SPECIAL SERIES ==> Marketing During Holiday?? <== | BATHROOM Break #108 COLLAB: The Marketing Millennials + Do This, Not That

Summary

Podcast Summary

Do This, NOT That: Marketing Tips with Jay Schwedelson

Episode: SPECIAL SERIES - Marketing During Holiday?? (Bathroom Break #108)
Date: May 25, 2026
Guests: Jay Schwedelson (Do This, Not That & subjectline.com)
Daniel Murray (The Marketing Millennials)

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Episode Overview

In this special "Bathroom Break" episode—a collaborative mini-series from "Do This, NOT That" and "The Marketing Millennials"—Jay Schwedelson and Daniel Murray tackle a classic marketing dilemma: Should you stick to your regular marketing cadence during holidays and long weekends, or hit pause? The duo shares personal anecdotes, actionable strategies, and debates misconceptions about email and social media campaigns during these "off" periods. With their signature humor and candidness, they reveal behavioral insights, tactical hacks, and the importance of consistency.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Networking Events vs. Social Obligations

• Relatable banter about networking: Both Jay and Daniel admit they're not fans of networking events and share the urge to leave swiftly—highlighting a memorable quip about “Irish goodbyes.”
• Social Anxiety Crossover: The discomfort about events extends to social gatherings/barbecues, discussed humorously in the context of holiday invites.
  • Quote (Daniel, 01:12): “No, I want to go back to the hotel room. That's why I do not like networking events. And it's even worse when you're hosting it...”

[00:59-02:15]

Memorable Moment:

• Jay: “So you and I are just horrible people that are antisocial?"
• Daniel: “Yeah, pretty much.”

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2. The Holiday Marketing Myth: Should You Pause Regular Outreach?

• Consistency Trumping Calendar:
  • Both hosts agree—don’t halt regular newsletters, webinars, or social posts just for a holiday (with rare exceptions for specific religious days).
  • Holidays often give people more time to check emails/social and can even boost engagement.
  • Quote (Daniel, 02:50):
    “I wouldn't break consistency for a holiday. I think that's ridiculous... people expect you to show up on that day.”
• Counterpoint/Clarification:
  • They clarify that this doesn’t mean insensitivity—know your audience and the holiday context.

[02:20-03:47]

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3. Tactical Holiday Marketing Tips

a) Leveraging Auto-Replies for CRM/Data Enrichment

• Actionable Hack:
  • Use out-of-office auto-replies from your holiday sends to identify new contacts for retargeting.
  • Process: Scrape addresses from auto-replies (with AI tools), and use these for remarketing or pass them to CRM/sales (compliance/region permitting).
  • Quote (Jay, 03:47):
    “Those auto replies are gold and you can get those during those holiday weekends or weeks... you can take that data and use it for retargeting and remarketing.”
• Daniel adds:
  • Pass new contacts to sales for more complete account data and outreach.
  • Quote (Daniel, 04:54):
    “You could do it way easier and you can strip it out and say hey match it with a target account and say this is another person at the company that belongs to this person.”

[03:47-05:37]

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b) Being “of the Moment” in Holiday Messaging

• Real-time Relevance:
  • Use subject lines/copy referencing the current holiday experience (e.g., bored at a barbecue?).
  • Quote (Jay, 05:37):
    “Literally the subject line says the barbecue's boring, but... you're at a boring barbecue. But check this out... it had an incredible performance.”
  • Result:
    • Emails that connect to people’s real-time context can outperform generic messaging.

[05:37-06:30]

c) Best Practices: Email & Content Timing

• Debunking “Perfect Timing” Dogma:
  • Don’t buy into sending only at “best practice” times—holidays can be great due to less inbox competition.
  • Even if open rates are a bit lower, it’s still valuable audience exposure.
  • Use resend-to-non-openers features to maximize reach.
  • Quote (Daniel, 06:30):
    “If you have something consistent, stick to the consistency and also market on these holidays... don't need to turn it off because people say it's the wrong thing to do.”

[06:30-07:23]

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4. Social Media: Should You Post on Holidays?

• Consistency Builds Habits:
  • Keep posting on holidays for algorithm/habit reasons.
  • Even if engagement dips, skipping breaks your content rhythm; some holiday posts might exceed expectations.
  • LinkedIn’s feed is more persistent: posts can take off hours or a day after posting.
  • Quote (Daniel, 07:39):
    "Most important thing on social is consistency and habit forming... just post something and know it might get less engagement, or it might be more."
  • Algorithm change: LinkedIn now serves posts according to user interest, amplifying their reach over time.
  • Quote (Jay, 08:34):
    “It used to be whatever the engagement you got in that first half an hour hour, you'd be able to say, oh, this thing's going to rip or it's not... now I wake up in the morning... this thing's like went bonkers.”

