Jay Schwedelson's Game-Changing Tactics for Email, Podcasts, and Outshining AI

I think that every single human being, every person that's a personal brand, a marketing brand, a big brand, you need some form of an asset that you are growing, that you can kind of build your tribe a little bit, that you can start to get to know people and have them get to know you. And it takes time.
So I think every single person needs that. And I wish I started sooner.
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Hey, I like talking marketing. You guys know that.
That's why a lot of you, the originals, the OGs, listeners came. You stay for the good stories, but we got a good one today.
We like to do this and not that. That's what my good friend and guest Jay Schwittleson says on his show, Do This, Not That, and he's the founder of Guru Media Hub.
What's up, Jay? I'm fired up to be here. I've been listening forever, so this is going to be really cool.
Thanks for having me. Yeah, man.
I appreciate that. I'm very, I don't know, sensitive to just people that listen, that have been following along, that give us their attention.
Attention is gold to me. So I'm very appreciative of that.
And also admiring your show, which remains on the charts. My team will review the data.
And I see your name regularly, start listening. I'm like, this is great.
Super tactical and a lot of knowledge. So I think we've hit this, I don't know, world where you can get knowledge from a lot of different places.
And I love what podcasting does for sort of knowledge enrichment. And I think you're a big part of that.
I appreciate that. Yeah, we try to keep it kind of 10-foot level, stuff you could implement really fast, really quickly.
Kind of stupid proof because that's why I am a little stupid. So it works out well.
Yeah. And I also love, you know, as a marketer, I've been doing this long enough wearing, you know, analog, digital.
At the end of the day, it's just marketing. At the end of the day, we like to chase the shiny objects.
You know, everybody gets excited about what's new, but damn, email and direct marketing still fucking work. I'll tell you that.
100%. People say, you know, cause I spend a lot of time in the world to email, like emails, legacy emails, dead emails, old school, but you know what? That's only if you're not doing it right.
And I'd like to see everybody just get rid of their email address, not have an email account anymore. How many people really willing to do that about zero? Yeah.
So it's doing, it's crushing it. Yeah, I know.
And it's, it's one of those tactics that doesn't sound sexy, but it works. And it's like, give me what works all day.
You know, I, uh, maybe early in my career, you chased those, you know, shiny objects, but now it's like, all right, we need this. I love I love outcomes, man.
And so do clients. That's it.
That's why we're here. Yeah, exactly.
Let's set the table for everyone, Jay. I'm going to give away a little bit of the punchline because I just love how fucking brilliant it is.
But subjectline.com, which you own, I want, that's going to be built into the story. But let's tell a little bit of the Jay story and building to kind of where we are today.
Yeah. So I've been at this for a long time, over 25 years.
I've had an agency. And when my agency was getting rolling, we do everything in my agency, right? We do email, direct mail, digital media, print media, all this crap.
And I would go into these pitches to try to get business. And I would go in there with these PowerPoint decks that were like, you know, 50 slides long saying, I do everything great.
I'm awesome at all this stuff. And almost every time I'd walk out of there, get no business.
And I would bang my head against the wall. I'm like, I'm going to

go out of business. What the hell is going on? I can't get any business.
And then, you know,

after a few years of really driving myself nuts, I walked out of this one meeting and this guy said

to me that we were pitching to, he said, you know, that stuff you were talking about email,

