[00:00:00] Mia Fileman
Are you tired of empty promises and stolen ideas? Me too. Got. Marketing is a podcast for marketers and small brands who want real talk and clever strategies without the bs. Running an online business is hard, but everything gets easier when your marketing starts performing. I am Mia FileMan, your straight shooting campaign loving friend here to talk marketing, running a business, pop culture, and everything in between.
Let's dive in.
Mia
Hello, friend. So I'm just gonna put this. Right out there upfront. I've had a marketing hero on this podcast before and I absolutely choked. We were talking strategy, which is my bread and butter, and I just couldn't find my words. So today we are calling this my Redemption arc. Today I am joined by Jay [00:01:00] Sch Wetson email marketing legend. Founder of subject line.com, creator of the largest virtual marketing events and the host of the number one marketing podcast in the us. Do this, not that. Jay has built and led businesses that have generated over $400 million in revenue all by doing what most marketers are afraid to try, which is breaking the so-called best practices. If you are a scrappy founder or solo marketer trying to figure out where to focus and what to ignore, this episode is for you. Welcome to Got Marketing? Jay.
Jay Schwedelson
I am so excited to be here. That was a super nice intro. I feel Total Imposter Syndrome to even live up to that intro, but you are crushing it and I'm excited about all of this.
Mia
What I love the most about you is that you are. Let's just call it super successful, but a really humble guy.
Jay Schwedelson
Thanks. I, uh, I don't know. Every day I feel like, what the hell am I doing here? But you know, you just one, one step after another. You figure it out. We all do. So, uh, I appreciate that.
Mia
Alright, well we are gonna kick it off with a very serious cultural test.
Jay, I'm gonna put you through a one question Aussie pop quiz.
Jay Schwedelson
Oh God.
Mia
Are you ready?
Jay Schwedelson
No. But yes.
Mia
Alright.
Jay Schwedelson
Oh God. Here we go. I'm so not ready for this.
Mia
Okay. Which of the following is not an Australian icon? A. Catherine Kim. B Tim Tams C. Drop Bears D Shrimp on the Barbie.
Jay Schwedelson
Oh my God. My Australian knowledge is so bad.
Here's what I could say relates to, okay. I know Shrimp on the Barbie because we have Outback Steakhouse here and that's their commercials, and I put another trip on the Barbie. Absolutely. Tim Tams. I'm fairly confident that is like a chocolate. Something or another. It's not a hundred percent accurate. The other two things you might as well have said, blah. I have no idea what those other two were. So one of the other, Tom and Tim or whatever you said has to be not on a, on a care bear or whatever. The hell's going on with that. I'm not sure.
Mia
All right, so you've gotta choose Catherine Kim or Drop Bears. Which one is not a
Jay Schwedelson
Ah, okay. I don't think drop bears is an actual thing because what the hell's a drop bear? So I'm going with a drop Bear
Mia
crushed it.
Jay Schwedelson
Oh, I got it right. Amazing. Look at me. I crushed it. I crushed it.
Mia
Catherine Kim is like the most iconic TV series. You have to watch it Jay.
Jay Schwedelson
Oh my God, I'm so embarrassed. I do know that you all watch 'cause I like reality tv. You all watch Married at First Sight. I think that's big there. Right?
Mia
It is huge. I am gonna disappoint you by saying I've never watched a single episode though.
Jay Schwedelson
What is wrong with you? Why are you being like an intellectual? You need to like, you know, get with humanity and watch garbage tv like the rest of us. Come on.
Mia
I watched Lego Masters with the kids. I think it's sensational. Do you have Lego Masters?
Jay Schwedelson
Oh, that's good.
Mia
Yeah, it's really good
Jay Schwedelson
You know what's so funny about Lego? I don't know if that's the way in Australia, but here we have like Lego stores, like in big cities like New York or whatever. There's lines to get into these Lego stores. Like you have to wait like 20 minutes just to get into the store. Legos are [00:04:00] very popular here.