[07:23-09:38]

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5. Blurred Lines: Barbecue vs. Business Networking

• Humorous Return:
  • Personal anecdotes highlight how even with friends nearby, the hosts sometimes avoid socializing—reinforcing their playful “antisocial” personas.
  • Quote (Jay, 10:44):
    “Me and my wife got Daniel and Ari a housewarming gift. It's been sitting on our counter in our house since the day that you guys moved in... Daniel lives within, like, I don't know, 5, 10 miles of where I live. And we just haven't brought it over. Cause we're really weird people.”
  • Both acknowledge the importance of showing up sometimes—for personal relationships’ sake.

[09:38-11:52]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Consistency:
  • Jay (02:50):
    “Don’t freeze your marketing just because it’s a holiday—it’s business as usual.”
• On Using Out-of-Office Data:
  • Jay (03:47):
    “Those auto replies are gold... you can get those during those holiday weekend or weeks.”
• On Social Posts During Holidays:
  • Daniel (07:39):
    “If you post every day on a Monday and then a holiday falls on a Monday, it doesn’t mean skip that Monday.”
• About Avoiding Both Business and Social Events:
  • Jay (10:44):
    “Me and my wife got Daniel and Ari a housewarming gift. It's been sitting on our counter… we're really weird people.”

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Key Timestamps

• 00:59-02:15 — The humor and honesty about networking aversions.
• 02:20-03:47 — Debate: Is marketing during holidays worth it?
• 03:47-05:37 — Tactical advice: mining auto-replies for data enrichment.
• 05:37-06:30 — Of-the-moment subject lines and email messaging.
• 06:30-07:23 — Challenging timing dogmas & maximizing holiday email value.
• 07:23-09:38 — Social media consistency and LinkedIn algorithm insights.
• 09:38-11:52 — Personal stories: barbecues, missed housewarmings, and anti-social confessions.

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Takeaways

• Stay Consistent: Regularly scheduled content (email, social, webinars) shouldn’t pause for most holidays.
• Leverage Holidays Smartly: Use occasion-based hooks in messaging; holidays are a chance to stand out.
• Extract Value from Auto-Replies: Out-of-office messages on holidays hold hidden data gold for sales and remarketing.
• Social Media Is Persistent: Engagement may rise later, and posting even on low-traffic days is a good practice.
• Be Human—But Strategic: Know your audience, but don’t let “perfect timing” myths prevent you from showing up.

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Final Words

The episode blends actionable, often-overlooked marketing tactics with personal, relatable anecdotes, urging marketers to resist the temptation to pause during holidays—and have a little fun and humanity in the process. If you only get one thing from this episode: Consistency, creativity, and a willingness to engage during overlooked moments can set your marketing apart—even from the barbecue.

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(Skip the ads, but don’t skip next week’s “Bathroom Break” for more bite-sized marketing gold.)

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Welcome to a new special series called the Bathroom break. That extra 10 minutes you either have to listen to marketing tips or use the bathroom. Or both. But I don't recommend both. But that's your choice.

[A]

This collab is going to be super fun. We have Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials and me, Jay Schwedelson from the do this, not that podcast and subjectline.com each episode in the series, we are going to go over quick tips about different marketing top topics. And if you want to be in the bathroom, fine, just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out. The Bathroom Break is back. This is Jay Schwedelson from Do this, not that. I'm here with Daniel Murray, the marketing millennial himself. So, Daniel, before we get into should you be doing your marketing, your regular marketing during holidays, like this episode being released on Memorial Day? I got a question for you. You were just recently at a, like an industry event or whatever, and there was networking parties and stuff. I absolutely can't stand going to networking parties. I do them. Do you get hyped for them? Do you love walking around and interacting with people? And is it like the night before? Can you just not sleep because you're so excited about them?

[B]

No, I want to go back to the hotel room. That's why I do not like networking events. And it's even worse when you're hosting it because then you have to totally be on the whole time. So I don't like. It's a mixed bag. It depends on, like, what conference to and what type of people are there.

[A]

So if you're going to a networking event and you're not, like, it's not your network event, you're going to somebody else's network event. Like, what would you say the average amount of time that you'll try to spend there before you kind of do the. You leave without anybody knowing?

