SPECIAL SERIES ==> Growing Email Tactic in 2026! and Daniel's Thanksgiving Plan <== | BATHROOM Break #83 COLLAB: The Marketing Millennials + Do This, Not That
November 24, 2025
AI Summary
5 min readWhen a Reply Is Worth More Than a Click
In a casual collaboration episode, Jay Schwedelson and Daniel Murray predict that one of the most underused email tactics will explode in 2026: getting people to reply to promotional emails. The reason is not just engagement metrics—it is a deliverability hack, a data source, and a signal that your content is actually connecting with humans rather than being ignored or filtered.
The conversation opens with a Thanksgiving tangent that reveals something about the hosts' approach to marketing. Daniel Murray, who grew up in South Africa, admits his family never had a strong Thanksgiving tradition, and he is not a fan of dry turkey. Jay presses him on the mac and cheese question (yes) and the salad question (no—"this is the one day of the year we could like get stretchy pants, get out of control"). The banter is not filler; it models the kind of human, low-stakes interaction that both hosts argue is the real engine behind the reply-rate tactic they are about to explain.
Why Reply Rate Is the Metric to Watch in 2026
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:07) **Welcome to the Bathroom Break Series** - Jay and Daniel introduce the special collab series for quick marketing tips
- 2 (02:35) **The Big Prediction: Reply Rate Will Explode in 2026** - AI enables faster, scalable responses to promotional email replies, making this a game-changer
- 3 (03:38) **Tactic 1: Personalized Questions to Spark Replies** - Daniel shares how to humanize emails with low-friction questions
- 4 (04:08) **Tactic 2: Easter Eggs in the Middle of Emails** - Hide a call-to-reply inside the email body to prove deep readership
- 5 (05:12) **Tactic 3: Reply-to-Get for Offers (Underrated Power Move)** - Jay explains how to replace forms with a simple reply prompt for guides or discounts
- 6 (06:28) **Cross-Platform Application: Instagram Stories** - Daniel extends the reply tactic to social media for better algorithmic reach
- 7 (07:28) **Real-World Example: The "Magic Trick" Moment** - Jay shares a story about a conference attendee who thought he personally DMed him while on stage
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Holiday email engagement is somehow both nerdy and genuinely fun here, as Jay Schwedelson and Daniel Murray use Thanksgiving food opinions, Hallmark movies, and Bathroom-Break banter to get into why replies matter way more than most marketers think. They dig into how to engineer responses in your emails and stories, why reply rate is a killer signal for both humans and algorithms, and how AI plus simple prompts like “Reply GUIDE” can quietly blow up your results. It’s basically a playbook for turning “one-way” campaigns into conversations people actually want to have.
Follow Daniel on LinkedIn and check out The Marketing Millennials podcast for sharp, no-fluff marketing insights. Subscribe to Ari Murray’s newsletter at gotomillions.co for sharp, actionable marketing insights.
Best Moments:
(00:50) Daniel shares his not-so-traditional Thanksgiving background and why dry turkey is an instant no.
(02:06) Jay’s hard rule for Thanksgiving dinner: mac and cheese is required, salad is banned.
(02:49) Jay explains why the reply rate on promotional emails is about to explode thanks to AI and better follow-up.
(03:28) Daniel’s tricks for prompting real human replies, from light personal questions to hidden Easter eggs in the middle of an email.
(05:20) Jay’s “just reply GUIDE” tactic for content and discounts that crushes landing page forms and boosts inbox placement.
(07:14) Daniel shows how the same reply mindset on Instagram Stories boosts distribution while keeping interactions feeling human.
(09:28) They break down how replies become a goldmine of first-party data and even shape future content topics like reality TV.
(09:49) A rapid-fire holiday movie riff that goes from Die Hard and Home Alone to The Grinch, romcoms, and why Hallmark is secretly elite.
(11:15) Jay and Daniel pitch their very on-brand Thanksgiving “gain 5 pounds, then lose it” logic as the ultimate holiday hack.
Check out Jay’s YOUTUBE Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@schwedelson
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