Mia
Yeah, same. Absolutely. Huh. We don't have the lines, but we definitely have the pest of power.
Jay Schwedelson
Yes, very big deal.
Mia
Let's get into the marketing portion of the podcast and then we'll come back to pop culture. I first heard you on the digital marketing podcast, which I love.
Not as much as do this, not that, but still love it. And you said Dumber People have been more successful. And as someone who works with brilliant women who are paralyzed with imposter syndrome, I need to hear more. Can you unpack that for me?
Jay Schwedelson
Yeah. I think in general, we all. Think that somebody else knows more than we do, and we're always waiting for the perfect time to do whatever it is that we want to do.
We're like, okay, I'm not ready yet, but in six months I'll have my act together. I'll have more time. My family will be in the right place. I can't do it. Right now, I have, I have a. Sick family member, or I have to wait until I learn more about this thing. Here's the secret, in my opinion, to business, it's never going to be the exact right time and you're never gonna have it be a perfect situation. So just get going even though you're or you're not ready, and don't be afraid to fail. The thing for me has always been, there's been one thing that's always been stuck in my brain, which is regret. Is worse than failure. I have no problem failing with things and be like, Ugh, why did I even do that?
Whatever. It's when I don't try to do the thing that I lose my mind. I'm like, why didn't I just try? And then every time I try to do something and I failed a million times in business, something comes out of it. I meet somebody cool. I learn a new tactic. And so I'm all about failing and trying, but I'm also about failing fast.
People hold on for too long. And that's the other big problem in business.
Mia
Yeah. That is 100% correct. I think the other problem in business is that there's so much bad advice. Yeah. And I love what you've said about legacy info being garbage.
I completely agree. Could you give us some examples of things that marketers.
And founders are still clinging onto that are just not true anymore.
Jay Schwedelson
Yeah, and I know you talk a lot about email marketing and email marketing happens to be a category where there's so much legacy information that is holding people back. That's absolute garbage. I'll give you a couple examples. So if you go online right now and you look up things like spam trigger words, you Google spam trigger words, there's going to be all these different lists that are being created right now by really reputable companies or people that claim to be experts, of which I don't claim to be.
They'll say, these are the the words. You have to avoid that if you put these words in your subject line, like the word free, or if you capitalize a word in your subject line, or you use an emoji or a question mark or a dollar sign that's gonna cause you to go to the junk or spam folder. And there's all this information out there scaring people, what they shouldn't do.
And it's just not even true. It was true 10 years ago, but technology changed. You don't go to the junk folder or the spam folder because you put the word free in your subject line, or you have a, a symbol in your subject line or capitalization or any of that nonsense. It has nothing to do with that. It's now become a, a technical thing while you go to the junk folder, spam folder. But there's this misinformation out there that gets regurgitated 'cause people are lazy and it's easy to put out these sensational things. And it's this, this constant misinformation or sharing of best practices that is holding people back. This is not true. It's just blatant garbage.
Mia
That is such a good example. It's like you are gonna get shadow banned on Instagram if you use these particular hashtags. That's exactly the same thing. And it's really. Trading in fear, don't you think? It's like, well, if you are not across this list, then you are gonna fail. So yeah, absolutely. Great example, marketers are being pulled in every direction.
TikTok podcast, YouTube, email, LinkedIn. Where do you think that they should actually focus? What channels give the. Best return for tiny budgets.
Jay Schwedelson
So in general, I know that's gonna sound like I'm biased 'cause I do a lot in the email space, but I don't just do stuff in the email space. But to me, your email database is the most valuable asset in your company. And the reason I say that is it is the only thing, the only marketing channel that when you have something to say and you wanna say it, that you have a vehicle. To get that word out. And so when we talk about, you know, Instagram and TikTok and this, that, whatever, the way that I view life is that everything should be, uh, a way to get onto your email list. Everything you're doing, your North Star should be, how am I getting people onto my email list? The point of having a social media following is not about growing your social media following. It's about growing a following that then you could pull them onto your email list and then you could send them the stuff that you wanna send them.
