Off-Season
The Off Season Marketing Calendar: What to Do December Through August
Most farm marketing goes silent the week after the season ends. The farms that grow fastest never stop. Exactly what to do month by month during the off season.
Most farm marketing follows a predictable arc. Nothing happens until late August. Then a panicked sprint of ads, emails, and social posts until opening weekend. Then frenetic in season activity. Then total silence the week after the season ends.
The farms Jenna and I see grow consistently year over year do not follow this pattern. They run a lighter but continuous program through the off season. The work compounds, and by the time peak season arrives they are starting from a much stronger position than the farm down the road.
The off season is when next season is won. Run a light monthly program from December through August: capture reviews in December, plan in January, reactivate your list in February, send monthly newsletters from March, rebuild your ticket pages in May, soft launch early bird tickets in June, and start warm audience ads in July.
Key takeaways
- The off season program takes 4 to 8 hours a month, not a full time job
- December is for reviews and a recap email, not promotions
- One monthly behind the scenes newsletter from March on keeps your list warm
- May is platform month: rebuild ticket pages before anything goes on sale
- June early bird sales to your own list come before any paid ads
Why going silent costs you real money
When you stop emailing in December and start again in September, you are not picking up where you left off. Email providers notice nine months of silence and start routing you to spam. Social algorithms bury accounts that went dark. Families forget you exist and book the other farm their neighbor mentioned.
Cold paid ads then have to do all the work your warm audience would have done for free. That is the most expensive way to fill a season. Every month of light contact in the off season is a month you do not have to buy back with ad spend in the fall.
Here is the whole calendar in one view, then the detail for each stretch.
The calendar at a glance
| Month | Focus | Customer-facing effort |
|---|---|---|
| December | Season recap and reviews | Recap email plus review request texts |
| January | Planning and goal setting | One sneak peek email at most |
| February | List reactivation | Two email sequence |
| March | Newsletter cadence begins | One newsletter |
| April | Stay visible | One newsletter, Instagram twice a week |
| May | Platform and ticketing work | One email if relevant, otherwise quiet |
| June | Early bird soft launch | Email, SMS, one Instagram post |
| July | Warm audience ads | Weekly email, 3 to 4 posts a week |
| August | Full pre season ramp | Twice weekly email, daily social, SMS |
Notice the pattern. Heavy months for you, December, January, and May, are light months for your customers. The customer-facing effort builds slowly and peaks exactly when buying intent does.
December: capture the season while it is still warm
Two priorities in the weeks right after you close.
Send the season recap email. Best photos, a genuine thank you, and a save the date tease for next year. Families are still emotionally attached, so this email gets read. Across the farm lists we run, email open rates average 68%, and the recap email is reliably one of the strongest of the year.
Capture every review you can. December visitors, especially Christmas tree farm families, remember the visit clearly. A post visit text asking for a Google review through the first three weeks of December produces review volume that carries your rating through the rest of the year. We walk through the full system in our guide to reputation management for farms.
Do not push promotions. Do not announce next year’s dates yet. Let the season breathe.
January: plan the year before you market it
January is for you, not your customers. Sit down with the season’s actual numbers, not your memory of them. What sold out, what underperformed, which weekends carried the revenue, which promotions you would never run again.
Then set four targets: ticket revenue, customer count, average order value, and repeat customer percentage. Those four numbers drive every marketing decision for the next eleven months. Customer contact this month is one “happy new year, here is a sneak peek” email at most.
Heavy months for you are light months for your customers, and the effort peaks exactly when buying intent does.
February: wake the list back up
The first real campaign of the new year is a simple two part sequence.
Email 1, mid month. A reactivation note to your full guest list. Subject line: “We’ve been busy planning.” Body: what is coming this year, what is changing, and a single ask. Hit reply with one thing you would love to see this season.
Email 2, end of month. Reply to every actual response individually. Real replies from you, not a template. At our scale Jenna still answers these personally for partner farms, because the families who reply in February are the ones who buy first in June and bring friends in October.
This sequence confirms which families are still engaged and quietly cleans your list before the season, which protects your deliverability for the emails that make money later.
March and April: the newsletter months
Start a monthly newsletter in March and do not stop until the season opens. Subject line: plain. “Spring update from the farm.” Content: behind the scenes photos of off season work. Field prep, new construction, equipment repairs, the new animal barn taking shape.
This feels like the boring stuff to you. To families it is proof of a real farm doing real work, and they love it. Off season updates routinely beat in season promotional emails on opens, and the gap between farm email and everything else in the inbox is enormous.
Farm emails get opened. Use that.
Source: campaigns we run for partner farms.
In April, add a soft pre season tease. One email previewing the year ahead: open dates if you have them, new events, new attractions, anything specific you can share. Specifics build anticipation. Vague “big things coming” emails do not.
