In this conversation, Jimmy Kim challenges the long‑standing belief that brands should avoid sending marketing emails on Thanksgiving. He explains that consumer habits have shifted: younger shoppers now check their phones throughout the holiday, making the inbox a viable touchpoint. Supporting data shows Thanksgiving open rates are now comparable to weekday rates, and conversion can even be higher because shoppers are in a spending mindset while competition in the inbox is low. Kim advises brands to send thoughtfully crafted, soft‑pitch Thanksgiving emails—such as early‑access offers or gratitude‑focused messages—rather than aggressive sales blasts. These unexpected, respectful emails achieve higher engagement than hard‑sell messages sent on more crowded days like Black Friday.
Chapters
This one's interesting because I was very against this for a long time, but sending emails on Thanksgiving Day used to be taboo basically. It's not anymore in my opinion. And the brands that are opting out to basically participate on Thanksgiving are leaving money on the table. The conventional wisdom for years was that Thanksgiving is family time. Customers don't want to be marketing emails. Give them a break. Save it for Friday. And 5, 7 years ago, even 10 years ago when I was a brand, that was very true. But the behavior has absolutely change customers are checking their phones constantly during Thanksgiving, between dinner, watching the football game, before bed. The respect the holiday framing is kind of outdated with the younger generation.
And the data really does back this one up. So Thanksgiving Day open rates are roughly equivalent to other weekday rates now. I mean, conversion rates are sometimes higher because the customer is in spending mode. And then also the inbox is less competitive. Most brands still respect kind of this old rule of thumb. The email will stand out more. So, or actually stand out even a lot more because it's way less competitive.
It gets, Interesting. The brands sending well-crafted Thanksgiving emails, not the aggressive sales emails, but like the thoughtful early access or we're grateful for your content, though cheesy, are seeing huge engagement right now because the format is unexpected. The customer's defenses are down and they're scrolling like casually and they're not in like a shopping mode the same way. So a good soft pitch on Thanksgiving lands better than a hard pitch on Black Friday morning when the inbox has like 200, 300, 500 sales emails.