[B]

Yeah, 30 minutes max. Iron Irish goodbye. Because some people want to, like, you've said this before, but some people, you just want to show face so they see that you were there. I did that at Inbound. Someone had like a meetup and they said, come. And I went for like three minutes, said hi, and then Irish goodbye.

[A]

So do you think anybody likes going to networking events or does everybody there.

[B]

Actually, I think some people just go to the conference for the parties, not the. The conference.

[A]

So you and I are just horrible people that are antisocial?

[B]

Yeah, pretty much.

[A]

Okay, good. Pretty much. All right, listen, this thing is coming out on Memorial Day, and so there's a lot of debate. Should you keep doing your marketing on a holiday or a Sunday or any of these off hours or should you kind of freeze it because it's not going to do as well as the regular days of the week? Whether you're a business marketer, consumer marketer, whatever you are, should you be treating kind of the holiday days differently than regular marketing days?

[B]

I always think that if you have something consistent going on, a consistent newsletter, a consistent webinar series, a consistent event, consistent anything or consistent posting on social, I wouldn't break consistency for a holiday. I think that's ridiculous to do that. I think you keep it as business as usual. I think there are maybe some religious holidays that are exceptions to the rule, but most holidays, I don't think businesses, I, I think business as usual people expect you to show up on that day and also people. So most, a lot of marketers have more time or more business professionals have more time during those days. So they're opening emails or they, it's in their inbox and they see it and they wanted to read it because a lot of them don't have time during the week to just open a normal marketing email.

[A]

Yeah. And I'll give you two kind of tactical things you could do related to around holidays. One is if you send out your email to your database, let's say on Memorial Day, right to your Firefoil database. What you can do with that information is you're going to get back a lot of auto replies, people saying I'm out contact, blah blah blah, I'm on vacation. Because a lot of people go on vacation, they tie it to a three day weekend. And what you can do is you can take all of that data unless you're in Europe because AMIA has gdpr, so you can't do that there. But you take all the auto replies and you could do something simple. You use an AI tool to strip out all the email addresses in the auto replies that you get. And then you could take that data and use it for retargeting and remarketing because those contacts that are in those auto replies from your database are very likely the exact right people that you should be marketing to anyway. So those auto replies are gold and you can get those during those holiday weekend or weeks or whatever. And I know there was a. You can't do that. Well, you can do that. I'm not telling you to take the data and make them your newsletter subscribers, but you could absolutely do that to target them and remarket to them for your programmatic stuff.

[B]

And another thing you could do too is what I we used to do back in the day when I when with auto applies is you send it to the CRM so like sales knows as an extra contact. So so you instead of you don't have the market but you give it as a an additional lead in the CRM to a salesperson or something like maybe they're getting trying to get in contact with this. This person's not reaching out like reach out to this person so you can auto now AI you could do it way easier and you can strip it out and say hey match it with a target account and say this is another person at the company that belongs to this person. So that's another thing you could do

[A]

with Those auto replies 100%. And you know the other thing is you should talk about the moment. So for example we did whatever the last holiday was that had a big barbecue or whatever tied to the hol our emails on that day that we send out promoting stuff. Literally the subject line says the barbecue's boring but and you open it up and says you're at a boring barbecue. But check this out. Since you're bored and actually trying to talk to the moment that people are in I think can get you a lot. It had an incredible performance that email because the more that you could be of the moment and speak to the moment the more people are like oh yeah, I'm going to check this out. So you don't just want to like pump out your regular garbage. The other thing Daniel I know you're into this is long form content during a weekend or during a holiday can do particularly well because of the time somebody has.

[B]

I believe in marketing at less like when people think it's a best practice because you will go into these these blog posts for years and say here is the perfect time to like send an email. And people only follow perfect time to send an email and they'll ignore holidays, they'll ignore weekends and stuff like that. And you've said this, you said this before the podcast and I know you're going to bring it up but it doesn't really matter if 40% instead of 50% opened. It's still people opening your emails and digesting that email. And you could also do resend it to non openers. You could do a lot of things that are happening. So if you have something consistent, stick to the consistency and also market on these holidays I don't think it's something you should need. Turn it off because people say it's the wrong thing to do.

[A]

So let me ask a question beyond email though. Let's talk about social. I mean it's Memorial Day. Are you gonna post on LinkedIn and are you okay with the fact that you might get a fraction of your normal engagement or you're like, no, no, no. Certain things I wouldn't do on a holiday.

