NEW: Ultimate Subject Line Test Ideas🫨Jay's SCOOP | Ep. 519
Do This, NOT That: Marketing Tips with Jay Schwedelson
GURU Media Hub
4.9 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 4 June 2026
⏱️ 10 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Partner with Jay: https://www.jayschwedelson.com/contact
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Pre-order Jay Schwedelson's new book, Stupider People Have Done It (out June 9, 2026).
All net proceeds are donated to The V Foundation for Cancer Research, let's kick cancer's butt: https://www.amazon.com/Stupider-People-Have-Done-Marketing/dp/1637635206
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Connect with Jay on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schwedelson/
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Most of us figure we've already tried every subject line trick worth trying, which is exactly what makes this batch so annoying. Jay Schwedelson runs through a pile of tactics that sound too dumb to work, like dropping a period after every word or dressing up a subject line as a calendar invite, except the open rates keep climbing anyway. Stick around for the strangely strong hill he's willing to die on involving coworkers, swimming pools, and dance floors.
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Best Moments:
(01:20) Why a subject line that reads like a calendar invite is lifting opens by 28%.
(02:15) The bracketed newsletter trick everyone abandoned, back from the dead and working again.
(03:43) Opening a subject line with And or But to trigger a different kind of curiosity.
(04:15) A period. After. Every. Word. And the quiet drama it stirs up.
(04:46) Dropping next month into your subject line two weeks early, and why people bite.
(06:00) Jay's deeply held refusal to see work people in bathing suits or on a dance floor.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast from marketers. |
| 0:05.1 | We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode. |
| 0:11.6 | We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out. |
| 0:16.5 | We are back for Do This Not That podcast, and today I wanted to do a new, all new, ultimate email subject line test ideas because everyone thinks their email subject lines. You've tried it all. You're a business marketer, consumer, nonprofit. You've done it all. And you can't get your emails to work. But there's always new tactics to try. And I have a research group called World Data Research, and we execute over 40,000 |
| 0:38.5 | campaigns annually and over 6 billion emails we send out. And we're always trying new stuff. |
| 0:43.3 | So I'm not going to share with you stuff you already know, like urgency or making your subject |
| 0:47.4 | line a question. That's boring. Everybody knows that stuff. I want to share stuff with you that |
| 0:52.0 | maybe you haven't tried. and these are not going to all |
| 0:54.1 | work, but they're easy tests. I don't care how big or small your brand is. This is easy stuff that you can test. And some things that I thought were used to be terrible and that we retested and are actually working really well right now, which is always the case in marketing. I'd always go back and retest. So I'm going to rip through some different test ideas. |
| 1:11.9 | There's a horrible way to do a podcast because you're out walking or driving. case in marketing. I'd always go back and retest. So I'm going to rip through some different test ideas. |
| 1:11.8 | There's a horrible way to do a podcast because you're out walking or driving. You're like, well, what am I going to do with this? I'm going to have to re-listen to this garbage. I don't know. Maybe you'll remember one of them. What can I tell you? And at the end, I'll share with you nonsense that's going on in my life because that's what I do. All right. So the first test that really |
| 1:28.5 | was surprising to us is having your subject line look like a calendar invite. |
| 1:33.1 | This is crushing it. |
| 1:34.1 | And our research is actually lifting open rates 28%. |
| 1:37.7 | So what does that look like in your subject line? |
| 1:39.8 | The subject line would literally say, you know, Thursday, 2.15 p.m. or would say, |
| 1:45.3 | 11, um, tomorrow 11 a.m. And this might be the date that you're releasing a new guide. |
| 1:51.0 | This might be the date that you're releasing, announcing a new sale going live on the consumer side, |
| 1:54.7 | or donation things being open, or a webinar event that's going to happen. But literally, |
| 2:00.7 | all you're putting is tomorrow 11 a.m. |
| 2:03.1 | Or Thursday, 2.15 p.m. |
| 2:05.5 | The person opens it up because they think, oh, wait a minute, I'm supposed to be there. |
... |
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