The Marketing Millennials

Everyone is fighting over Black Friday and Cyber Monday, while the holidays quietly lifting email open rates by over 20% are sitting wide open. Jay breaks down the lesser-known holidays worth building campaigns around, like Small Business Saturday, Giving Tuesday, Green Monday, and Super Saturday, and why naming them in your subject line within five days of the date drives the lift. Daniel explains why every business has a holiday it can own, and why those dates come with far less competition and ad spend than the big ones. They also cover why every Marketer needs to use agentic AI tools right now. Daniel says to check how your emails get surfaced when someone asks a chatbot for their priority emails, and Jay predicts the subject line will lose importance within a year as AI summaries decide what gets opened. Plus, Jay shares how Instagram blocked his account over ManyChat, and how switching to Instagram’s new native auto-DM tool fixed it. Daniel’s takeaway: any third-party tool connected to a social platform can get you blocked if you aren’t paying attention. If you’re a Marketer who wants to stay ahead of where the inbox and social platforms are going, 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:https://themarketingmillennials.com/ Daniel is a Workweek friend, working to produce amazing podcasts. To find out more, visit:https://workweek.com/

This conversation with Richard Shotton originally aired in December of 2025. Why does social proof actually matter? What’s the psychology behind FOMO?  Behavioral science legend Richard Shotton is back, and he’s dropping some of the most practical psychology-backed tactics marketers can use today. Richard and Daniel break down the biases that shape real-world buying behavior, including why social proof works far better when it’s specific and localized, AND how to make customers draw their own conclusions.  You’ll also learn:  - The subtle language shift between “out of stock” and “sold out” that changes irritation levels by 15% - Why humor dramatically boosts every brand metric thanks to the Halo Effect - Apple’s use of concrete language and how to make your messaging 4x more memorable If you want your Marketing to work better with zero extra budget, this conversation is for you.  6sense’s 2026 B2B Buyer Experience Report shows how buying groups make up their minds long before they ever talk to a seller, and why LLMs have far less influence on their decisions than you’d think. Visit https://6sense.com/buyer-experience-report-2026 to get the latest research. Follow Richard: LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-shotton⁠ Follow Daniel: LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-murray-marketing/⁠ Sign up for The Marketing Millennials newsletter: ⁠https://themarketingmillennials.com/⁠ Daniel is a Workweek friend, working to produce amazing podcasts. To find out more, visit: ⁠https://workweek.com/

What if the most underrated Marketing channel isn't a new platform, but the independent creators your audience already trusts? Dan Robbins, Head of Brand Sponsorships at Substack, has spent his career building ad businesses from scratch. He started in measurement at Nielsen, then launched ads at Roku in the early days of streaming, and later did the same at PayPal and Venmo. He even taught a course on the economics of advertising at Cornell. Now he's bringing brands like Balenciaga, Uber, T-Mobile, and Rare Beauty onto Substack. And, Dan breaks down Substack's three new sponsorship formats. Unlocks let a brand open up a paywalled post. Upgrades give readers a free month of a paid subscription, like Rare Beauty did for World Mental Health Day. The Masthead gives brands a curated destination on the Substack homepage and app without having to launch their own publication. Plus, Dan explains why launching your own brand newsletter is quietly one of the biggest mistakes brands make on the platform. His advice is to join the party where it already is instead of throwing your own. He also explains why creators should keep full creative control, and how Substack is using brand lift studies with Kantar to prove these sponsorships actually move awareness, consideration, and intent. If you're a Marketer who wants to reach audiences where trust is moving from institutions to individuals, this is the episode for you. Breakthrough 2026 is the Agentic GTM Conference, happening November 2-5 at Fontainebleau Las Vegas. Join 1,300 revenue leaders for three days of real research, hands-on skill-building, and a certification to prove you can apply it. Learn more at https://6sense.com/breakthrough/ Follow Dan: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drobbins2/ 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

Kelli Hurley, VP, Head of Content and Podcast Partnership Sales at SiriusXM, sits between brands and podcast creators on every deal. She calls the job a combo of diplomacy and psychological warfare. Before SiriusXM, Kelli helped build the Westwood One Podcast Network, so she’s watched creator Marketing grow from simple host reads into video, social, and live events. She tells us where a brand should put its 1st podcast dollars when it has SOME budget (but not TV budget), why some creator briefs can kill a deal before it starts, and the 1 measurement problem the whole industry STILL hasn’t cracked. Plus, the Marketing hill she’d die on, and why it changes how you should think about brand safety. If you’re a Marketer who wants to make creator partnerships actually pay off, this episode is for YOU. If you got something out of this one, hit follow and leave a rating. It helps more Marketers find the show. Own every listening moment with SiriusXM Media. As the access point to the most valuable audiences, we make it easy for advertisers to reach people across premium audio, creators, video, and live experiences—all through one connected ecosystem that’s built for scale, quality, and measurable results. Learn more about the largest addressable audio ecosystem at siriusxmmedia.com/daniel Follow Kelli: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kellihurley Follow Daniel: YouTube: youtube.com/@themarketingmillennials/featured Twitter: twitter.com/Dmurr68 LinkedIn: 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

Check out the new Bathroom Break podcast with Jay Schwedelson and Daniel Murray on Apple and Spotify. ㅤ 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. ㅤ LinkedIn posts that look almost identical are getting 8,000 impressions one day and 80,000 the next. Instagram has dropped its years of resistance to long-form video. And more inboxes now let AI decide what people actually read. Jay Schwedelson and Daniel Murray work out which of these shifts should change how you market, and they settle once and for all whether bottle service makes you a tool. ㅤ Best Moments: (02:58) Jay stopped liking his own posts from company pages, and reach went up (06:09) Why Instagram may be a much easier growth play than YouTube (06:49) How brands can tease a launch and keep viewers on Instagram for the full reveal (07:49) The first 200 characters of live text are email’s new North Star (08:50) Image-heavy emails are invisible to AI summaries (09:32) Why AI agents could make email matter more than ever