And the thing with social media right now is that organic reach is getting really, really bad, right? You could have a zillion followers, but when you post, less than 10% of your audience now is seeing that on social media. So this idea of having big followers and you're gonna. Build your business around your big followers.It's not true anymore. But the bigger your email database is, you can grow your business. So being very intentional and you know, people think it's hard to grow your email list, it's really not hard to grow your email list. You just need to be focused on it and do lots of little things and you can get there.
Mia
Oh, tell me more. How do people grow their email list without. Because they do, they, they blow it out to this big, colossal thing.
Jay Schwedelson
Yeah. So let's talk about some quick win tactics to grow your email list. Some of them are gonna sound ridiculous, but it doesn't matter. It's all about little things. There's never gonna be one thing that you're gonna do in any marketing channel that's going to solve all things.
So lots of little things I. First of all, you have calls every single day, every single week, all month long you have calls with people, okay? And these are usually people that you really want to be engaging with doing with whatever. Every time when we're on call, my teams are on a call. Everybody says the same thing.
Hey, we have this great newsletter. We'd love to add you to it. Can we add you to our email list? Right now, and you think, well, what's the point of that? That's three people. That's four people. Maybe it's five or six people a day. Perfect people though. Okay. And then over the course of a month, now you're talking about hundreds of people.
The exact right people. Be very intentional on every call and get every one of those people to say yes, to go onto your list. No-brainer. Every time someone engages with. Anything you do on social media, if they like something on LinkedIn, they literally just like it or they like something on Instagram, you DM that person.
Say, Hey, thanks for engaging with that post. By the way, we have this great newsletter. We'd love to add you to that. Or, we have this guide we want [00:10:00] you to download. Be intentional, be aggressive about every person that's engaging with your content, and that will help grow it. And then the last one is use popups on your site.
People think popup contact captures are super annoying. And they are super annoying. They are. But the thing you have to think about is when someone comes to your site and then they leave and you don't get their information, you have nothing to show for the fact that they just went to your site. If you do a pop-up contact capture, you pop it up.
It doesn't have to be on your homepage, it could be on your pricing page, can be on your blog page, it could be anywhere. And you say, Hey, listen, give us your email address and we'll give you this discount code. Give us your email address. We'll give you this free piece of content. On average first time visitors to your site will fill that out about 7% of the time.
And you're saying a lot of the times people out there say, well those popups, they annoy me. I don't like them. Who cares? That's a you problem. Because the reality of it is when you go to a site and they have a popup, right? Let's say you're going to Nike's website for the first time, 'cause they use it all the time.
Do you see that pop up and click the little X in the upper right hand corner and go onto the rest of the site and forget that they even popped it up? Or do you. See the popup and you say, I hate this popup. I'm never gonna buy sneakers from Nike and Goodbye. Nobody says that. They forget, they even click it, they move on.
But 7% of the people opt into your list. So thinking about every which way you've been growing your list, it pays off massively in the long run.
Mia
Yeah, I love those suggestions. So I offer like a. Free discovery call if anyone wants to spend 20 minutes and we'll have a chat and it's through Calendly, but I put a disclaimer that if you book one of these free calls, you are agreeing to opt into my email list because you know nothing in life is free. Right?
Jay Schwedelson
Absolutely, a hundred percent. And I love the fact that you're open to calls and all that, and I'm the. Same way. I mean, you have to just be willing to meet people with no agenda. I'm a big believer in no agenda marketing that yeah, let's talk. I don't know, let's just see what happens and that's how you grow.
mia
Oh, I love that so much. Which is probably why we are here, which is great for me. So good.
Jay Schwedelson
It's true. That's how we met.
Mia
Yeah. Alright, so if you are starting from zero with a $5,000 budget. What would your first 30 days of marketing look like? Really putting you on the spot today, Jay.
