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5 Quick Wins That Anybody Can Test! + 👃 Malls Smell 👃 Jay’s SCOOP | Ep. 453

Episode 453 • 29th January 2026 • Do This, NOT That: Marketing Tips with Jay Schwedelson • GURU Media Hub

Jay Schwedelson: We are back for do this, not that podcast. And the thing that crushes me, that upsets me so much about so many different marketing teams I interact with is they think that in order to have. Meaningful change, improvements in the number of new customers you're getting, the number of pieces of content they're getting downloaded, whatever that you need to make these big changes.

Jay Schwedelson: We need a different platform. We need to completely redo all of our templates, all this stuff, and that very well may be helpful, but there are so many micro little things that you can do that will actually have a really big impact on performance. Usually you're not thinking of. So I wanted to rip through, uh, a number, like a good number of the easiest little things you may not be aware of that you could test or utilize in your different marketing campaigns and all of this data.

Jay Schwedelson: I'm gonna share with you all these literal, simplest, I hate saying the word literal, I just said it doesn't matter. I'm gonna say it again. These are literally the simplest tactics to try and all of the, uh, statistic data comes from. My research group at World Data Research, where on an annualized basis we are doing over 6 billion emails a year.

Jay Schwedelson: We're doing over 40,000 campaigns on social a year, all these different things. So let me take you through some of these tactics that you can then, uh, think about implementing, whether you're a business marketer or a consumer marketer. First off, believe it or not, how you justify text in emails. You are sending out to your existing customer base.

Jay Schwedelson: Maybe it's a letter format email. Maybe it's a pretty HTML email that has copy in it, right? That could be for a nonprofit email, a consumer email, a business email. It doesn't matter if it is center justified. It does much worse than it. If it is left justified, actually having it left justified will significantly increase performance.

Jay Schwedelson: So for example, having it center justified, your overall click-through rate, if it's center justified, will be lower by 12% on average, uh, than if it was left justified. I mean, that's what I'm talking about, these little things that actually have a big deal. This next one is a no-brainer and everybody sleeps on it.

Jay Schwedelson: You have a a, a form, right? You want people to fill something out. You want 'em to sign up for a demo. You want 'em to get a discount code. You want 'em to buy a product, you, 'em to join, newsletter, whatever it is, you have a form and you want them to fill out the form. If you add a single line of reassurance text on that form right below the form, it will increase the percentage of people submitting on that form by 18%.

Jay Schwedelson: What do I mean by that? Okay. Right below that submission area, that button, if it says things like takes under 30 seconds. We won't sell your info or unsubscribe anytime, whatever it is. That's gonna be that, you know, three or four word, phrase or sentence, that is that trust signal right there. Believe it or not, it helps get that person over the edge.

Jay Schwedelson: These little things actually matter. Another super small thing is that I always like to tell marketers, especially in the email campaigns they're sending out, is you want to think about every. Link in your email. What a lot of us sleep on is the logo. Doesn't matter if it's a beautiful HTML email, doesn't matter if it's a letter format.

Jay Schwedelson: Email the logo in your email, you'll, it'll actually generate one in five clicks on the email that you send out will actually be a click on the logo in your email. So where's the traffic going? Uh, when someone clicks on that logo, logo, are they going to your homepage or are they going to the offer page or whatever it is that you're trying to promote?

Jay Schwedelson: The reason you want them going to your offer page, in my opinion, is it's one in five clicks and, and they're interested in what you're up to. Why would you send them to your homepage? So think about every link in your emails along the lines of thinking about every little thing. I know this is the most annoying episode somewhere you're out walking, driving, doing.

Jay Schwedelson: You are like, I gotta write this down. Or maybe you're like, Jay's a clown, I need to ignore him. And that's probably even more true, but it's a good one to go back to and think about these different tests. 'cause there's a lot of them. Another one. Is the number of fields that you have on that landing page that form every additional must fill field.

Jay Schwedelson: When you tell somebody they have to fill in this field or they can't submit every additional must fill field that you ask somebody to give you that information, you lose on average about 9% of submissions. So it's not that you shouldn't have must fill fields, but are all the must fill fields that you are requiring actually critical.

Jay Schwedelson: 'cause if they're not, it is the thing that's holding back. Um, your performance, which is pretty wild. A few other ones that I think maybe are off people's radar. Fridays. Fridays, people think Fridays are bad for certain offers or certain things. As an example, Fridays having your webinar. If you use webinars as part of your marketing strategy.

