Why You Shouldn't Stop Marketing on Weekends | Bathroom Break #64 🚽

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Marketing Millennials - "Why You Shouldn't Stop Marketing on Weekends | Bathroom Break #64 🚽"

Episode Details:

• Title: Why You Shouldn't Stop Marketing on Weekends | Bathroom Break #64 🚽
• Host: Daniel Murray
• Guest: Jay Schwedelson from Do This, Not That Podcast and SubjectLine.com
• Release Date: July 14, 2025
• Podcast Series: Bathroom Break (a collaborative special series)

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Introduction to the Bathroom Break Series

In this special episode of "The Marketing Millennials," host Daniel Murray teams up with Jay Schwedelson from the "Do This, Not That" podcast and SubjectLine.com. The "Bathroom Break" series is designed to deliver quick, actionable marketing tips suitable for a brief 10-minute listen—perfect for those multitasking moments between marketing insights and a bathroom break.

Key Opening Remarks:

• Daniel Murray [00:02]: Introduces the concept of the Bathroom Break series, humorously highlighting the challenge of balancing marketing tips with personal time.
• Jay Schwedelson [00:14]: Emphasizes the collaborative nature of the series, aiming to provide concise marketing insights without divulging listeners' bathroom habits.

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Main Discussion: Marketing on Weekends vs. Weekdays

The core of the episode revolves around the critical question: "Should you be doing your marketing on the weekends?" Daniel and Jay delve into the advantages and misconceptions surrounding weekend marketing for both business and consumer brands.

1. Changing Marketing Landscape on Weekends

Jay Schwedelson [01:25]: Opens the discussion by addressing the common belief in strict work-life balance and its impact on weekend marketing activities. He candidly shares his lack of work-life balance, setting the stage for a deep dive into weekend marketing strategies.

Daniel Murray [02:31]: Offers a B2B perspective, highlighting two main advantages of weekend marketing:

• Less Competition: "You have less competition on the weekend now so you have more space to get attention."
• Increased Engagement: "People are doing more leisurely scrolling on the weekends...they have more time to read longer form pieces of content."

Daniel advocates for a continuous marketing presence, suggesting that shutting off marketing efforts outside typical business hours could mean missing out on valuable opportunities.

2. Email Marketing Dynamics

Jay Schwedelson [03:27]: Presents intriguing data from MediaPost, revealing a 30% year-over-year increase in web traffic to business websites from high-level contacts (e.g., directors, CMOs) during weekends. He underscores the importance of:

• Lower Email Sending Volumes: "Email sending volumes is dramatically lower on the weekends. Which gives you more of an opportunity to stand out."
• Customized Benchmarks: Emphasizes the need for separate benchmarks for weekend and weekday email sends due to differing audience mindsets.

Daniel Murray [04:36]: Enhances the conversation by discussing optimized email strategies:

• Higher Open Rates on Weekends: "I get 10 to 20% higher open rates when I send on a Sunday night because I know I'm going to be first in the inbox Monday morning."
• Intent Over Quantity: "A red email is more important than an open and unread email...people are more likely to engage meaningfully with weekend emails."

3. Behavioral Patterns and Content Consumption

Jay Schwedelson [05:32]: Advises marketers to rethink their send times based on weekend behaviors:

• Different Mindsets: "10am on a Saturday, that's kind of annoying to see business emails... Whereas, 6 or 7pm on a Sunday, you're like, okay, what do I got going on tomorrow?"
• Content Timing: Encourages testing various send times to align with how audiences engage differently during weekends.

Daniel Murray [06:16]: Adds a nuanced perspective on email metrics:

• Beyond Open Rates: "Open rate doesn't necessarily mean that people saw your email. It means they opened your email."
• Engagement Quality: Highlights the importance of considering the quality of engagement over mere open rates.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Daniel Murray [02:31]: "Marketing should always be always on. No matter what the day, your ad should run on the weekend."
• Jay Schwedelson [03:27]: "Email sending volumes is dramatically lower on the weekends. Which gives you more of an opportunity to stand out."
• Daniel Murray [04:36]: "I get 10 to 20% higher open rates when I send on a Sunday night because I know I'm going to be first in the inbox Monday morning."
• Daniel Murray [06:16]: "A red email is more important than an open and unread email."

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Practical Tips and Strategies

1. Leverage Lower Competition:

   • Utilize weekends to capture audience attention with fewer marketing messages vying for their focus.

2. Optimize Email Campaigns:

   • Develop separate benchmarks for weekend and weekday email performance.
   • Schedule emails to land at strategic times (e.g., Sunday evenings) to maximize engagement.

3. Adjust Content Timing:

   • Experiment with different send times to align with your audience's weekend routines and mindsets.

4. Focus on Engagement Quality:

   • Prioritize emails and content that foster meaningful interactions over those merely seeking high open rates.

