Summer changes how people move through their days. Travel plans shift routines. Students start to clear out and campus slows down until incoming freshmen trickle in for orientation. Fitness members move their workouts outside, or fall out of their normal workout routines while traveling. Guests start thinking about where they want to stay, eat, visit, and spend their long weekends.
Even though summer disrupts people’s normal rhythms, it doesn’t have to disrupt your email marketing program. The campaigns that worked in March may need a different subject line, send time, segment, or call to action by July because your audience’s context has changed. And your summer email marketing should adjust with them.
A smart summer email strategy starts with a simple question: What does your audience need from you this season?
Summer email segments to revisit before your next send
Summer is a good time to revisit your segments. A single seasonal message to your full list may miss the differences in what people need, plan, and respond to this time of year. We’ve pulled together a handful of summer segmentation examples across industries to get you thinking about how to approach your email segmentation strategy in the summertime.
Travel and hospitality segments
Consider last summer’s guests who haven’t booked again. A hotel could send a warm reminder based on the type of stay someone booked last year, like a family weekend, spa trip, or midweek getaway. A beach resort could also segment by location and reach people in especially hot, landlocked markets with a timely reason to plan a trip to the coast.
Higher education segments
Summer is a good time to think beyond general orientation reminders. Incoming students may need different messages depending on whether they’ve completed housing forms, registered for orientation, submitted health records, or clicked resources about campus life.
Nonprofit segments
Summer can change how supporters are able to show up. Volunteers may be traveling, managing childcare, or working around less predictable schedules, so you might want to create a segment of past volunteers and let them know about low-commitment opportunities or flexible shifts.
Sports and fitness segments
Remember that summer can disrupt the routines that usually keep members coming in. Consider segmenting members who haven’t booked recently and sending them a friendly re-entry email that points them to a favorite instructor’s upcoming class, a shorter workout option, or a friend referral discount or guest pass to make coming back more fun.
How to time your summer email campaigns
Summer email campaign timing is about more than just choosing the right day or hour to send. It’s also about giving people enough time to plan, sending reminders when travel and shifting schedules make one message easy to miss, and adjusting your cadence when routines change.
Start by reviewing your email data from last summer. Look at how different audiences responded by send day, send time, campaign type, and call to action. Then look beyond opens and clicks. Which sends led to bookings, registrations, completed forms, volunteer signups, donations, class bookings, or return visits?
From there, think about the timing behind each message:
- For actions that require planning: Send early enough for people to compare dates, check schedules, and make arrangements. This could include travel offers, summer events, volunteer shifts, orientation steps, or family programming.
- For deadline-driven messages: Plan a reminder cadence instead of relying on one send. Incoming students may need a first reminder when a form opens, another as the deadline gets closer, and a final reminder with the exact next step.
- For routine-based messages: Look for moments when summer may interrupt the pattern. A fitness studio could send a re-entry email after a member has missed a few weeks, while a nonprofit could follow up with volunteers who haven’t signed up for a summer shift yet.
- For seasonal peaks: Adjust your cadence around the moments when interest is naturally highest. For instance, a resort may send more often ahead of holiday weekends or open booking windows.
Set up your summer email automation before the season gets busy
Summer is one of the harder seasons to stay on top of manually because when team members take time off, approval windows for email campaigns slow down. But you don’t have to put your email marketing program on pause, either. Automated email sequences keep your program running on schedule even when no one is available to hit send. By building those sequences before the team thins out and summer calendars fill up, you can ensure the right message still goes out at the right time.Â
Triggered email campaigns should be part of your email marketing program regardless of the season, because they respond to the actions your individual contacts take—or don’t take—at the moment their interest is highest. With automated triggered emails, someone who opened your nonprofit event invitation but didn’t register, or who started a hotel booking and didn’t finish, receives a follow-up because of that specific action. Since that follow-up email is both timely and relevant to the recipient, it’s less likely to feel like just another message in their inbox.
Summer email automation idea #1
Follow-up sequence for incomplete actions
We’ve all been there: in the middle of dutifully filling out a form, browsing travel dates ahead of the next family vacation, or registering for a charity event, when we suddenly get sidetracked and forget to circle back. A short email follow-up sequence of 2-4 messages spaced out across a week or two gives your audience a few gentle nudges in the right direction.The goal of a follow-up sequence is to make it as easy as possible for them to take the next step. That means cutting out excess information and having just one call to action so your contacts have a well-defined path forward.