if you had just kind of doubled down on that and just focused on that, you probably would have gotten that business. And then after you got that, maybe you would have gotten our other stuff.
And it was like a light bulb moment for me. I was like, what the hell? I go, you know what? I'm trying to be known for everything.
And I believe that when you're known for everything, you're known for nothing. So that night, literally I was sitting on my couch.
I'm like, I got to be known for something. I said, screw it.
Email was just getting going in a big way. This is like almost like 15 years ago or so.
It was really starting to explode in terms of marketing and using it for sales. And so I sat on my couch.
I went on like GoDaddy or Network Solutions, whatever the hell it was called. And I bought a URL.
I found subjectline.com. I could buy it.
It was 500 bucks. It was like a premium domain.
I was like, screw it. And my idea was that everybody has a subject line.
Why don't we put up a site where you can go and put your subject line in. It'll tell you if it's good or bad using whatever information we had and we'd keep it free.
And in order to use it, you just give us your information, but you could test out your subject lines. And this was my idea.
And you know what? It turned out to be a decent one because people started using it. And you fast forward now, we've checked about 15 million subject lines on that site.
And I became known a little bit as this email guy, which is fine. Not that I'm just an email guy, but it was an entree point into my business, which once you come into my agency, then we torture you and do all this other stuff for you.
And it's kind of, I've learned that putting a flag in the ground saying, yeah, this is me. This is what I'm about.
Then people are willing to learn more about you over time, if you don't suck at what you do. So having that vehicle, whether it's subjectline.com or whatever it is, wherever business that, you know, you're in as a listener, I think it helps to define why people should work with you.
And that's kind of how I got rolling. Yeah.
And it's a brilliant lead generation way to get known. It serves a lot of masters and it's so simple, but it's something we all need.
That's always the brilliance of like the ideas. Like sometimes it doesn't mean they're easy to come up with, but the simplicity of what it is, but yet so many people have a need for it.
I also like to say, if you don't become known for something, then they get to make it up themselves. That's right.
That's so true. So you've got to define, you can help define and shape it, or they're going to kind of shape their own opinion.
And I think that's a lot of it is, like you said, oh, you get known for all. If you're not known by lots of people for the same thing, then it's kind of like getting a million impressions for 100 different products.
Well, that's great, but what's it driving to, right? 100% right. It's like you want, when you're not in the room and your name comes up, you want to already know what they're saying about you and what the topic is that your name's coming up for because then you could build your business around that.
If it's just generic and just all over the place, there's nothing there. You have nothing, right? And you could then grow from there.
That's everything. Every business, I think, is really, that's how it also, I mean, look at Starbucks.
Yeah. You go there for coffee because that's what you think of, but more than half their business now is nothing to do with coffee, right? You go look at, you know, your iPhone, Apple, the majority of the revenue is coming from all sorts of stuff, not just their phone, right? Or it could be anything.
It could be Tommy John underwear. Yeah, you buy your underwear there, but now they sell all this other crap.
You need an entree point in whatever your business is. That's kind of the secret sauce.
Yeah, exactly. And I think it helps when you've got a great tactic.
Subjectline.com was brilliant. Coming back to that a minute, like 15 million.
I think sometimes, you know, for our audience and even for myself, like I have to, I like to pause on numbers and like say them again for people. Because in today's data world, you know, between the news or anything else, we kind of get lost in the numbers.
Like, oh, like that sounds like a lot. But like, you know, people that also throw around, you know, making a million dollars, like that's just easy to do or something.
15 million times it's been used to check a subject line. That's incredible, man.
Yeah. And it's funny because then we look at what are the most common things that people are doing right or doing wrong.
And the thing about subject line, the thing that gets me excited about it, it's one of the tactics in marketing or in sales outreach that literally it costs you nothing. It takes five seconds.
And by changing a few words, a few symbols, a few things, you can change the outcome of your business. And it's just knowing what those little things are.
So it gets me excited to be able to share what some of those quick wins are all the time because it changes everything for you. And that's, that's kind of fun.
Yeah. I could rip through some if you want.
Yeah. I mean, I, I do.
I mean, I'd love for, you know, it'd be tactical and proud of some action. Like for everybody that's listening, I look, we got a savvy audience, but I mean, everybody's listening is always trying to improve some facet of their marketing.
And even if they don't specifically oversee email, they can pass some learnings down to their colleagues or otherwise. How about like subject lines for

emails to my wife? Could we optimize that, Jay? Yeah, I think we can change the from line and

just have it come from a different person. Then maybe they'll get open.
Yeah, exactly.

