Email marketing for bars and pubs

Email marketing for bars and pubs, explained

Email marketing for a bar or pub is about filling quiet nights. Unlike most retail, your problem is rarely awareness and almost always occupancy on a specific Tuesday. Email is the cheapest way to move people from "I like that place" to "we are going there tonight."

This guide covers what actually works for independent bars, pubs, and cocktail venues: building a list without annoying people mid-drink, the weekly rhythm that fills midweek, event-led emails, and the timing details that decide whether a message works.

Key takeaways

• Your goal is occupancy on specific nights, not brand awareness. Write every email with a night in mind.
• Send close to the moment. A Thursday email about Thursday beats a Monday newsletter about the week.
• Events carry the list: quiz nights, live music, tastings, sport fixtures, seasonal openings.
• Local, small and engaged beats large and indifferent. A 600-person list in your catchment is worth more than 6,000 strangers.
• Collect the address in the venue, where people already like you, not through paid ads.

Why does email work for a venue when everyone uses social?

Email works because social reach is unreliable and your audience is small and local. A post reaches whoever the algorithm decides that day. An email reaches everyone who asked to hear from you, at a time you chose, which is exactly what you need when you are trying to fill a room on Wednesday.

Three practical reasons it suits hospitality:

• You control the timing. The difference between an email at 11am on the day and one on Monday morning is enormous in this trade.
• It is cheap per head. With small local lists, the cost of a send is negligible against the value of twenty extra covers.
• It carries detail. Event line-ups, menus, ticket links and opening hours all sit awkwardly in a social post and naturally in an email.

Get the first message right, since a new subscriber decides quickly whether you were worth it. Our guide on how to create the welcome email covers the structure.

How do you build a list in a bar without being irritating?

Collect at the moments when people are already pleased to be there, and ask for one thing only. Nobody in a bar wants to fill in a form.

At the point of a good moment

Booking confirmations, event tickets, quiz team sign-ups, and tab receipts are all natural collection points. Someone booking a table has already told you they want to come back.

Give a reason that is not a discount

"Know about the next tasting before it sells out" or "get the quiz answers and next week's date" work better than a voucher, and attract people who will actually return rather than bargain hunters.

Keep the form to two fields

Email address, and one useful question such as which nights they usually come or which of your events interest them. Building it as an online form on a tablet or a QR code on the table means the answer arrives tagged and ready to segment.

Ask staff to mention it once

A single line from someone behind the bar converts better than any sign. Give the team one sentence to say and a reason customers will care about.

What should a bar actually send?

Build a short weekly rhythm around what is happening, not a monthly newsletter about your brand. The table below is a workable pattern for most venues.

The same-day reminder is the highest-value email in hospitality and the one most venues never send. People genuinely intend to come and then forget. Setting reminders up as automated emails tied to your event dates means they go out on a busy service day without anyone remembering.

A venue list grows every event and every booking, but you only email a slice of it each week. Mailpro charges for what you send rather than for how many contacts you store. See Mailpro pricing

When should a bar send emails?

Send when people decide, which in hospitality is late and close to the event. Most venues send far too early.

• Weekend plans: Thursday morning or lunchtime. Monday is wasted, because nobody has decided yet.
• Midweek events: the morning of, and possibly late afternoon. Decisions about a Tuesday quiz are made on Tuesday.
• Ticketed events: two to three weeks ahead to sell, then a reminder on the day for everyone who bought.
• Weather-dependent: send on the day. A terrace email in unexpected sunshine outperforms any planned campaign.

Because timing matters so much, segment by the nights people actually visit. Using email segmentation to separate your weekend crowd from your midweek regulars stops you filling a Saturday that was already full.

How do you fill a genuinely quiet night?

Give people a reason to come that is not just cheaper drinks. Price alone attracts a crowd that leaves as soon as the price returns to normal.

What works in practice:

• A recurring event. Quiz, open mic, board games, run club. Repetition builds a habit, and a habit fills a night permanently.
• Something time-limited and interesting. A one-off tasting, a guest bartender, a small producer takeover.
• Sport fixtures. Email the fixture list and let people plan around you.
• An offer with a reason attached. "We over-ordered on this" is more persuasive and less damaging than a permanent happy hour.

How do you know if it is working?

In hospitality the number that matters is not the open rate, it is whether the night was busier. Connect the two or you will optimise the wrong thing.

• Compare like-for-like weekdays. A Wednesday with an email against a Wednesday without tells you more than any click rate.
• Ask at the door or the table. One short question about how someone heard about the night costs nothing and gives your numbers context.
• Use bookings as the signal. If reservations rise in the two hours after a send, the email worked, whatever the statistics panel says.
• Watch unsubscribes. If they climb, you are sending too often or not relevantly enough for that audience.

Which templates work for bar and pub emails?

Use simple, mobile-first layouts that read in ten seconds. Mailpro includes ready-made bar and pub email templates and happy hour templates covering what-is-on emails, event announcements and offers, all editable with a drag-and-drop editor.

If you serve food, the restaurant templates cover menu and booking emails, and for ticketed nights the event templates handle invitations and reminders.

What are the common mistakes?

• Sending on Monday about the weekend. Too early to be acted on, forgotten by Friday.
• Permanent discounting. A happy hour that never ends stops being a reason to come.
• Long emails. Nobody reads three paragraphs about a pub. One night, one reason, one link.
• No same-day reminder. The single biggest missed opportunity in venue email.
• Buying local lists. Unconsented, ineffective, and damaging to your ability to reach the people who did opt in.
• Ignoring the quiet months. January and the post-summer lull are exactly when your list should be working hardest.

Frequently asked questions

How often should a bar email its list?

Once a week is right for most venues, with extra sends only for genuine events. Weekly works because the content is genuinely new each time. A venue emailing daily will burn its list within a month.

What is the best day to send?

Thursday morning for the weekend, and the morning of the event for midweek. Test against your own list rather than trusting general benchmarks, because catchment and clientele change the answer significantly.

Should I use SMS instead?

SMS works very well for same-day reminders and last-minute table availability, where immediacy matters. Email carries the detail, the images and the event listings. Most venues do best using both, with SMS reserved for genuinely urgent messages.

Do I need consent to email people who booked a table?

You can email them about their booking, since that is why they gave you the address. Adding them to your weekly marketing email is a separate purpose and needs a clear opt-in on the booking form, with plain wording about what you will send.

How do I get people to open a pub email?

Put the specific thing in the subject line. "Quiz tonight, 8pm, two teams short" outperforms "Your weekly newsletter" every time, because it says what is happening and when.

Is it worth emailing about a quiet Monday?

Only if you give a real reason to come. An email that says "we are quiet on Mondays" is not a reason. An email about a specific event, a guest, or something genuinely limited is.