Jay Schwedelson: A lot of brands say, oh, we don't do Fridays. That's a bad day. It is not true. Webinar attendance in the last 12 months on Fridays is up over 75% year over year. I don't know about you all, but the way that I view Fridays is almost like a a a day. I better myself from a content perspective. I'm consuming more content, I'm attending things, I'm downloading things because my brain's almost already into the week being over, and I wanna get some good stuff in there.

Jay Schwedelson: So if you're not testing Fridays. Really it's been ever since COVID, that Fridays have become this day to better yourself and think about Fridays for a lot of the stuff out there. Um, a few other ones that I would put into the category of your sleeping on potentially is PS adding a PS at the bottom of your emails with a link to the offer.

Jay Schwedelson: Crushes it. Repeat the offer, have a link to that offer. We see this increase overall clickthroughs by about 14%, just by adding a PS with that offer. And then the last one that I think I'll probably get some hate on, but I don't really care, is on your landing pages, the destination page, the closing argument for your offer.

Jay Schwedelson: Business consumer, nonprofit. I don't care. A lot of brands will have their social sharing links right on that page, on that landing page. It makes no sense. You got the person to the page where they're gonna do the thing. They're gonna buy the thing, they're gonna subscribe to the thing, they're gonna register for the thing.

Jay Schwedelson: And here you are saying, Hey, go check out our Pinterest. Go check out our LinkedIn. No. If you give people the option to leave. They will, but if you don't, they convert. When you remove the social sharing links, the social buttons from your destination page, we see conversion rates rise by over 8%. So I know that that's a lot of, all sorts of different nonsense.

Jay Schwedelson: Uh, that was a lot. Alright, let's get into, since you didn't ask, um, which is the portion of the podcast is absolutely ridiculous. So I was, um. In the mall this past weekend. This is so irrelevant. And, um, I noticed that every time you walk into a store, every to every store smells ridiculous. Like I don't under do people.

Jay Schwedelson: First of all, I walked into, what is it, a, a white barn or was it Bath and Bodyworks? I think they're like the same store now where they sell all the candles, all the garbage. No offense if you're listening, you're out there. But like I go in that store. And there's so many smells going on in that store, and people are buying all this stuff to make to, to they, I, I, I know these companies do very well with selling all the smelly stuff, but how much smelly stuff are you gonna buy and bring into your home?

Jay Schwedelson: Does your home smell like a toilet, that you're trying to buy this stuff to overcompensate and then like, you want it to then smell? Everything's gotta smell like lavender. What is going on with lavender? Who cares about lavender? But every store I walk into, it's like somebody sprayed Axe Body spray 4 billion times.

Jay Schwedelson: Like it's, it's, it's one bad decision after another about every store has to smell, I can't take it. And then like you walk through like Macy's or one of the department stores, which I always do, 'cause the way, uh, the parking works at my mall is you're better off parking, like outside of like one of the department stores than walking through the department store.

Jay Schwedelson: You have to run like the gauntlet of people with the perfume things. And I know that that's a tough job. I do, but it stinks. I don't mean stinks the job. I mean it just smells. And everyone's like, smell this, smell this, smell this. I'm like, what are we doing enough with everybody smelling each other, everyone's gotta stop smelling each other.

Jay Schwedelson: We need less smells. This is what we need. We need less smells. Everybody. Just, whatever your store smells like is fine. I am not going to your, uh, store because like, I'm, we gotta go there, that, that store smells so good. We should go there. Anybody that says that is a clown, okay? Nobody is coming to your store 'cause it smell good.

Jay Schwedelson: Now, if your store smells bad, then fix the root problem. Find out why your store stinks. Don't just put garbage on top of garbage. What am I talking about? I don't know. Um, man, I get worked up. You know what, also might smell my new book. There you go. That's my transition. Hey, my book's coming on April. You can pre-order it now.

Jay Schwedelson: It all net proceeds are going to the V Foundation for Cancer Research. I wrote this book to kick cancer's butt. You can go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble or wherever you buy your books. It is, uh, you can get Kindle, print, whatever. You could pre-order it now. Stupider people have done it. That's the name of the book.

Jay Schwedelson: Stupider People have done it. I hope you check it out. You're awesome. See you at the next one.

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