Key Finding 1: Holidays Crush Engagement
The most significant finding is the dramatic drop in engagement on the holiday itself. Compared to the week before, Independence Day (a Friday) saw its reply rate fall by 28.8%, and its positive reply rate collapsed by 80%.
This proves what many suspected but few had data to confirm: sending cold emails on major US holidays tanks your performance.
Key Finding 2: The Post-Holiday Hangover
Does engagement bounce back the day after a holiday? Our data reveals two very different patterns.
1. Friday Holidays Create an "Engagement Dead Zone"
After July 4th (Friday), reply rates remained suppressed for the entire following week. The long weekend extends the disconnection from work, and engagement does not immediately recover on Monday.
People return to overflowing inboxes. They're in triage mode—deleting, archiving, and clearing clutter. Your cold email, sent on Monday or Tuesday, gets swept away in the cleanup.
2. Monday Holidays Have a Quick Rebound
After Labor Day (Monday), engagement bounced back to normal levels on Tuesday. The three-day weekend acts as a clean break, and people return to their inboxes ready to engage.
This is the core of the Holiday Hangover effect: the day of the week a holiday falls on determines the length of the post-holiday slump.
Key Finding 3: The Monday Holiday Volume Trap
Many teams front-load their week, leading to a 94% increase in email volume on Labor Day compared to July 4th. However, this extra activity does not yield better results.
Labor Day's reply rate was a mere 3.19%, proving that more volume cannot overcome the holiday effect. It's a classic case of quantity over quality.
Volume sent on Labor Day (Monday): 4,820 emails
Result: 94% more emails, nearly identical terrible engagement
Actionable Recommendations for Your Sales Team
Based on this data, here is a new playbook for holiday email strategy:
| Strategy | Action | Data-Driven Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Pause Holiday Sending | Stop all outreach on the day of a major US holiday. | Reply rates drop by ~30%, and positive replies vanish (down 80%). |
| Identify the Hangover | Check if the holiday is on a Monday or a Friday. | This determines the recovery speed. |
| For Monday Holidays | Resume sending on Tuesday morning. | Engagement rebounds quickly as the work week begins. This is a prime opportunity. |
| For Friday Holidays | Wait until Tuesday or Wednesday of the following week. | The post-holiday slump extends through Monday. Give prospects time to clear their inbox. |
| Measure What Matters | Shift focus from send volume to reply and positive reply rates. | High volume on holidays is a vanity metric that doesn't translate to results. |
Methodology
The findings in this report are based on an analysis of 663,093 anonymized email sending events and 37,344 replies from the internal database, recorded between April and November 2025.
Holiday performance was calculated by comparing reply rates on a specific holiday to the average rates from the week preceding it. The post-holiday hangover effect was analyzed by comparing the reply rates in the week following a holiday to the week before it.
The holidays analyzed in depth were Independence Day 2025 (Friday) and Labor Day 2025 (Monday).