But talk to me about, you know, some learnings or some tips for that. Yeah.
You know, I think the thing about subject line, whether it's a sales outreach email or a marketing email, because listen, you don't send an email without wanting it to get open. Hello, that's why you send the email.
And what people don't really realize is nobody reads the whole subject line ever. You could write Jay's a giant loser at the end of your subject line.
No one will ever see it because all they're doing is they're doing kind of that social scroll in their inbox and you got to grab their attention and they'll see like the first half of your subject line. So what really is the most important thing are those first few characters, literally the first few characters of your subject line where, for example, if you start your subject line, I know it sounds ridiculous with an emoji.
All right. And people think emojis are stupid, but there's a million emojis.
You don't have to use a smiley face. You can use a calendar or a checkmark or whatever.
It gets people to stop and open up the emails. And just by using an emoji in your start of your subject line, it will lift the percentage of people opening up your email by over 20% just by doing that.
Or if you started with a number, the three pitfalls to avoid, the four things you didn't know about, whatever, it grabs that attention. People want to see what it's about.
And they don't realize that it grabs their attention, but it does. Or even capitalizing the first word, like it might say new, like the entire word is capitalized, not just the first letter of the first word.
And it grabs that millisecond attention. And you know what people don't necessarily understand about email anymore is it used to be that the words that you put in the subject line, like free, okay? Or if you put a dollar sign in the subject line, it used to be that would cause you to go to the junk folder or the spam folder, like 10, 15 years ago, but technology has changed.
And that's not the reason you go to the junk folder or spam folder anymore. So you can liberate yourselves and use the words and the symbols and capitalization that you want to use because the reason you stay in the inbox now has everything to do with how often you're getting your emails opened and clicked and all that stuff.
So you want to be using all the stuff that you probably were avoiding in the past. So that's why I like email.
Even though it seems legacy, it's always changing. And there are little things like this that can change the outcome of everything.
Yeah. I love the emoji tip because I do think people probably police themselves a little bit with that, like going, oh, this probably get flagged or they think.
And some of what I heard, you didn't use this word, but I'm going to use it for you. It's just being human.
Like how do we, how do we text people and how we do things certain ways? It's kind of applying that to the subject line. A hundred percent humanity and marketing, especially in email is everything now, especially with AI, right? The problem now is we have this tidal wave of garbage that's coming at us with AI in terms of content creation, you know, using AI to write better subject lines or better emails or better social posts or better whatever.
And what AI recommends by and large is generic, right? And so we need to, you know, it's funny, we just did a study where we found two of the words at the start of your subject line that are increasing the percentage of people opening up your emails more than any other two words are the words and, and the word, but literally starting your subject line with the word and like, and you need to see why, right? Or, but you didn't realize this. And the reason and and but are doing so well in the last 90 days is because AI would never recommend you to start a sentence with and or but.
It's like the most un-AI thing ever. And that's the crazy world that we're in now.
We have to say, okay, what will the robots never recommend? So that way we stand out and seem more human. And it's like, you need the worst grammar possible in order to stand out, which is great because I sucked at that in high school.
So it's perfect. Yeah.
I'm a great writer, but I'm not sure it's because it's the grammatically correct at all times. Talking with Jay Schwedelson, he's the founder of Guru Media Hub and the host of Do This, Not That.
Jay, it's funny you bring up AI. That was kind of on my short list.

Being someone in media and marketing, obviously, AIs have an impact, and you went right where I

wanted you to, which is, I love it when guests do that, which is, well, the way I feel is just

the trash that's sort of coming. Don't get me wrong.
I love AI. I'm embracing it.
We use it. All about it.
But there is some just garbage, repetitive content coming out. And being someone so heavily, you know, in the spoken word, the written word, I love hearing, you know, maybe your perspective even a little further about, you know, what's the good and the bad and the ugly with AI so far today? Yeah.
First of all, I love AI also. AI is incredible for so many things, but the problem with AI when it comes to your content, right? If you're writing a newsletter, a blog post, social media posts, content for your website, emails, there's two pieces to it.
There is a technical problem with it. And then there's just kind of an engagement problem with it.
The technical problem it is, is that, for example, Google. Google scans all of our websites, right? And that's how they're determining the ranking of when your site shows up when someone searches for something.
Google is very good at being able to identify content on your website that's been written by AI versus written by a human. And what Google wants, Google wants human written content.
So because they're able to identify AI written content, they're actually now depressing rankings for those websites who have more than half of their content that's actually being able to identify it as AI written. So from a technical perspective, you actually getting dinged negatively

by just using AI to write all your stuff. So you can't just have AI do that.
You will lose

because of that. Now, in terms of an engagement thing, the other issue is that like our email newsletters, for example, right?

A lot of people are using AI to write their email newsletters.

And what we have seen from all the data, we send out about 6 billion emails a year.