Jay Schwedelson
Oh, no. Well, first off, I would go very aggressive on LinkedIn.
Regardless of who you're marketing to, consumers, business professionals, doesn't matter. I'll tell you why. First of all, LinkedIn has a billion people, but LinkedIn I. Is the really the last social media network. And what I mean by that is if you go on Instagram and you post something and somebody likes it, it doesn't mean that the person that liked it, it's gonna have that content show up on their feed.
Instagram and places like that are no longer really social networks, right? But LinkedIn is. If I post something on LinkedIn and you like it, it's now gonna show up to a lot of people on your feed. It's truly a social network. It's also a happy place where people are willing to connect, willing to share things.
So it's very easy to grow on LinkedIn and to have organic growth in terms of all of your content. So I'd spend an inordinate amount of time there. And then again, I would be doing everything I could to grow my list and to start an email newsletter. And I don't [00:13:00] care if your email going to five people, 500 people, 5,000 people, but start putting out the content.
And then the other secret about. An email newsletter that people don't really think about is, I don't care what it is in your business life, you need to have something that holds you accountable to learn and get better. Meaning that what do you have in your business life that every week is a big pain in the butt.
Is forcing you to learn the latest thing, to know what's going on in your sector, in your thing. It could be a podcast that you're putting out weekly. It could be a newsletter that you're putting out weekly. It could be you committing to posting on social media about new stuff in your industry weekly, a certain amount of times.
But if you don't have something like that right out of the gate, you're just gonna be. Putting out legacy information, you're not gonna know what's going on. You're just gonna be selling, you're not gonna be learning. So I would put a, a, a stake in the ground and say, what is it as I start my business, that I'm gonna hold myself accountable?
That's gonna be super annoying, and that, that really pays dividends massively.
Mia
Oh, I love that so much. Like I'm a professional marketer, you know, I've got all the degrees and worked for big companies. The learning curve of starting a small business was insane. Like, here I am running a podcast, I don't know what I'm doing.
I've had to. Self teach myself editing and recording and yeah, I think that that is, it's how you stay sharp as a human anyway.
Jay Schwedelson
A hundred percent. And the other thing that I'm a big fan of, and the number one type of content right now that's getting consumed and circulated and shared is building in public.
Talk about imposter syndrome or starting a podcast or whatever. Like for me, uh, we just launched a YouTube page. I know nothing about YouTube, like literally like Zero Burger about YouTube. But this idea of building in public and posting about it, talking about it, writing, about saying, this is what I'm doing, here's how it's going.
Oh, I did this. This is working really well. I did this. It didn't go so well. That is actually the content format that's getting circulated more than anything else. So whatever it is that you're thinking about doing that you don't feel that you're qualified to do, that is the exact thing that you should be posting about, sharing about, talking about.
'cause that makes you relatable and you're going to figure it out and then people are gonna come to you for your advice on how you did it. So the stuff that you don't know is the, actually the stuff that's actually gonna help you grow,
Mia
but it's the edge against a bigger business. So, you know, we, uh, we spoke in the Green room about Ripple Festival and how we're bootstrapping this festival.
We have South by Southwest in Australia, which is an American franchise. Been running for many years. It's really well funded. We are two Australian small business owners. We have no idea what we're doing, so we decided to build in public and we are super vulnerable in all of our content. Like this worked.
This didn't work. We screwed up here. I can't believe it. Squarespace is. Sponsoring us like we are riding the highs and lows with our audience, and we are also prepared to fail in public, which is part of the strategy that people don't often talk about. That you need to be able to go there
Jay Schwedelson
A hundred percent.
And I'm sure because you're doing that, people are reaching out to you. They're. Connecting with you and they say, I want to help you with this. I saw you're trying this. [00:16:00] It's so cool you're doing this. And, uh, I tried this and it didn't work. Also, it's allowing you to probably network more than you would have if you just made it seem like you had your act together and everything's perfect.