April is also when Instagram comes back to twice a week, even if there is nothing new to photograph. Throwbacks from last season and prep shots from this one are plenty. If writing these emails sounds like a chore, our guide to email marketing for agritourism has subject lines and templates you can lift directly.
May: rebuild your ticketing before anything goes on sale
May is when we do most of the platform work with partner farms. TicketSpice page updates, calendar coloring for the new season, bundle restructuring, new promo code logic, email template refreshes, and landing pages for new events.
This work has to happen before tickets go on sale, and May is the sweet spot. No opening weekend pressure yet, but close enough to the season that decisions are fresh. Branded ticket pages convert 10 to 30% better than generic ones in our experience, so this is not housekeeping. It is revenue work.
Customer contact stays light. One mid month email if there is genuinely something to say. Otherwise quiet, because June is about to get loud.
What we'd do Block one full day in May, walk through your entire purchase flow on a phone like a first time customer, and fix every screen that does not look and sound like your farm before a single ticket goes on sale.
June: the soft launch to your own people
First real revenue of the new season, and it comes entirely from your existing audience. No paid ads yet. The goal is to convert your most loyal families into the first buyers and prove the new season’s setup works end to end.
Think of it as a friends and family opening for your ticket store. The families who reply to your February email and open your March newsletter have been waiting for this. Reward them with first access and a real reason to buy now.
- Open early bird tickets to your email list first Give subscribers 48 to 72 hours of genuinely exclusive access with a modest discount or a bundle bonus, and say clearly that the list got it first.
- Text your opted in SMS subscribers One short message the morning access opens. The texts we send see open rates up to 98%, so this single message often outperforms the email.
- Post once on Instagram One post announcing tickets are live, after the list has had its head start. The point is proof of demand, not reach.
- Watch the orders like a hawk Early bird week is your dress rehearsal. Confirmation emails, ticket delivery, promo codes, mobile checkout. Find the problems now, not on opening weekend.
July and August: ramp into the pre season window
July is the warm up. Start paid ads to warm audiences only: custom audiences built from last year’s guest list, retargeting on website visitors, and lookalikes from your highest value past customers. Instagram moves to 3 to 4 posts a week, and email moves to weekly.
July is also when you build the influencer list and reach out to local micro creators about late August and September visits, while their calendars are still open.
August is the full ramp. Daily Instagram activity, twice weekly emails, SMS announcements, cold audience expansion, influencer content going live. The five week pre season window starts here, and our pre season ticket strategy takes over from this calendar.
Watch out Do not start cold paid ads in June or July to "get ahead." Cold traffic in midsummer is expensive and forgets you by October. Spend those dollars in the five week window when families are actually deciding.
What changes when you run the calendar all year
Three things, every year, on the farms we run this way.
Opening weekend stops being a panic moment. It becomes the result of nine months of quiet work. The platform is ready, the list is engaged, and the brand never left people’s feeds.
Customer acquisition costs drop. A warm audience that heard from you in March and May does not need to be re-bought with cold ads in September. The 40 to 50% year one ticket growth we see across farms we run is built on this foundation, not on a bigger ad budget.
Repeat rates climb. Families who got your spring tulip photos in April are dramatically more likely to come back for pumpkin season in October than families who only hear from you when you want their money.
The effort is smaller than you think
This whole program runs on 4 to 8 hours a month of focused work. One or two emails, a light social cadence, and one planning or platform task. That is it.
The mistake is believing the off season is “off.” It is quieter, but the work continues, and stopping it hands your competitors a head start they did not earn. If you would rather not carry it yourself, this calendar is exactly what we run year round for partner farms, emails, social, the May platform work, and the June soft launch included. Start with a free farm growth review and we will show you where your off season is leaking next season’s revenue.
Questions farm owners ask us about this
What should a farm do for marketing in the off season?
Run a light monthly program instead of going silent. Capture reviews in December, plan in January, reactivate your email list in February, send a monthly behind the scenes newsletter from March on, rebuild your ticketing pages in May, and soft launch early bird tickets in June. The whole program takes about 4 to 8 hours a month.
When should a farm start selling tickets for the fall season?
June is the right month for most farms to open early bird tickets to their email list. That gives your most loyal families first access, tests your ticketing setup months before opening weekend, and produces real revenue before you spend a dollar on ads. Paid ads to warm audiences start in July, and the full pre season push begins in August.
How much time does off season farm marketing actually take?
About 4 to 8 hours per month of focused work. That covers one or two emails, a light social cadence, and one planning or platform task per month. It is far less effort than the panicked sprint farms run in September after six months of silence.
Should a farm keep posting on social media when it is closed?
Yes, because algorithms reward consistency and punish long gaps. Two posts a week from April on is enough, using throwback photos from last season and behind the scenes shots of prep work. Ramping a dead account back up in August takes weeks you will not have.