Okay, we have seen that those email newsletters that are predominantly written by AI, having AI content generated newsletters, their click-through rate on their email newsletters is about 40% lower, okay, than those that are written by a human being.

Thank you. having AI content generated newsletters, their click-through rate on their email newsletters is about 40% lower than those that are written by a human being because we feel it.
When you're interacting with a blog or an email or social posts, you could feel when there's a person behind it versus when there's just a robot behind it. So while you should be using AI to edit things, maybe it's a little bit of an idea, kind of kick around starter thing.
It can't be your content creator because for a variety of reasons, it's going to hurt you. Yes.
I think I personally, when I'm reading stuff now, I don't know if it's like the, I don't know if the, I would think it's not just me. I mean, I think it's everyone starting where you read something and it starts to feel completely AI.
Like you can almost feel the filter that I don't think the human edited this enough or something because it just feels, for lack of a better term, robotic in a lot of ways. And it's not just one part.
It's like from maybe, you know, headlines to throughout the body copy. It just starts to feel, I don't know, like old school brochure-ish or something.
It really is a title of garbage. I mean, I can't believe, you know, we're starting to see even podcasts that are coming out there to not just forget about the words.'s ai voices coming out with ai content and like and it drives me crazy i'm like we are just losing the humanity

of what we're doing and i think that is what's going to win yeah right that's why shows like

yours are going to win because we are all going to gravitate towards humans which is great because

we're all humans exactly right and it's it's one thing i don't have a problem back to like it's

Thank you. humans, which is great because we're all humans.
Exactly right. And it's one thing, I don't have a problem back to like, it's not a fight against AI.
Like if it's summarizing

just totally headline news and it's informative, fine. But trying to be

human, trying to be opinionated, that's when it's going to, I think, just start to lose its measure. And I think I've toiled with this, like not wanting to be like this.
Again, we use AI, I embrace that it helps with research and knowledge and like downloading tons of data, totally get that practice.

But I sort of wonder if we're going to hit this point where between social media or podcasts, where people are going to fight back and go, I only, I want what's real and not what's a robot and AI. Like I'm almost like I'm trying to think of the analogy, like comparison of point where, you know, we just weren't going to tolerate a certain thing anymore because it just wasn't real.
Well, look, I couldn't agree with you more. And you see it like, so for example, look at Mark Zuckerberg, right? Two years ago, that dude was like a robot himself, the most boring dude on the planet.
Right? And he's just the most generic social media post. Terrible.
Yeah. And then the last year and a half, he's become like super cool.
Right? He's posting pictures of himself doing jujitsu with no shirt on and drinking beers and out there and whatever. And everybody's gravitating towards it.
Right? Because he's more of a human. Yeah.
And what does that dude have? He has access to all the data in the world. And he could tell you firsthand, being a human is what works in terms of content and your outward, your public presence and all.
So I'm with you. I love AI for all the other stuff.
But in terms of presenting yourself and content, I just think it's hurting you. Yeah.
And like, you know, these personas and like Instagram profiles and social media profiles that are just, you know, they come out and say it's a fake person. And it's like, what are we doing? Like, it's like, that's not a real person.
And like, are you, you're taking some satisfaction with engagement with an artificial bot? I mean, like what? I don't, I don't get it. I can't even believe that there are AI influencers that actually make money now, which is crazy.
Yeah. Even though they aren't real, that people are paying these, these accounts to promote.
I'm like, what are we doing? What's going on? I'm hoping there's more of a backlash or like we can clean it up. Like, images aren't real, that people are paying these accounts to promote them.
Like, what are we doing?

What's going on?

I'm hoping there's more of a backlash, like we can clean it up.

Like, let's use it for what it's meant to be and not this non-real place. But, Jay, talk to me about the podcast.

You know, what got you into it?

