Seasonal emails planned before the season

In the second week of December, a restaurant sends its first email about Christmas parties. By then, most office parties were booked in October, most families have their Christmas lunch plans and the email lands in inboxes full of other venues' last-minute offers. The tables it was meant to fill stay empty. The email was fine. It was two months late. Seasonal emails work only when they are planned before the season, not during it.

Every restaurant year has a handful of moments when guests plan to eat out: the festive season, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, the first warm weeks of summer and, in many places, Ramadan and Eid. Each has its own planning rhythm. Party organisers decide months ahead; couples decide a few weeks ahead; terrace guests decide the day the sun comes out. An email that arrives at the right point in that rhythm fills tables. One that arrives late fills inboxes.

This guide covers the six moments in a restaurant year that usually deserve a send, how far ahead each one needs to go out, how to build them into an email calendar and how to prepare the venue before the first email lands. Every venue and figure in it is an example.

Seasonal emails compete with every other venue's seasonal emails, and with guests' own plans. The venues that fill their festive weeks are usually the ones that wrote to their guests first, while plans were still open. Those that wait until the season has started find that guests have already booked elsewhere.

Planning also improves the emails themselves. A seasonal email written in a hurry, with a menu that is not quite finished and photos that do not exist yet, is weaker than one prepared weeks ahead with real dishes, clear prices and a booking page ready to take the tables.

For many restaurants, six moments deserve a planned send:

Your list may differ. A venue near a university may add graduation; one in a tourist town may add the start of the holiday season; one serving a particular community may add Diwali or Lunar New Year. The principle is the same: identify the moments when your guests plan, and write to them before they do.

Before choosing moments, map your own year. Which weeks are always full, which are always quiet and when do the busy periods begin? Your seasonal trade has its own shape, set by your location, your guests and your menu. Some trade follows seasonality in the weather, some in the calendar and some in local events.

Look at last year's bookings by week, and at how far ahead guests booked for the busiest dates. That tells you which moments matter most for your venue and how early each email needs to go. Our guide to seasonal trade: mapping your own restaurant year covers how to build the map.

The festive season is the biggest seasonal moment for most restaurants, and the one that needs the earliest planning. Festive bookings fall into three groups, each with its own timing: office and group parties, Christmas Day and the days around it, and New Year's Eve.

Treat them as separate emails, sent at different times to different guests. A single "festive email" in late November tries to do all three jobs and arrives too late for the first. Our guide to festive bookings: open the diary in September covers the operational side.

Office and group parties are often booked in September and October, sometimes earlier. Organisers are under pressure to find a venue, agree a date and confirm a menu, and they tend to book the first suitable place that answers quickly.

Send the party email in September, to guests who have booked groups before and to everyone who opted in. Include the party menu, the price per head, the dates available and how to enquire. Follow up in October with a reminder of the dates still open. By November, the best dates are usually gone.

New Year's Eve is usually decided four to six weeks ahead, often after Christmas plans are settled. Send the first email in mid to late November, with the menu, the price and the times of any sittings, and a reminder in early December.

Be clear about what the evening includes: a set menu, a late finish, a glass of something at midnight. Guests booking New Year's Eve want certainty, and an email that answers their questions before they ask is far more likely to fill the room.

January is quiet for almost every venue, and seasonal emails can help. A reopening email after the festive break, a January set menu, a dish that suits the cold weather or an invitation to regulars who have not been in since December all give guests a reason to come out when many would rather stay in.

Plan January's emails in December, so they are ready to go in the first week. Offer emails have a natural place here, because the quiet is real and guests understand it, but keep them to January. Our guide to offer emails without training guests to wait covers how to stop them becoming the price.

Valentine's Day is usually booked three to four weeks ahead, often less. Couples decide late, but the most popular venues fill early, so the first email should go out in mid January, with a reminder in early February.

Think about what the email promises. Some couples want a set menu and a special evening; others want an ordinary dinner without the fuss. Being clear about which you offer helps the right guests book. And make sure the room is set for twos, because Valentine's Day bookings are almost all tables for two.

Mother's Day and Father's Day bring family lunches: larger tables, several generations and often a fixed time. Families plan these three to four weeks ahead, and the dates differ from country to country, so check the date where your guests live.

Send the email about a month before, with the menu, the times available and how to book a larger table. Families organising a lunch for eight need to know quickly whether you can seat them, so make larger tables easy to book or ask them to call.

Summer trade often depends on the weather more than the calendar. The first warm weekend brings a rush of guests who want to sit outside, and they decide on the day, or the day before. An email about the terrace sent on a cold, wet week falls flat; the same email sent when the forecast turns sunny fills it.

So prepare the terrace email in advance, with photos and the booking link ready, and send it when the forecast is right. Follow it with a summer menu email when the season settles in, and perhaps a reminder on the next sunny spell.

For venues where Ramadan shapes the year, it is one of the most important seasonal moments. Ramadan moves about eleven days earlier each year in the Gregorian calendar, so it needs checking every year rather than repeating last year's dates. Guests plan iftar bookings, family gatherings and Eid lunches around it.

Send the first email before Ramadan begins, with iftar times, the menu and how to book for groups, and follow with a reminder in the first week. Plan the Eid email for the last days of Ramadan. Our guide to Ramadan restaurant hours and the service that fits covers the service side.

Beyond the six, many venues have moments of their own. Diwali, Lunar New Year, Easter, Thanksgiving, a local festival, a big sporting event, the start of the school holidays or a graduation week can all be worth a send, depending on your guests.

Add them to your map if they show up in your bookings. A moment that brings a noticeable rise in covers, or that your guests clearly care about, deserves a planned email. One that does not can be left out, however popular it is elsewhere.

