Presented by

It’s 🚫 Prevent ✍️ Plagiarism Day, Reader... We can all get behind this one!

In today’s edition:

• Today's 👉 Tip of the Day is for AI

• ☝️ Tips to get more results from your 📩 email newsletters

• Expanded FB and IG 🔊 boosted posts feature

• ♻️ YouTube Short Remixes

We’re all learning that artificial intelligence (AI) tools can help us work smarter. But figuring out where AI can best support your business rather than just jumping on AI for AI’s sake is less clear.

Identify High-Value AI Use Cases for Your Business

These key questions will help you uncover the highest potential AI applications.

• What are your biggest marketing or business problems?

• Where in your workflows or processes do you spend a lot of time, money, or effort? 

• Where does your team experience significant skill or knowledge gaps?

• Is there an AI tool available that could help automate or enhance this area? And what would the cost/effort tradeoff be of implementing it?

This exercise will surface overlooked areas in which AI solutions can have the greatest return on investment versus lower-impact uses like generative content writing.

Today's tip is inspired by Cathy McPhillips.

LAST CHANCE: Join Us LIVE Today! 

Social Media Marketing World kicks off today at 8 am Pacific.

We'll be coming to you from the San Diego Convention Center with my opening keynote: The Future of Marketing: How to Thrive in a World of Disruption.  

Over the next 2 days, I'll be joined by dozens of marketers who are ready to help guide you into the future. 

Did you know that even if you can’t get to San Diego you can experience the conference “live?”

Grab your Streaming ticket, and let's make 2024 your best year ever.

 I don’t want to miss the conference!

3 Ways to Improve Email Marketing Results

Email marketing remains an extremely effective channel for engaging customers and driving conversions. But to get the best results, marketers need to use strategies based on today’s current behaviors, not outdated conventional wisdom or practices. 

For example, many still think that using certain words like "free" or question marks in subject lines will automatically send emails to spam folders. In reality, factors like historical user engagement rates play a much bigger role in filtering decisions than an algorithm flagging random words or punctuation. 

The following small optimizations can have a big performance impact on your email messaging campaigns:

Tips to Optimize Your Subject Lines

The subject line serves as the critical attention-grabbing headline that determines whether busy subscribers ever see your email in the first place. Using numbers at the start, emojis, brackets around key terms, and capitalizing the first prominent word have all been shown to help subject lines visually stand out better in crowded inboxes. 

However, avoid excessive capitalization of entire words throughout the length of the subject, overuse of random punctuation, or cryptic abbreviations of terms. Why? Because people generally only glance at the very first few characters before deciding whether to open your email. 

And while personalization matters, just inserting first names provides diminishing returns compared to showing contextual relevance to the reader's interests or attributes. Subject lines that quickly identify the recipient's role, vertical, or recent life events generate higher open rates by instantly conveying applicability.

Tips for More Effective Calls to Action  

Once your email is opened, persuading readers to convert relies on catchy, benefit-focused calls to action (CTAs). 

Graphical buttons normally beat basic text-based hyperlinks, but the aspect to put most of your effort into is the wording of the CTA. Be sure to write the CTA wording from the reader’s first-person perspective and focus it on their benefit. For instance, leading with “Get My Discount” will work much better than a generic “Buy Now” prompt.

Tips to Tackle Formats   

Sticking to consistent templates month after month can inadvertently train your subscribers to automatically tune out recurring email formats. To revive their interest, try featuring a substantially different structural layout in every third message you send.

For example, instead of your standard format try including personal letters, postcards, quizzes, polls, or other atypical interactive email arrangements that present a pattern disruption. 

Analyze these outside-the-box layout changes through split testing in order to scale the approaches that lift engagement metrics. 

Watch for higher open rates, even if format tests also attract more opt-outs or spam complaints in the short run. Those signals can counterintuitively confirm the revised formats are succeeding at grabbing attention rather than being completely ignored as background noise.

Today's advice is provided with insights from Jay Schwedelson.

Recordings of Social Media Marketing World? 

At this moment thousands of marketers from around the world are at Social Media Marketing World hearing about the future of marketing. 

If you're experiencing FOMO, here’s some good news for you. 

We’re capturing every single thing at the conference, and it's available to you with your On-Demand ticket. This means all the sessions and keynotes—plus the bonus workshops—are all there for you to watch at your own pace over the next year. 

You can even save an extra $200 off your On-Demand ticket today.

Yes! I want all the great content.

🗞 Boosted Posts on Meta: Facebook and Instagram have announced alternative options for small businesses to boost posts and avoid a new 30% Apple service charge on in-app purchases. Facebook and Instagram have now made it possible to access the full boosted posts experience via mobile and desktop web browsers at Facebook.com and Instagram.com. Source: Meta

🗞 YouTube Shorts Remix: The platform announced the rollout of the Remix feature to its short-form video content. Source: YouTube

🗞  ChatGTP's Sora Video Generator: OpenAI has developed Sora, a new AI text-to-video model that can generate high-quality videos up to a minute long based on text prompts. Sora has a deep understanding of language and the physical world, enabling it to create complex, multi-character scenes with accurate details. OpenAI plans to make Sora available to artists and designers for feedback, while also working with experts to test for potential harms. Source: ChatGPT

Did You Know?

The signature food dish served at Wimbledon is strawberries and cream.