What's, you know, it's very obviously practically, tactically driven with, you know, you can't be more direct than don't do this, do that. Right, right.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, no, first of all, I have been a listener of yours for a long time. And I was like, dude, this guy kind of cracked the code a little bit because it's really hard to stand out in this flood of all this stuff.
And I'll be real transparent. When I started the podcast about a year and a half ago, and when I did, I never thought about, I'm going to have a boatload of listeners, all this cool stuff's going to happen.
I was frankly using it as a play to meet people, right? So if I wanted to get business from somebody and they weren't giving me the time of day, I was like, you know what, if I have a podcast and I invite them on, I bet you I can meet them. Right.
And people don't realize that about podcasting that, Hey, you don't need to be the size of Ryan's show here. Right.
If you just start a podcast, it's a great way to get people to meet with you because everybody likes to go on shows. So that's why I started it.
And then I realized very quickly that I wasn't you in that, uh, I, I'm not like Barbara Walters. I suck at interviewing people.
Like I, I didn't want to listen to the episodes after we recorded them. I'm like, I don't know what the hell I'm doing.
So after like a month or two, I was like, I got to do this so it's comfortable for me, which is another thing I learned about content. You got to make it something that you can do.
And so we started doing these like 10 minute episodes about just quick tips, crap, about everything that's working and not working and you should try this and not that. And I share our fails, our share our successes.
And thankfully that kind of grew and people started getting into it. And so the show grew and, um, it's been, it's been fun cause I get to now meet people like you, which is super cool.
Um, but I, I will tell you, I think that every single human being, every person that's a personal brand, a marketing brand, a big brand, you need either a blog, a newsletter, or a podcast. You need some form of an asset that you are growing, that you can kind of build your tribe a little bit, that you can start to get to know people and have them get to know you.
And I, and it takes time. So I think every single person needs that.
And I wish I started sooner. Yeah, man, you've done a good job and I appreciate that feedback.
And also you nailed it. Like what podcasting isn't, doesn't have to be the same for every person.
Like there's different, there's a lot of different takes like interview style versus monologue versus guests versus 10 minutes, you know, of hyper knowledge versus, you know, like the formats can change, but they need to suit, you know, your subject matter and what the host is good at and, and like what suits your audience. And so there's a lot of ways to skin the cat.
It doesn't, I think a lot of people get into it maybe with inspiration and think it's going to be one thing and don't necessarily know how to pivot, but it sounds like that's what's key for you. Oh, totally.
We're still pivoting. So it's a, it's, it's terrible, but I release four episodes a week, which as you know, is no joke, right? That's a lot, right? It is a lot.
And so one of the formats though, that is now our most popular format is this weekly episode that's called Ask Us Anything. And we have this area on my website where you could submit a question.
And what we do is every week we answer one work-related question that people submit and one ridiculous question. And the ridiculous questions could be like, you know, what reality TV shows are you watching right now, if any? You know, stupid, stupid stuff, right? And just answering one of each of these questions, people love it because it's work stuff.
It's not work stuff. It's a format I never would have thought of, right? But people just writing in questions like, all right, let's do it.

And so you have to almost go with kind of like how it how it unfolds.

Yes.

Don't be afraid to evolve and learn.

And also, you know, the hardest thing for podcasting and we're and look, we're even at our stage trying to find the best.

I mean, I get a lot of DMs and things like that.

So we have engagement like that way.

But having that two-way conversation is really hard to, to, to crack. So creating like a format like you did is really brilliant and smart because you know, you know, people, you can look at the numbers, you know, people are listening, but you're not having that, you know, it's a one way dialogue, you know, you're sharing.

And so cracking that code and making, you know, creating, you know, a tribe and a community that you're having conversations with is really smart. And then you nailed it.
Like when you're trying to build, people do business with people, you know, we keep coming back to this humanity thing. And if you're trying to build your company, it really helps if people know who you are, what you stand for, and that they see that both, both your personality and your knowledge and podcasting provides a great outlet for that.
Oh, it is. And people think there's too many podcasts out there.
There's too much this, there's too much that. You don't need to have a massive audience, right? You need to have your, you need to have your audience, right? And, and that's all that matters.
And so I, I'm a big, big fan of it all. And look, it's all heading in that direction.
It goes without saying that podcasting is, is just getting more relevant and you see all the big podcast deals, all that stuff, whatever it's, it's, it's awesome. Yeah.
And 18 to 34 year olds listen and watch more podcasts. They do television.
Uh, that's crazy. That genie's not going back in the bottle.
So, uh, yeah. And yeah, YouTube is the fastest growing podcast channel.