5. Continuous Marketing Presence:

   • Maintain a steady marketing presence without adhering strictly to traditional business hours, ensuring you're always accessible to your audience.

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Personal Insights and Anecdotes

Throughout the episode, Daniel and Jay intersperse personal habits and anecdotes, adding a relatable touch to the discussion:

• Morning Routines: Sharing their morning routines, including waking up without an alarm and seeking sunlight, provides a glimpse into their personal lives and underscores the importance of routine in maintaining productivity.
• Engagement with Audience: Both hosts encourage listeners to connect via social media and share the podcast, fostering a sense of community and interaction.

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Conclusion and Key Takeaways

The episode effectively debunks the myth that weekends are an unsuitable time for marketing. By presenting data-driven insights and practical strategies, Daniel Murray and Jay Schwedelson make a compelling case for integrating weekend marketing into your overall strategy. The key takeaways include:

• Embrace Weekend Marketing: Take advantage of lower competition and higher engagement rates by maintaining marketing activities on weekends.
• Tailor Your Strategies: Customize your email campaigns and content distribution based on the distinct behaviors and mindsets of weekend audiences.
• Focus on Meaningful Engagement: Prioritize quality interactions over sheer metrics like open rates to build a more engaged and loyal audience base.

By adopting these strategies, marketers can unlock valuable opportunities and enhance their overall marketing effectiveness.

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Connect with The Marketing Millennials:

• LinkedIn: The Marketing Millennials
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Follow Daniel Murray:

• Twitter: @Dmurr68
• LinkedIn: Daniel Murray

Follow Jay Schwedelson:

• Podcast: Do This, Not That

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Transcript

[Daniel Murray]

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

[Jay Schwedelson]

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 topics. And if you want to be in the bathroom, fine, just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out. Bathroom break time is here. This is Jay Schwedelson from Do this, not that Podcast. I'm here with Daniel Murray, the marketing millennial himself. And today we're going to be talking about, should you be doing your marketing on the weekends? If you're a business brand, a consumer brand, is it good or bad? But before we do that, I got a question, Daniel. Do you set an alarm to wake up in the morning and are you a snoozer? Are you one of these people that hits your snooze button like five times? Drive yourself bananas, because I think that's one of the stupidest things in the world.

[Daniel Murray]

Which part of that snoozing?

[Jay Schwedelson]

The snoozing part.

[Daniel Murray]

I won't lie if I haven't ever had the snooze button, but I do. I do have a wake up. Actually, me and Ari wake up at the same time. So she sets the alarm. I do not set the alarm. Sometimes she gets scared that I don't set that alarm too. But she sets alarm and we wake up this same time. So. Yeah, but you. I apparently I know what you do.

[Jay Schwedelson]

I actually don't need an alarm, which is such. I'm trying. That's like a flex. Like you're cool that you don't need one. I get up somewhere around 5:45 every single day without an alarm.

[Daniel Murray]

Whoa, that's a flat.

[Jay Schwedelson]

I know, right? I wish I could sleep later. I just can't.

[Daniel Murray]

Well, we don't know what your bedtime is.

[Jay Schwedelson]

No, I go to sleep very early. I go to sleep. I don't really see past 10 o' clock much. I'm such a. That's why I live in Boca. I eat dinner, like four o'. Clock. I'm an embarrassment. I said all this stuff. I'm like, that sounds embarrassing. It really does. Even on the weekends. Speaking of weekends, let's jump right into it. So there is a lot of new data that is showing that marketing on the weekends is crushing it. And if you're listening out there, you're like, wait a minute, you need to have a work life balance and at 5pm on Friday you should shut it off and you don't think about working until Monday if you got that going on. I salute you, I high five you, I celebrate you. I do not. Okay, there is. I have a. I don't know, I don't have a work life balance. I straight up don't. I was going to tell you that I do. I don't. So I don't. Which is very unhealthy. But what do you think, Daniel, about all this and marketing on the weekends and whatever.

[Daniel Murray]

Let's go the B2B side first. I think one, because people have the mentality that people aren't doing things on the weekend. I think you have less competition on the weekend now so you have more space to get attention. Two, I think people are doing more leisurely scrolling on the weekends. When it's during the week it's more like in between things busy. But on the weekends they have more time to scroll on their phone and do things. And I also think they have more time to read longer form pieces of content because on the weekend they can have more time to relax. I think for even one thing I would do is like if you fishing in a pond that's less competitive, go to the less competitive side. So. And also I truly believe marketing should always be always on. Like I think like it doesn't no matter what the day, your ad should run on the weekend. Some emails should go out on the weekend like it should. They should never be just like I shut off only marketing through 9 to 5, Monday through Friday.