Uh, because that's not relatable.
Mia
Not relatable at all.
Ad Marketing Circle
Does your marketing feel like guesswork? Be honest. Join Marketing Circle, the membership for female entrepreneurs who wanna nail their strategy, boost their creativity, and create marketing that actually pays off no cookie cutter templates and broken dreams.
Just practical marketing, training, mentoring, and support. To help you grow your business, you'll work directly with me, a legit marketing expert, and tap into a brains trust of clever business owners who bring their expertise, ideas, and support to. We are capped at 45 members, so apply to join today.
Mia
Can we just go back to LinkedIn?
I'm a huge fan. Just, just like you are. Do you think it makes a difference that [00:17:00] LinkedIn is just for business, whereas Instagram, you've got people who. Don't even run businesses don't even work in business. They're just there for celebrity and pop culture and redesigning their kitchen.
Jay Schwedelson
I am not of the opinion that LinkedIn is just for business anymore.
And if you start to see some of the, the brands that are advertising on there, their consumer brands, and the beautiful thing about LinkedIn is if you look at the income, the household income of the people that are on LinkedIn, it's slightly higher, right? It's not TikTok, it's slightly higher. You're actually getting to people that have, you know, discretionary income that are open to subscription based consumer offers.
And I think people are sleeping on LinkedIn. I think the other emerging channels that we're spending a lot of time on is Reddit. I think that Reddit is exploding in terms of. For marketing purposes, for consumer offers, for business offers, so Reddit and Pinterest probably right after that. People think that Pinterest is not, is only for consumer, but it really is for B2B now as well.
So really what I would be thinking about is Instagram's flooded, tiktoks flooded, right? Uh, paid search is tough. Think about some of the channels that is not flooded right now and you could really crush it.
Mia
Oh, I love that. You always have so much data stats on hand. For marketers, where do they need to go to get these stats so that they can make a lot more informed decisions?
Jay Schwedelson
Well, we do constantly put stuff out because everything is always changing. You know, the funny thing about email marketing is that everyone legacy, it's oh, blah, blah, blah, whatever. But the weirdest thing is that I. It's always changing how we are consuming and interacting. For example, with email, why we're opening up an email.
The types of things that we're clicking on. You know, what to put in our call to action buttons, all that stuff. It's always changing. So we, we do have a website called subject line.com. It's a free website where people can go to it. They put their subject line in and it'll tell you the latest. Tactics and things to do to improve your subject line.
We also put on big, giant free conferences. So our biggest conference that's free and virtual, everyone in Australia should go. It's called Guru conference. Guru conference.com. And every stat, every everything will be there. And by the way, speaking of Australia, our keynote speaker this year is Nicole Kidman, who is a great Australian.
So we're very into Australia this year.
Mia
You sure are. She's a fricking legend. And we're gonna talk about gurus because we. Both use gurus, but for me it's not a compliment. But before we get there, I wanna go to my favorite topic, which is, which is campaigns. Yeah. We both love campaigns. Campaigns is in my name, but we both love the, you know, smaller budget, quick turnaround, not this big slow burn kind. So I would love to know from you, because campaign is not a pineapple word. It means different things to different people. What is your definition of a campaign and what makes a small campaign great.
Jay Schwedelson
You know, that's an interesting question because I almost don't even operate with campaigns. 'cause we react really fast sometimes when you make a campaign, we're gonna do all this stuff and you make your content calendar and your plan, and you do all of it, and then you're starting to [00:20:00] execute on it and it's going okay, not great, but you're on this track that you've created. I don't subscribe to that. I like this idea of failing fast. Okay, this ain't working. We need to pivot. Like right now, immediately. So I don't really live by this idea of kind of overall campaigns. Even with our clients and our agency, we pivot very, very, very fast and I think that's something important to do.
And then the other thing, the problem in email marketing, I think some of the biggest problems that are out there, and it's like campaigns is these automated triggers. Everyone sets up email automations. You go to this page, you get this email automation, you've been on the list for three days. You get this one, you get this one, you get that one, and everyone thinks that email is almost like a set in and forget it.