[B]

I think the bet the most important thing on social is consistency and habit forming. So you should always build that muscle of because you can skip when you skip one day, then you're like, maybe I'll skip another day. And it becomes this like cycle of skipping, skipping, skipping. So if you post every day on a Monday and then a holiday falls on a Monday, it doesn't mean skip that Monday because just post something and know it's gonna might get less engagement or it might be more engagement because now like the LinkedIn feed has this like 24 to 48 hour like window. So it might show up the next day or the following day and other people's feeds because got fed and they got and you were competing against less posts on the business network. So I think you should try it at least or keep that muscle like moving during those days.

[A]

By the way, it's so interesting you say that about LinkedIn because I've been seeing that too. It's like it used to be whatever the engagement you got in that first half an hour hour, you'd be able to say, oh, this thing's going to rip or it's not going to rip. Now it's like I wake up in the morning and I have a post that was doing okay and then I wake up in the morning. By the time I wake up this thing's like went bonkers or whatever and I'm like, how the hell that happened?

[B]

I had a post yesterday that like had probably like 90 likes in two hours and then by the time the day ended it ended up like at 4 or 500. But like I normally I would say this is a flop post but now LinkedIn's serving it to new people. But I think it's this new interest based of like okay, this now a marketer sees it and now another marketer season. Now another marketer season. It's this cycle of more and more wants to show it to the actual people who want to view it versus people before just showed it to everybody and ever got likes and then if people had pods it worked. So I think it's actually a better algorithm than it used to.

[A]

Yeah, I agree with You. All right, so one last thing. Back to the original topic. So we don't like going to networking events, but now it's Memorial Day. You get invited to a barbecue. Are you like, yes, I really like going to barbecues. I like doing it in a social setting. Or do you feel the same way about, like, barbecues and stuff as you do networking events at business stuff?

[B]

There's two sides to this coin. One is, do you need, like, your kid to get in and be friends with that other kid and start. So there's, like, that strategic play of it. And I love. We're calling this a strategic of going tomorrow. But also, I think that if you don't go to things, you stop getting invited to things. And if you're like, yeah, well, yeah, but when you're, like, making new friends, it's hard to say, yeah, but I think, yeah, Jay's the type of person is like, I don't want to do any. I don't want to hang out with anybody. I don't want to see anybody. I. I only want to do my own thing.

[A]

And can I tell everybody how bad I am? This is the truth. Okay. Daniel and I live relatively close to each other. Okay.

[B]

And.

[A]

And he moved into a new home. I would say, would you move in that home, like, six months ago or something like that? And so me and my wife got Daniel and Ari a housewarming gift. It's been sitting on our counter in our house since the day that you guys moved in. And I'm talking about. Daniel lives within, like, I don't know, 5, 10 miles of where I live. And we just haven't brought it over. Cause we're really weird people.

[B]

No, it's not even five to ten miles. It's like five to ten minutes of oh, my God. But also the funny part is, too, is that I used to live, like, a hundred miles, probably from Jay. And I probably saw him more in the hundred miles than I saw him

[A]

in the 10 minutes. That's right.

[B]

Yeah. He doesn't like seeing people. And even when they get closer, he has one of his best friends that move near, too. And he's like, he's, no, I don't want to see you. No.

[A]

100%. Right. I don't know what the hell's wrong with me. I am in therapy. I'll admit it. I'm fully in therapy, and I talk about this, and I'm trying to work through it, and so far, I've not had a breakthrough, so.

[B]

Oh, you're probably never, never gonna have a breakthrough.

[A]

I don't even know if this episode's gonna break through, but we've covered a lot, as usual. Listen, everybody go to Daniel's feed. Leave him a Spotify comment, leave him an Apple review. The guy loves that stuff.

[B]

Also, everybody go by Jay's new book. It's on Amazon. It's. It's actually releasing in next month. I have. I have two books coming, so it's going to be really good. Jay's gonna. I'm gonna. I'm gonna make Jay sign one of them for me. Yeah, he's gonna love to do that.

[A]

Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate you. All right, we'll see you at the next one. Daniel. Come on, man. I gotta get back to work. Get out of there. All right, while he's still in there. This is Jay. Check out my podcast, do this, not that, for marketers. Each week we share really quick tips on stuff that can improve your marketing and hope you give it a try. Oh, here's Daniel. He's finally out.

[B]

Back from my bathroom break. This is Daniel. Go follow the Market Millennials podcast, but also tune into this series. It's once a week, the Bathroom Break. We talk about marketing tips that we just spew out. And it could be anything from email subject line to any marketing tips in the world. We'll talk about it. Just give us a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out.

[A]

Later.