And you're right. A lot of people, oh, doing a podcast, you know, like think that.
But those are the same people that listen to six different shows. You know, they just, you know, like you just have a lot of different channels.
It's different than the TV days. You know, you got the 100 channels.
You might not watch 90 of them, but 10 of them get watched. and in a world where media distributed in a different way,

in a more, I mean, you got the 100 channels. You might not watch 90 of them, but 10 of them get watched.
And in a world where media is distributed in a different way, in a more, I mean, democratized way in a lot of ways, it's, you can have as many channels as consumers want. And as long as you're serving an audience, at the end of the day, that's all that matters.
100%. And it's like, it's also, it's like anything, right? It's like your email database, a newsletter.
You could be having it out to 100 people or it doesn't have to be 100,000 people, right? You are communicating with an audience and that's how you're going to grow your business or your personal brand. And also, I think every company needs a personal brand.
You know, every single major company needs to have a couple of individuals that they're putting out there and building that personal, you know, those personal brands. That is where we're heading in the next few years is that, you know, you're going to be doing business with, you know, Mark Zuckerberg and not just Meta.
That's what you're going to feel. And that's where, that's where it's all headed.
Jay, talk to me about, you know, getting back to maybe, you know, some of the core, like email marketing, things that are happening real time today in the field, maybe knowledge for our listeners for how and what they should be considering and how to do it better. Yeah.
So the biggest change with email marketing right now is that Apple, okay, has, you have your phone, your iPhone, and on your iPhone, you have a mail app, that little blue icon where you check your mail. 47% of all mail is checked by clicking on that blue icon.
So half of all emails checked by clicking on that blue icon. Well, Apple has just released iOS 18, which is the latest update to our phones, which is annoying because we make our phones slow down and we all buy new phones and we all know that routine.
But part of that update, that iOS 18 update is a radical change to the mail app on our phones. And what's happening now for the first time ever, Apple is going to be utilizing AI, what they're calling Apple intelligence.
And in real time, as we receive our emails, using this AI, Apple is going to be bucketing all the emails that we receive into four different buckets. There's going to be a bucket for a primary tab bucket, a transactions bucket, an updates bucket, a promotions bucket.
And depending on what the emails are about is where they're going to fall in these buckets. Now, it goes without saying that if you are marketing something, you're trying to do sales outreach, you don't want your email necessarily going in that promotions bucket because how often are people going to check that? It might not be that often.
So understanding why an email may go in the primary bucket or the update bucket, those are the top two that you want to be in as opposed to the other buckets is going to be a really, really important thing. And what we're seeing is just as this is starting to roll out is that there are going to be certain trigger words that if you use in your emails, that you have a greater likelihood of going into the buckets that you want to go into.
So for example, if you have the word, let's say, preview or confirmation, right? These are trigger words that are like, uh-oh, telling the AI, this email is important. It's not just selling some garbage.
Let's move it to the update tab or the primary tab or something like that. So as this unfolds, really staying in tune with what are these trigger words that AI is looking for in order to stay in the buckets that you want to stay into is going to be a game changer because email is evolving a lot.
Yeah. And I mean, I don't know what the percentages are, but how many people are on Apple and how many people carry an iPhone using that app? I mean, it's more than average and more than 50%, I would think.
100%. Because, I mean, everybody's carrying a smartphone.
It's like 80% penetration. And at least, I don't know, 55%, 60%, I think, is iOS these days.
So that's why, like, highlighting this, you know. And look, we're in a mobile environment.
So everybody's on their smartphone. And again, attention is fleeting.
And friction is a powerful term. What does it take to get that message in their hands and how much friction is there to get to it for the consumer? If they got to click into a folder that they don't look at, that's just friction you don't need.
Yeah. And you know, people don't realize this is not where you need to buy some sort of fancy thingamabob that you don't have the right technology in order to accomplish getting into the right bucket or getting the right subject line.
This is just knowing some very simple stuff and rewording a few things. And it costs you nothing.
It takes no time. It's just understanding a little bit of the nuances because there's no silver bullet, especially for email.
There's no one thing that you're going to do that's going to change everything. Oh, great.
Every email I send crushes it. It's a series of little things.
And that, again, don't take any time, don't cost any money. And so just taking the time to understand those little things is how you win.