That as long as you set up all these automations that you are good. And I think that that's a recipe for failure. I think that people then lean on it, and that's not a good way to go. People have stuff in their automations that is not evergreen, meaning that it's dated, right? Somewhere out there right now, there's an automation in somebody's email automation stream that's frying off the 2020. Four secrets to whatever, because they didn't go through and audit all of their stuff. And when you have these automations like that, a lot of times you're sending out like a negative signal. You're actually hurting your brand because you're sending stuff out. That doesn't make any sense anymore. And the world's always changing.
So I know it's not helpful, but I'm almost like, I would call myself like the anti campaign person.
Mia
Oh, don't worry. I will make you a convert in good time. Like, let me give you an example of what I think is a. Sensational small business campaign that's running in Australia currently. So mingle. They make seasoning, spices, rubs, but they do it without any sugar artificial ingredients.
They looked at like the common market leaders and it was just full of crap, like literally just garbage inside the seasoning. So this is an Australian brand. The female founder has grown by a hundred per cent year on year. Their latest campaign is a collaboration with an OnlyFans. Star called the Girth Master, and he has become the chief satisfaction officer at Mingle and is spicing up the kitchen with new meat rubs.
And to me, this is just so culturally relevant, making the brand open to Gen Z and is just winning headlines left, right, and center. Like every business publication in Australia has written about this because it's so salacious.
Jay Schwedelson
Well, I, I, I would also say that it's very real, meaning that I think oftentimes everyone tries to fit into a mold.
Obviously that doesn't, and even if you take it down to like an email level, what do most marketers do? They're like, oh, let's get a new email template. Let's go into a template builder. Let's find, you know, this thing and, and follow the mold of what you're supposed to do. The, the stuff that breaks through is the stuff that you know, breaks through because it's. Different. And you know, a campaign like that's amazing 'cause it breaks through the noise. I think the most important takeaway for any campaign or anything you're gonna do is stop following the regular playbooks because it's gonna get you nowhere in a lot of ways. I always say, please keep following those boring playbooks 'cause then my stuff will stand out.
I need the rest of you to be boring. Be wallpaper. So when we hit send and we send out our campaigns, it actually breaks through because that's what everybody does. They follow the herd.
Mia
Oh, I love that reframe. That's great. Alright, let's go to gurus. So when I say guru, I mean someone promising six. Figure launches in your sleep with little substance, what does a guru mean to you and how do we spot one in the wild?
Jay Schwedelson
Well, you know, it's funny, when we started, uh, we something called Guru Media Hub and it's all about free content for marketers and we were like, what should we call it? So we came up with the name Guru and we was like, well we can't do that. First of all, that's like possibly culturally insensitive and you know, that'll.
Piss some people off. And also this whole idea of people being a guru is ridiculous. What? Who even is a guru? Whatever. And then we're like, but you know what? Everybody knows what it means. It means you're like really good at the thing. And we're like, alright, who cares? Screw it. And so I don't believe anybody's a guru.
I don't believe anybody's an expert. I think the people that call themselves gurus, the people that go on their LinkedIn and they list themselves as visionaries, those people are absolute losers. I can't stand them. And uh, it's like nails on a chalkboard to me. So any of those names or whatever are, it is the worst.
So I'm not a guru. I hope you're not a guru. I hope no one, you know, is a guru. That's how I feel about it.
Mia
I love it. It's like a tongue in cheek then. It's very Australian of uj. Good. Look at me. I didn't know. I love it. Amazing. All right, so just quietly, how long did it take you to be an overnight? Success.
Jay Schwedelson
Oh my God. I have been at this for a very long time. I'm embarrassed say I'm in year, believe it or not, 27 of my career. It's been, I graduated college 27 years ago and I've been grinding for 27 years, which sounds absolutely out of control, and I just feel like I'm just getting started. If I'm being real.