As a rough guide to timing:

Adjust these to your own bookings. If your guests book further ahead, send earlier; if they book late, the reminder matters more than the first email.

The way to make seasonal emails happen on time is to put them in an email calendar: a plan for the year showing each moment, when the first email goes, when the reminder goes and who is responsible. Without it, seasonal emails depend on someone remembering, which usually means they go out late.

Review the calendar at the start of each quarter, so the next three months' emails are planned well ahead. Our guide to an email calendar for a venue with no marketer covers how to build one.

Draft seasonal emails weeks before they go out. The Christmas party email can be written in August, once the party menu is agreed. The Valentine's email can be written in December. Drafting early gives time to get the details right, take proper photos of the dishes and check every date and price.

It also takes the pressure off. A seasonal email written calmly in a quiet week is better than one written in a rush on a busy Friday, and it is more likely to go out on time.

Most seasonal moments deserve a reminder: a short email a week or two after the first, or a few days before the date. It reaches guests who meant to book and forgot, and guests who missed the first email altogether.

Keep the reminder short and specific: the dates still available, the last tables, a reminder of what is on offer. Do not simply repeat the first email. A reminder with new information, such as "only two Saturday dates left for parties", is more useful and more honest.

Close to busy dates, a last-tables email can fill the final gaps: "Four tables left for New Year's Eve" or "Two Saturday dates still free for December parties". Guests who had not got round to booking now have a reason to act.

Use it only when it is true, and only when the tables really are few. A "last tables" email sent with half the room still free is soon recognised as a sales tactic, and guests stop believing the next one.

The changing seasons themselves are a reason to write: a spring menu with the first asparagus, an autumn menu with game and mushrooms, a summer menu built around tomatoes and fish. A seasonal menu email gives regulars something new to try and reminds lapsed guests why they liked the venue.

Time it to the menu's launch, and make it specific: name two or three dishes and say what makes them seasonal. A short email about an ingredient in season, such as "Asparagus is here, for six weeks", can work as well as a full menu launch.

Busy seasons can justify sending a little more often than usual, because there is more to say and guests are actively planning. A festive season with a party email, a festive menu email, a New Year's Eve email and a reminder or two may mean more sends in a few weeks than in the rest of the autumn.

Keep each email useful, and return to your normal rhythm when the season ends. Our guide to email frequency: how often is too often covers how far you can stretch it.

Not every seasonal email suits every guest. Party emails suit guests who have booked groups before, and business guests. Family moments suit guests who usually come with children or in larger groups. Valentine's emails suit couples more than families.

Where you can, send each seasonal email to the guests it fits, or at least tailor the subject line and first lines. A family who receives a Valentine's email may ignore it; the same family may book Mother's Day lunch from an email written for them.

Before any seasonal email goes out, make sure the venue is ready for the bookings it brings. The menu and prices should be final. The dates should be open on the booking page, with the right times. The team should know about the offer, and someone should be ready to answer enquiries quickly.

An email that sends guests to a booking page with no dates available, or a phone nobody answers, wastes the interest it created. Check the whole path from email to booking before you send, especially for party enquiries, which often need a quick reply.

When each seasonal moment has passed, look back. Which emails brought bookings? Did the party email go early enough, or did organisers say they had already booked elsewhere? Which dates filled first? What would you do differently next year?

Write the answers in the email calendar, against next year's dates. A venue that learns from each season gets better at the next one, and its seasonal emails go out earlier, with better timing and fewer surprises, every year.

An invented brasserie has always sent its festive emails in late November and found its party bookings disappointing. It maps its year and sees that party enquiries peaked in October, mostly from guests who had booked groups before. The next year, it drafts the party email in August and sends it in mid September to past group bookers and everyone who opted in, with a reminder in October.

It sends the Christmas menu email in late October, New Year's Eve in mid November and a last-tables email in early December. Party bookings rise noticeably, most December Saturdays are full by the end of October, and the team can plan staffing for the season weeks earlier than before.

In servearound, campaigns can be drafted early and scheduled to send at a set time up to ninety days ahead, on the venue's own clock, so a Christmas party email written in August can go out at the right moment in September. Among the more than 150 templates are seasonal ones, from the Christmas menu, Christmas parties, Christmas Day and New Year's Eve to January reopening, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and Father's Day, Easter, summer and winter menus, Ramadan iftar, Eid, Diwali and Lunar New Year, each starting from a suggested audience.

Booking rules set the times offered for each shift and how far ahead each table can be booked, so the season's dates can open when the email goes out, and a set menu can be built on the menu for the festive weeks. Reservation analytics show covers by day and hour and how much notice guests give, which is the evidence for how early each seasonal email needs to go. servearound does not take deposits today, so festive deposits are taken by invoice or payment link and noted on the booking. See Campaigns.

In September, with a reminder in October. Many parties are booked by November.

Several: parties, Christmas Day and New Year's Eve each have their own timing.

Around mid January, with a reminder in early February.

Prepare it in spring and send it when the forecast turns warm.

Ramadan moves about eleven days earlier each year in the Gregorian calendar.

Put them in an email calendar for the year and draft them weeks ahead.

A few more can be fine, if each is useful. Return to your normal rhythm afterwards.

That the menu, prices and dates are final, the booking page has the dates open and someone can answer enquiries.

Seasonal emails work only when they go out before guests make their plans. Map your own year first, then plan a send for each moment that matters: the festive season, January, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and Father's Day, summer and, where it shapes the year, Ramadan and Eid. Each has its own lead time, from September for Christmas parties to the day the forecast turns for the terrace.

Put every moment in an email calendar, draft emails weeks ahead, send a useful reminder and keep "last tables" emails for when they are true. Segment where you can, prepare the menu, the booking page and the team before each send and look back after every season, so next year's emails go out earlier and fill more tables.