And that's the same thing for social media. There are certain ways that you post on LinkedIn in order for it to get circular in the algorithm.
Same thing for Instagram. Knowing these little things doesn't cost you money.
It just takes a little bit of effort and time. Yep.
And Jay, I'd love to know your perspective on, you know, how to best build your, your, your list. And, you know, are you anti-cold email? Are you, you know, like, where do you fall in that game? And are you equal opportunity email guy, no matter what it is? I'm a pretty equal opportunity email guy.
I'll tell you the, I'll tell you kind of things in terms of growing your list. Number one, one tactic that people don't love, but I don't care.
It works really well is pop-ups, right? People go to your website and what happens? They go to your website and then they either become a customer. Very few of them do, or they just leave your website and they leave your website.
You have nothing to show for at. Zero.
But that's why pop-ups work. Like if you are, if you visit nike.com for the first time, they're going to have a pop-up and it's going to say, Hey, you want 10% off on your sneakers? Give us your email address and we'll give you the code.
Right now. A lot of people say pop-ups are annoying.
I hate pop-ups. I would never put that on my site, but they don't realize about 6% of first-time visitors to a site will actually give their email address.
That's a lot. That's a high percentage.
And again, it doesn't cost you anything. So why do companies like Nike do that? Because they know something that when you go to a website, if there's a pop-up, what do you do? Let's say you don't want to fill it out.
Do you curse Nike and say, I'm never working with them ever again? I'm never buying from them? Or do you click that little X in the top right-hand corner and you forget that you even saw a pop-up? That's what you do. Right.
But for the 6% that are giving you their data, now they're on your list. Now they're part of your asset.
Now you can market to them. So I believe pop-ups are for business marketers or consumer marketers is an essential growth element.
The other thing is about social media. To me, the only value of social media is to get them off social media.
You want to build up your social media following with the intentional focus of how do I get them off social and onto my list so I can market to them whenever you want. And you're giving away content, you're giving away discounts, you're giving you whatever to get them to give their data.
So I think you need to be intentional about why you're on social and growing that following. And in terms of cold email, cold email is a fine thing, but I don't think tricking people is where it's at, right? The RE, the fake RE or fake forward, and you get somebody open up and you trick them.
To me, that's garbage. And also that's not a relationship you're building, but you providing value where you say, hey, here's a new stat I just saw.
I thought you'd be interested in this. Or here's an article that I thought you'd want to check out where you're providing value without asking for anything.
Check this out. I think it's pretty cool.
You might be interested. And then you start to build that dialogue.
You start to become a mini thought leader in that recipient's head. And you're like, Hey, you know what? Can we jump on a call? I'd love to talk to you here about what you got going on.
That's how cold email can work. But cold email where it's like, uh, hi, I'm tricking you open this up and let's book a meeting.
That to me is just a waste of time. Yeah.
Yeah. Value is the key.
Always. Uh, and good tips.
I mean, and back to practical solutions that work in the pop-up, you know, like it's, you know, don't overcomplicate it, like put it on there. We're not going to stop doing this with you.
Like I can, I have been in those meetings though, you know, with, with executives or somebody like nobody likes pop-ups anymore. I'm like, well, uh, yeah, I mean, I like it, but they work and they don't, they're coming to get what they want to get.
They're going to either, they're likely going to read it and you might end up with another subscriber. But if it's irrelevant to them, they'll click out of it and go to what they want to get to.
You know, it's not overcomplicating. Yeah, you know what? I think in general, people focus on themselves.
I don't like it, so we're not going to do it. Okay, well, that's great.
Go out of business, okay? Just because you don't like it and it's not your favorite thing. Doesn't mean it's not a great tactic that you should have to test.
You got to test it and get yourself out of the mix. It's not about you.
It's about everybody you're marketing to. Yep.
Yep. Jay, you know, with the Apple update, I mean, I'm trying to like wrap my head, you know, move the audience.
Like, I mean, it's a big deal. I mean, so it's like, you know, how much is that changing? Like the way like you guys do business with clients as far as email marketing goes? Yeah.
I think the biggest thing that we are seeing that, that brands are going to be doing is related to their email newsletters. So a lot of companies, a lot of brands have email newsletters.