[Jay Schwedelson]

Yeah. And I'll throw out some stats that are kind of wild. So media posts came out with some data that showed on the business side, for example that web traffic to business websites from director level and above contact contacts like the directors, CMOs, VPs, whatever, regardless of industry is up over 30% year over year because everybody is checking their stuff. And here's the thing, email marketing. Let's talk about that for a second. Whether you're a consumer or business marketer, email sending volumes is dramatically lower on the weekends. Dramatically lower. Which gives you more of an opportunity to stand out. But the mistake that marketers make is they go, oh, I sent this out on a Sunday. It didn't do as well as when I sent it out on on a Wednesday. That is ridiculous. You want to have benchmarks for your weekend Sends. You want to have benchmarks for your weekday sends. They're two very different things. And you're reaching people in a different mindset. I mean, to your point Daniel, long form content newsletters on the consumer side, newsletters on the business side, people have time. They're not getting slacks or teams messages or whatever. This is a time to build up your raving fans 100%.

[Daniel Murray]

I also think that when coming on the weekends, like one thing I do like, I send my newsletter. One of my newsletter, I'll give you a stat like, and we have marketers on our list. I get 10 to 20% higher open rates when I send on a Sunday night because I know I'm going to be first in the inbox Monday morning. I was going to add one thing because I just remembered is that what I used to do is I used to like have calendar system and you're like form. So when you are on the weekends, you can set your calendar to be like book meetings on the weekend. And like you said, there's more high intent browsing on the weekend. So if someone's in doing the time to browse on that weekend and they click, oh, I want the software and have a way to like book a meeting on Monday and Tuesday, that's a great way to do that. But if you have an autoresponder that says we'll get to you in five minutes and you're not getting them on five minutes, that's the problem you have.

[Jay Schwedelson]

Yeah. And the other thing is don't use your same send times that you do during the week. If you have consumer offers, they go out, you know, at 10:00am Whatever, you really need to test into your send times because you have to test into the way that people's minds are working, especially on the business side as well. Because you know, 10am on a Saturday, that's kind of annoying to see business emails because you're like, I just about to get my weekend going. Whereas you know, 6 or 7pm on a Sunday, you're like, okay, what do I got going on tomorrow? I want to get my work brain going just a little bit. So send times is something that you really have to be thinking about a little differently. But in general, if you think that weekends are not when you should be sending out your promotional offers, trying to get people to go to a webinar or a product discount or whatever, you're sleeping on crazy valuable inventory.

[Daniel Murray]

And I'll add one thing like we talked about. You talk about op rates and it's different from Weekdays and weekends. But open rate doesn't necessarily mean that people saw your email. It means they opened your email. So if someone is more high intense, lower open rate, you might be getting a higher intent open on the. On those things. And people will remember that offer more than someone is going. So when people think of like that high end metric of open rate and they don't think about like, there's people. Are people in this email doing things and reading things. Like a red email is more important than an open and unread email. So it's like you got to compare. And that's why you should go beyond that. Open rate.

[Jay Schwedelson]

Open rate KPI 100%. So let's go back to the beginning part. So when you first wake up, I'll tell you the cheesiest thing I do every day. When I first wake up. And you're going to make fun of me, and you should. So when I first wake up, I think I heard this on Huberman or I don't know which podcast, whatever. But I go and I look for sunlight out my window and I stare into the sun for like, I try to do it for two minutes straight to get whatever the crap is that's in your brain that you're supposed to activate. And I don't do any. I don't look at my phone. I just go like this out my eyes like an idiot. Do you do anything like that?

[Daniel Murray]

Well, I brush my teeth.

[Jay Schwedelson]

But I.

[Daniel Murray]

I do try at least in the first 30 minutes. I have like a coffee shop. It's like a 0.4 mile walk. So I'll go outside to just get outside, get fresh air, go to the coffee shop. And I do. People say, like, save money for the coffee. It's not about, like, I do it for the routine more than the, like the coffee itself. So I'll go get my fresh air in the morning, come back or the coffee. So that's ever. I do that every single morning.

[Jay Schwedelson]

That's good because you're basically getting sunlight also. So you're doing like, both.

[Daniel Murray]

Yeah, but I don't get it in the first, like ten minutes I open.

[Jay Schwedelson]

I do. I do. That's what I do. It's so weird. All right, well, this podcast is also weird. Listen, hook Daniel up with a review for the marketing millennials. Tell him how awesome he is. DM him on LinkedIn. He loves getting DM and DMS. And if you share this on Instagram. Okay, if you share anything about this on Instagram and you tag me, which is@J Shwetelson or you tag at the Marketing Millennials. We're going to put this in our story so you'll get some circulation, we'll get some love. It'll be amazing. We'll see you at the next one. Later. Daniel. Come on, man. I got to 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.

[Daniel Murray]

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.

[Jay Schwedelson]

Later.