I mean, every day I wake up, I think I feel like I'm racing against. The clock. And that is my mindset and I, I'm just on it from the moment I wake up to the time I go home and when I go home, I shut it down. I really do. So me and my family, we prioritize having dinner together every night. My kids are almost [00:25:00] outta the house.
One's graduate high school, one's about to graduate. So while I'm working though, I'm locked. In. But then after that, I am just relaxation. I watch a lot of reality TV and that is my world.
Mia
But you seem to love it, and so does it. Does it feel less like work to you then?
Jay Schwedelson
No, I don't love my job. I actually think that that phrase is crap.
So when people say they, you know, you should love what you do. I think that that's really hurtful to a lot of young people because they think that if they don't love their job, then maybe they're not in the right job. So I absolutely do not love my job. I love. The outcome of my job, the lifestyle it gives me.
I'm super passionate about what I do, but this idea that you have to love what you do, I think like maybe 1% of people out there really love what they do and great, good for them. Amazing. You don't need to love what you do. You just can't hate what you do, but you need to be passionate about what you do.
You need to be intellectually stimulated by what you do, but chasing this idea that you're supposed to love your job. I think. Hurts a lot of people, especially early on in their career, thinking that they're failing and finding their mission in life. Because look, uh, the overwhelming majority of us don't love our job.
That I, I love my kids. I don't love my job.
Mia
Yeah. I think for me it's because I had to eat a lot of shit in a corporate workspace. Like I worked for Maybelline as the senior brand manager. All I did all day every day was run AC Nielsen reports. And sit in meetings, and now I genuinely love my job, but you are right.
I had to do that to get to where I am now. We do have to suck it up.
Jay Schwedelson
You, you built a job that you, that you love. You said, okay, I have all this experience, I've done all these things. I'm going to create this thing that I, that I love. But it'd be very, very hard to do that. As you know, a 22-year-old, 23-year-old, just starting out and then you get in that first job at Maybelline, whatever, and you're like sitting like.
I don't love this at all. I'm failing in life and you're not, you're building towards something that you are gonna really care about. So I just think it's, it's a hard pill to swallow when you're young.
Mia
Yeah, that's a really good point. I'm, I'm gonna look at it from a different perspective now. Thank you.
Let's just go back to email briefly and then we'll get to your favorite section of the podcast, which is the ridiculous section of the, the chat, which I've added in just for you, Jay. Thank you. But something about Australians. That you might not know is that they are terrified of sending too many emails like it is the number one thing I hear is that I just don't wanna bother people by sending too many emails.
But Americans, they will send like three emails a day. They don't care. They're just on for donkey cop. So what would you say to Aussies who are scared of annoying people?
Jay Schwedelson
Well, let's, let's unpack that a little bit. First off, let's talk about people removing themselves from your list. If somebody unsubscribes from your list, number one, it doesn't hurt your deliverability.
Just 'cause somebody removes themselves doesn't mean you won't go in the inbox on the next, send to all the other people. So when someone says, take me up for list. It doesn't hurt your deliverability, but more than that, when people remove themselves from your list, that's a good thing, okay? Because you want people that aren't really your people anymore to get off of your list, and you're not gonna always be for [00:28:00] everybody.
If you try to be for everybody, then you're really for nobody. You shouldn't have a database, you shouldn't be doing marketing that. That is perfect for everybody and everybody wants to be a part of it. It's for exactly who it is that you're trying to reach and speak to. So unsubscribes shouldn't turn you off.
It shouldn't change your marketing. If you get that one remove request that says, I hate you, this is terrible, why are you sending me so many emails? Don't sit there at night on your couch. Be like, you know what? I need to rethink my strategy because that person's having a bad day. Okay, that person is just too much going on.
It's. Not because you sent one more email, but in general, believe it or not, you need to be sending more email, not less email, and people are like, what is he talking about? It's true. The thing you have to always frame your mind is that frequency and relevancy are married. Okay? If you are sending out really good stuff, you could send me an email every single day because I can't wait to get it.