When you build out a follow-up sequence, make sure your exit conditions are set correctly. If someone books, registers, or completes the relevant action, they should exit the sequence automatically so they aren’t receiving follow-ups for something they’ve already done.
Summer email automation idea #2
New contact welcome sequence
You might already be sending out an automated welcome email when someone signs up for your email list. But people probably join your list in more ways than clicking a subscribe button on your website. A student might agree to email communications while registering for a campus tour. A gym member might opt in at the front desk when they sign up for a membership. A first-time guest might check a box during the booking process. Each of those contacts is new to your list and deserves the same warm introduction.
And while a single welcome email is a great start, a sequence of around 3-5 emails gives you the room to do more. With an automated welcome sequence for new contacts, you can introduce your organization at a pace that doesn’t overwhelm, anticipate the questions a new contact is likely to have before they have to go looking for answers, and gradually point them toward whatever next action makes sense for where they are in their relationship with you. A nonprofit welcome sequence, for instance, might introduce your mission, share a recent impact story, and eventually invite the new subscriber to an upcoming volunteer shift or event.Â
Re-engagement emails to bring quiet audiences backÂ
Summer is a natural moment to check in with people who have paused their usual patterns. And sometimes a single, well-timed message is all it takes to bring someone back. Here’s how to approach summer email re-engagement:
Start with the signal
Look at the behavior that tells you someone has gone quiet. Did they book last summer but skip this one? Attend an event last year but miss this year’s invitation? Open a few emails without clicking? Visit your site without completing the next step? Drift from your nonprofit after donating? Each signal tells you something different about where that person is and what they’re likely to need from you.
Match the ask to their behavior
Someone who has been unengaged for months may need a low-commitment call to action—inviting them to view a class schedule, browse open weekends, or read a seasonal update. Someone who engaged more recently may be ready for a higher-commitment ask: a direct invitation to book, register, or sign up.
Keep the tone easy and inviting
When an audience has gone quiet, sharing something new can give them a reason to re-engage—an upcoming event, a fresh volunteer opportunity, a new class on the schedule. Unlike a follow-up sequence, where the goal is to get someone to complete an action they already started, the goal here is simply to make it easy for them to reconnect with your organization. And if someone hasn’t unsubscribed, there’s a good chance they still want to hear from you—they’re just busy, the way many of us are in the summer. Keep the tone low-pressure and easy. This re-engagement email doesn’t need to do much more than remind them you’re there and give them one clear way back to get involved again.
Campaign Checklist
Your summer email campaign checklist
Use this checklist as a starting point before your next seasonal email marketing campaign goes out.
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Identify your key summer segments. Start with audiences whose needs change during the season, like incoming students, quiet fitness members, past guests, volunteers, donors, or residents who rely on seasonal services. |
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Review last summer’s timing data. Look for patterns by day, time, audience, and campaign type. |
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Set up a follow-up sequence for incomplete actions. Identify the moments where contacts are most likely to drop off—leaving a form unfinished, abandoning a booking midway through—and build a short sequence that brings them back to that next step. Remember to set exit conditions so contacts leave the sequence automatically once they’ve completed the action. |
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Audit your welcome sequence. Make sure every entry point to your list—not just your subscribe button—is connected to an automated welcome sequence that introduces new contacts to your organization. |
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Pull a list of people who engaged last summer but haven’t returned. This could include guests, attendees, donors, members, registrants, or subscribers who clicked on last year’s seasonal content. |
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Set up at least one re-engagement campaign. Focus on a quiet segment and give them one clear next step. |
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Review your email cadence. Make sure your audience is hearing from you often enough to stay informed without receiving more messages than they need. |
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Preview emails on mobile. Checking email on mobile is common, but summer readers are even more likely to be checking from the airport, the pool, the sidelines, or between errands. |
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Use reporting to improve the next send. After the campaign goes out, look at clicks, conversions, registrations, bookings, donations, or other actions tied to your goal. |
Send summer emails that feel timely, useful, and easy to act on
Summer looks different depending on your industry. A university is managing a wave of incoming students. A nonprofit is working around volunteers with unpredictable schedules. A resort is trying to fill holiday weekends. A fitness studio is coaxing lapsed members back through the door. The context changes, but the approach stays the same: know who you’re trying to reach, understand what summer means for them specifically, and shape your timing, segments, and sends around that.
With Emma, your team can build the segments, sequences, and automations that keep your summer email program running.
New to Emma? See how Emma helps teams create, optimize, and send more relevant email campaigns all season long →
