Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice
Marketing Strategies That Still Work in an AI-Driven World with Jay Schwedelson
19 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
You are about to get the high octane growth blueprint you need to stop wasting time on fleeting trends and start building a real asset. Because email marketing is the one legacy channel that still crushes every conversion rate metric.
We're unlocking the high converting secrets big brands rely on from using power words and emojis in your subject lines to leveraging the revolutionary data behind 15 million tested email intros with Guru Media Hub's Jay Schwedelson. If you're ready to drastically increase your open rates, Generate unstoppable leads and future-proof your business against the AI content trash wave.
Then hit play and let's get down to business right about now.
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 or whatever business that you're in as a listener, it helps to define why people should work with you. And that's kind of how I got rolling.
Chapter 2: Why is email marketing still a top-performing channel?
When you're not in the room and your name comes up, you 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. And you could then grow from there. That's everything.
You need an entree point in whatever your business is. That's kind of the secret sauce.
This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford.
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Chapter 3: What strategies can improve email subject lines?
You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now.
What's up, guys? Welcome to Right About Now. 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. We've hit this 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.
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 when I am a little stupid, so it works out well. We like to chase the shiny objects. Everybody gets excited about what's new, but damn, email and direct marketing still fucking work, I'll tell you that.
I spend a lot of time in the world of email, like email's legacy, email's dead, email's 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 are really willing to do that? About zero? It's crushing it.
Let's tell a little bit of the Jay story and building to kind of where we are today. I've been at this for a long time, over 25 years. I've had an agency. When my agency was getting rolling, we do everything in my agency. 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 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.
After a few years of really driving myself nuts, I walked out of this one meeting. This guy said to me that we were pitching to, he said, you know, that stuff you were talking about email, if you would just kind of double down on that and just focus on that, you probably would have gotten that business. And then after you got that, maybe you would have gotten our other stuff.
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.
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Chapter 4: How can authenticity impact email marketing?
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.
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, these are trigger words that are like, 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.
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. Talk to me about where I can keep up with what you're doing, the show, all that good stuff. 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. You can check that all out and you'll find me. I appreciate the opportunity. I love the show and can't wait to have you on mine. I love it.
I'm going to go to subjectline.com. 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. Right about now.
This has been Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. Visit RyanIsRight.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.
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