If you're sending out garbage, irrelevant stuff that's just promotional trash, then yeah, it's too much. Relevancy and frequency are married, so it's not that you're sending out too much and that's why you're bothering people. [00:29:00] You're sending out garbage uselessness, and that's why you're bothering people.
So really think about when you're sending your emails, am I just sitting there promoting my buy this, subscribe to this, download this, or am I sending out information and cool stuff that is of value. A lot of the emails that my organization. Sends out. We are oftentimes just giving information, sharing stuff.
We're not saying Buy this from us, give us money, do whatever. We're saying, Hey, here's an idea. Check it out. And that's kind of like how you build that trust. Yeah. I don't have any tattoos, but I'm seriously considering getting frequency and relevancy of married on my body somewhere. 'cause that is.
Mia
Absolute gold. That is so good. Love it. Alright, we've reached the ridiculous portion of the podcast, so final question. Yeah.
Jay Schwedelson
Amazing.
Mia
What is your go-to Comfort TV show when you're stressed? Tired or just over it. So I've got a cool story about the fact that basically I wouldn't be married to a sexy army helicopter pilot if it wasn't for our mutual Love of the West Wing, which is the best show ever created, written by Aaron Sorkin.
It is my comfort blanket. What's yours, Jay?
Jay Schwedelson
Wow. First of all, great show. I like all reality TV and I don't know how many of these uh, uh, franchises are in Australia, but I do. Love Is Blind, is amazing. Is Love is Blind in Australia? Do you guys have Love is Blind. We do. Love Is Blind is amazing. Love. Love is Blind.
As a matter of fact, we had the cast at one of our events 'cause I love them so much. So that shows amazing. And then The Bachelor franchise, it's been on for 20 years. And I've never missed a season or an episode of The Bachelor, the Bachelorette, the Golden Bachelor, bachelor in Paradise. Basically any weird dating reality show I watch and I always ask myself, why do I watch it with my wife?
And I've come to the conclusion that I watch it and I go, well, at least that's not me. And that's the emotion I have. I'm judging people. I'm making fun of them. And I'm saying at least that's not me, and it makes me feel better about myself. So it's always about me. That's hilarious. The Bachelor is amazing.
Mia
I love The Bachelor. We have our own version. The Australian Bachelor not as good as the American. We can watch the American on binge. So we all watch the American, it's just, it's extra cheesy. The American. Yes. Like it's really cheesy.
Jay Schwedelson
Yes. Yeah, yeah. But I love it. We try, we, we specialize in cheese here.
Cheese is our specialty.
Mia
It is. Yellow orange cheese, bright orange cheese. Ugh.
Jay Schwedelson
Absolutely right.
Mia
Well, it has been an absolute pleasure chatting with you. I'm so grateful for your generosity with all of your ideas, your humor, by agreeing to just come on a podcast to a random Australian girl. Really appreciate it.
Jay Schwedelson
First of all, you're not a random Australian girl. You're crushing it. I'm excited for your festival, your podcast, all things, and, uh, it's an honor to be on here and can't wait to come see you in Australia so we can hang out.
Mia
Yes, let's do it. You and your wife come to Darwin?
Jay Schwedelson
Yes, a hundred percent.
Mia
I've started a Substack as the ideal companion to the podcast.
It's packed with extra insights, visuals, and nuggets that didn't make it into the episodes. Plus, you can revisit past editions, any type if you want more or just prefer to read, you'll love it. Plus it's a place for us to connect. Want the backstage pass to Got Marketing? Subscribe [email protected].
Thank you. You listened right up until the end, so why not hit that subscribe button? And keep the good marketing rolling. Podcast reviews are like warm hugs and they're also the best way to support a small business. You can connect with me, Mia FileMan on Instagram or LinkedIn, and feel free to send me a message.
I'm super friendly.
