings, commercials, beer, and you can have fun with it.

But you're acknowledging that this thing is going on, okay?

And when you acknowledge that it's going on, all of a sudden people want to engage because you are of the moment.

This is not some wallpaper thing that you send out at any other time of the year.

People want to participate in all of this.

So I'll give you another example of a set of words that if you use in your subject line, whether you're a business marketer or, or a consumer marketer, especially if you use them as the first word or the first few words of your subject line, we see a big boost.

So these words specifically used in your subject line, the week leading into the super bowl, we see over a 15% increase in open rates for business and consumer emails.

When these words in the subject line, words like touchdown, big game, qb, which stands for quarterback, super, or win.

When you use words like touchdown, big game, qb, super, or win, again, you're getting into the mindset of the person, the recipient, and they're like, oh, this email ties into this thing in some way.

And they're not looking at it like, oh, this is the coolest thing ever.

I love this email.

They said the word touchdown.

No, it's moving really fast.

It's in the subconscious and it works.

The other thing that works that you're not going to try and you're probably going to be like, jay is annoying, which is totally fair, is emojis.

This is one of the best time to use emojis in your subject line when, whether you are a business or a consumer marketer.

And the two emojis that work incredibly well, of course, one is the football emoji and the other is the trophy emoji.

When you use the football emoji or the trophy emoji, okay, one day before the Super bowl and one day after the Super bowl, anytime within that 48 hour period, we see open rates on emails for business and consumer, not just consumer, rise over 20%.

Because again, it's capturing that mindset, it's capturing that moment that everybody's a part of.

So whether it's a football emoji or it's a trophy emoji, you want to be a part of what is going on, right?

You want to be a part of what is going on.

Now, the thing that you also want to be really, really, really aware of, that most people don't understand or not thinking about is the super bowl, of course, happens on Sunday, but the Monday after the super bowl, you could use all these tactics I just gave you emojis, all this stuff.

But the Monday after the super bowl in general, okay, in general is actually a really weak day for email performance.

Business open rates are down on average about 14% on that Monday versus a regular Monday, and consumer email open rates are down about 17% on that Monday as compared to any other Monday.

Why?

Why is that?

Well, believe it or not, on average, okay, on average, 1.5 million Americans will call in sick the Monday after the Super bowl and 4.4 million will show up late to work, right?

So, you know, you feel it too.

People stay out late that Sunday night, they have some drinks, they have some whatever, and the next day they're not really locked in on their regular day to day.

So if you're not factoring in that, you're going to have lower performance on the Monday after the Super Bowl.

You need to really be looking at that and thinking about that.

And look, the super bowl is a weird time.

Did you know, by the way, I saw this status really disgusting at halftime.

How many times do you think the toilet is flushed in the United States at halftime across the entire country?

This is real.

This is real data.

Toilets are flushed 100 million times at halftime.

That's disgusting.

Like, everybody's collectively disgusting.

And you know why they're getting flushed?

Because I saw this.

According to the National Chicken Council, which who even knew that was a thing, the National Chicken Council estimates that Americans will eat a record 1.42 billion chicken wings during the Super Bowl.

That is really gross.

I mean, everybody needs to calm down.

It's.

Why.

Why isn't super bowl just, like, eat more food than you've ever eaten in your entire life?

Like, what is actually going on?

All right, let's move on.

Before we get to.

Since you didn't ask, which is the ridiculous portion of this podcast, which already feels like I went through a ridiculous portion of the podcast, I wanted to let you know this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold.

Marigold is my email sending platform.

It's the one I'm gonna be sending out emojis on all the stuff during the Super Bowl.

It is awesome.

If you're a business marketer, consumer marketer, I want you to check out Marigold.

You can check them out@meet marold.com.

i could feel it through the device that you're listening in on right now.

You don't love your email sending platform.

You don't.

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Your emails aren't going to the inbox.

It doesn't have all the features, doesn't have all the AI stuff.

It doesn't have good loyalty programs.

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all right, let's get into.

Since you didn't ask, I had the weirdest thing happen to me at the supermarket this week.

And I.

I mean, this has never happened to me before.

So here's what happened.

I'm online at the supermarket, okay?

And big, long lines.

Every one of the lines had a lot of people.

So I'm like, two people dap back on the line, and this one person's checking out.

And then all of a sudden they go, oh, my God, I forgot.

I wanted to get this other item.

And they did the thing where they say to the cashier, and the cashier was like a teenager.

So the cashier, hey, I'll be right back.

I forgot to get this one thing.

And off they go, running off the thing.

And the cashier is sitting there like, okay, we're just going to all wait.

And I'm fine with that.

I didn't care, right?

So the person's gone.

They're trying to get that other item that they wanted.

But the dude behind me, there was this big dude behind me, and he was pissed.

He was like, this isn't right.

We shouldn't all have to wait.

Can't you, like, do something?

The cashier, where it pauses or whatever.

And the cashier couldn't do any of that.

This teenage kid, I felt so bad for him, whatever.

And the guy starts getting real angry, like, what's wrong with you?

What's going on?

He starts getting really, really heated.

And I decided, because I'm an idiot, okay?

Because this guy who's taking so long to get the thing, he was, like, disappeared.

I turn around and say to the guy, I said, you know, why don't you just take a moment here, and let's all just relax?

I go, the cashier's trying to do their best job possible.

That person's going to be back in just a minute.

This is not a big deal.

In the grand scheme of things, you would have thought that I said to that guy, you're ugly, and everybody in your family is ugly, all right?

This dude wanted to actually kill me.

Like, kill me.

And he was a much bigger dude than me, not that we were getting into a royal rumble with whatever.

And he proceeded to drop some serious language on me and.

And drop it, you know, a bunch of these, I don't know, who the hell you think you are maneuvers.

I mean, all sorts of stuff.

I go, oh, my.

What is about to happen here?

I am not equipped to handle this interaction.

Like, this is going to go south incredibly fast.

And then the dude came back with his item.

I'm like, oh, hooray.

Comes back with the item.

The whole thing starts checking out.

This dude's got, like, fire in his eyeballs.

The guy that's angry at me.

So he takes his cart, he goes off to some other line, and he gives me kind of like this stare like he's going to find me in the parking lot or whatever.

And off he goes.

And I didn't see him again, which was fantastic, because I thought in the parking lot, I didn't know what was going to happen.

And I said to myself, I said, you know what, Jay?

Shut up.

What are you doing?

Why are you talking to other people?

Nothing good happens when I talk to other people.

I just need to not talk to other people, because I don't.

I'm saying the wrong things at all times.

I'm just saying the wrong things, even right now.

What am I saying?

I don't even know.

Anyway, so I tried.

I tried.

What can I do?

Listen, I.

I hope you check out what I want you to check out.

I don't know.

Check out life.

Leave this thing a review, please.

It's helpful.

It circulates the podcast.

You're awesome.

And if you want to do anything, partner with me, work with me, talk to me.

I don't know, go to jschwetelson.com that's where I hang out and appreciate you being here later.

You did it.

You made it to the end.

Nice.

But the party's not over.

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