The Marketing Millennials

Most brands would kill for the loyalty Stretch Zone gets from members who show up two or three times a week…and it all started with a category that didn't exist yet.

Daniel sits down with Lindsey McFadden, CMO of Stretch Zone, to break down how she grew the brand from 60 locations to 425, with zero closures, ever. Lindsey walks through why "your first stretch is free" became the backbone of the entire acquisition strategy, and how you educate a market into a habit that didn't exist before you built it.

Lindsey shares how Stretch Zone keeps hundreds of franchise owners rowing in the same direction with playbooks so simple she calls them "Fisher Price easy," one page campaign briefs, and a real estate team that heat maps every territory before a franchise agreement is ever signed.

Plus, Lindsey explains why AI front desk agents are quietly failing her franchisees (one generated an ad with a leg bent completely backwards), and why her Marketing hill to die on is simple: AI's not gonna run your business for you.

If you want to understand how to scale a brand across hundreds of locations without losing what makes it work, this is the episode for you.

Follow Lindsey:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lindsey-mcfadden-mba

Follow Daniel:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@themarketingmillennials/featured
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Dmurr68
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-murray-marketing

Sign up for The Marketing Millennials newsletter:www.workweek.com/brand/the-marketing-millennials

Daniel is a Workweek friend, working to produce amazing podcasts. To find out more, visit:www.workweek.com

Your subject lines might be too clean, too correct, and too polished to actually get opened.

Jay and Daniel go through their favorite subject line tactics, and most of them break every "best practice" rule you've ever heard. Daniel swears by emojis, unfinished sentences that trail off with ellipses, and odd numbers like 7, 9, or 13 instead of round ones. He also calls out his audience directly in the subject line ("For Marketers who...") and says it crushes every time he uses it.

Jay counters with what he calls "un-AI" subject lines: intentionally long subject lines (100+ characters) that fill the whole line and get cut off on purpose, ellipses at the start of a subject line instead of the end (a 15% lift in open rates), and skipping capitalization entirely. His logic: if AI would never suggest it, it probably stands out.

They also get into serialized numbering (numbering your newsletter editions so people notice when they miss one and go back to read it) and "vault content," repackaging your best existing content as a locked offer people have to unlock.

The bigger idea: the goal isn't to write a "correct" subject line, it's to write one that doesn't look like everyone else's. If it looks like AI could've written it, it probably won't get opened.

If you want subject line tactics that actually move open rates instead of just following best practices, this is the episode for YOU.

Follow Jay:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schwedelson/
Podcast: Do This, Not That

Follow Daniel:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@themarketingmillennials/featured
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Dmurr68
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-murray-marketing

Sign up for The Marketing Millennials newsletter:www.workweek.com/brand/the-marketing-millennials

Daniel is a Workweek friend, working to produce amazing podcasts. To find out more, visit:www.workweek.com

Phil Treagus-Evans, Co-Founder and CEO of Giraffe Social, is not anti-AI (he uses it every day). He’s anti-LAZY AI. You know, the copy-pasted slop currently flooding your feed.

So how do you dial up your human-ness…and build trust in the process?

Phil and Daniel talk about why people trust people and not brands, how to turn your own team into your highest-performing Marketing channel, and the 1 metric he says matters most even though you can't actually measure it. Plus, how boring Marketing is secretly the riskiest.

If you're a Marketer who wants to cut through the AI noise and keep people at the center, this episode is for YOU.

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Follow Phil: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/phil-treagus-evans & check out his book, Human First Marketing

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Enjoying the pod? Do Daniel a favor and hit follow, then leave a quick rating. It helps more Marketers find the show. 🎧

Follow Daniel:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@themarketingmillennials

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Dmurr68

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-murray-marketing

Newsletter: https://themarketingmillennials.com/

Daniel is a Workweek friend, working to produce amazing podcasts. To find out more, visit: www.workweek.com

Paul Reiss dropped out of college to build Protein Pints, and then scaled it from 1 store to 15,000 in just three years.

His strategy: deliberately pumping the brakes on Marketing so the brand wouldn't blow up before it could actually deliver.

Paul and Daniel get into why going viral too early can sink a young brand, how to know when to hold back versus hit the gas, and the 1 question he says every product has to answer before you scale it.

If you're a Marketer or founder who wants to know when to market and when to wait, this episode is for YOU!

Enjoying the pod? Do Daniel a favor and hit follow, then leave a quick rating. It helps more Marketers find the show.

Sign up for The Marketing Millennials newsletter: ⁠www.workweek.com/brand/the-marketing-millennials⁠

Daniel is a Workweek friend, working to produce amazing podcasts. To find out more, visit: ⁠www.workweek.com⁠

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Follow Paul on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-reiss-7060381b7/

Follow Daniel:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@themarketingmillennials/

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Dmurr68

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-murray-marketing

Most of what you're measuring in email Marketing is noise, and the signals that actually predict pipeline are hiding in places you're probably not even looking.

Daniel breaks down why every email needs a honeypot link, an invisible link that only bots click, so you can strip out fake engagement before you ever look at your real numbers. He also makes the case for tracking every CTA separately, since the people who click a button at the bottom of an email are reading more of it and often move faster to pipeline than people who click the first thing at the top. He also talks about using AI to track reply rates and pull specific language out of replies to build first party data, and points out that replies quietly boost your email deliverability too.

Jay adds a list of intent signals most teams ignore completely: an emoji reaction during a webinar, any interaction with a chatbot no matter what someone types, and more than 10 seconds spent on a pricing page. He says shoppers who click a bottom CTA show a noticeably higher lifetime value, and that these small, easy to miss actions should put someone on a VIP list because they predict who actually buys faster than a standard open or click ever will.

The bigger idea here is a shift from counting activity to counting intent. Opens and clicks only tell you someone showed up. Replies, chatbot use, and CTA position tell you who is actually paying attention and close to buying.

If you're a Marketer who is done guessing which leads are real, this is the episode for you.

Follow Jay:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schwedelson/
Podcast: Do This, Not That

Follow Daniel:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@themarketingmillennials/featured
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Dmurr68
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-murray-marketing

Sign up for The Marketing Millennials newsletter:www.workweek.com/brand/the-marketing-millennials

Daniel is a Workweek friend, working to produce amazing podcasts. To find out more, visit:www.workweek.com