And right now, the overwhelming majority of email newsletters come from a brand account, right? It would come from, you know, SAP or Microsoft or whatever. And it's coming from those brands, some sort of digest view about what's going on there.
Almost all of those brand focused newsletters are going to go into probably the promotions tab from what we're seeing, the new promotions area on the update. What we are seeing though, is the newsletters that come from an individual, the CEO, the senior vice president, your own personal brand.
We're seeing those go into the update tab, which I know sounds like semantics, who cares, one tab versus the other, but it's a game changer in terms of engagement. So the biggest push as we head into the next six months, 12 months, whatever it may be, is whether it's a personal brand or a giant brand, is to have these email newsletters that are coming from a human being and you're feeling a connect to that human being because it's going to go into the place that you want it to go.
And we're seeing the engagement, regardless of the bucket that it goes into, be sky high for those kinds of newsletters. So I think that's going to be the biggest change for email marketing over the next year.
Yeah. Good tip there.
So always back to the human hero with Jay. Where are things going with your show, with the podcast? Do this, not that.
You know, similar to you, I think YouTube is just going, they're doubling down, right? They're doubling down on podcasting. And I will tell you right now, I have not cracked the code, not even by any stretch at all.
So we're very focused on building out our YouTube strategy for the podcast. Uh, and also I, you know, as Spotify goes deeper into video components for podcasts, I think that's going to be important.
So if you are starting a podcast out there, you absolutely should have a video component to it. Um, and then of course repurposing that and using that all over social.
Uh, but again, I also think it's about mixing up formats. I don't think for me personally, like I've seen like almost every six months, I need to insert a new format, keep it a little interesting.
So it's not like you could figure out one thing and just double down on it forever because that's hard. It's hard to do.
Yeah, it is. I mean, you kind of have to stick with something long enough to know both of it works and also to create, I don't know, repetitiveness and people would expect.
And, you know, I do think a lot of different formulas can work, but I do think people listening like some kind of stable formula to what, you know, it's like, I use the analogy, like the reason, like the local, and I, maybe local news is going away at one point, just more because of going away i said local news but you get local news national news the weather and sports you know like you have that that synergy you know what to expect so i do think that we are people of uh creatures of habit that we like sort of a format but then they have to change every single week yeah agreed is uh what do you do, Jay, when you're not working? I mean, what's what's what? Yeah, I mean, I'm not that exciting. So I got a 17 year old daughter, 18 year old son.
And right now we're in the middle of football season for my son. So I'm Friday Night Lights, man.
That's where I'm at right now. So I'm all in, but then, you know, uh, we're in the college application process, which is total anarchy.
Oh my God. So whatever.
So that's my excitement. Yeah.
I have four boys, but they're all, uh, my high 15 year old that just started high school. So mine are, mine are younger, eight year old to 15 year old, all boys.
Oh, you're in it. Oh, I'm in it right now.
Yeah. Coaching.
I'm not in it because my kids don't even they're like, I'm a big fat loser right now. And I, you know, so I am not in it.
Yeah, I like, you know, still like the kids want me around. You know, I like that.
It won't. My days are fleeting.
I know this. Yes.
Yes. The runway is running out of a room.
I promise you that. Jay, talk to me about where everybody can keep up with what you're doing, the show, all that good stuff.
Yeah, I appreciate that. First off, I'm all over LinkedIn.
I post way too much garbage there, but please connect with me. Hit me up on LinkedIn with my horribly long last name.
You'll find me. My show, Do This, Not That for marketers.
It's a pink square. You'll see it.
Again, that's kind of fun. And give subjectline.com a try.
It's 100% free. It's kind of fun to do.
And you can check that all out and you'll find me. So I appreciate the opportunity.
I love the show and can't wait to have you on mine. Yeah, man.
I love it. I'm going to go to subjectline.com later today, put in that, you know, giving my wife a little bad news subject line and just see what it spits out.
Amazing. See how the performance goes.
If we get our 100% open rate or not. But go check that out and go check out Jay's show.
You know where to find us, ryanisright.com.

We'll have all the highlight clips, the full episode from today.

And go to our YouTube channel to check it out, all the interactive content we've got going on over there.

And, of course, we'll have links to all of Jay's stuff in the show notes.

We appreciate you for making us number one.

We'll see you next time.

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