Event marketing for pubs: an SMS and email campaign checklist

Pub event marketing works best when each message reaches guests who already visit on that night. Use guest WiFi visit data to segment quiz regulars, match-day crowds and seasonal visitors. Send an email seven to 10 days out, an SMS reminder 24 hours before and a short same-day nudge. Only message guests who gave GDPR-compliant consent.

What does pub event marketing by SMS and email do for your venue?

Events give guests a reason to choose your pub on a specific night. A quiz turns a slow Tuesday into a standing booking. A big fixture fills tables that would otherwise sit empty. A seasonal event brings back guests you have not seen since summer.

Email and SMS do different jobs. Email carries the detail: the fixture list, the quiz theme, the Christmas menu and the booking link. SMS carries the nudge, a short reminder that lands hours before the doors open.

Measure three outcomes before anything else:

• Repeat visits. The share of messaged guests who return on event night.
• Opt-in rate. The share of guest WiFi logins that agree to email or SMS marketing.
• Revenue per send. Event-night spend you can match to a campaign, divided by messages sent.

The list is what makes this work. Mailchimp, Klaviyo and HubSpot send campaigns to contacts you already hold. They do not capture the guest standing at your bar. Purple builds the list from guest WiFi logins, so every contact arrives with consent and visit history attached. You see which nights a guest visits, how often and at which site.

That visit history makes targeting possible. Purple runs across 80,000+ live venues and recorded 440 million logins in 2024, according to Purple's own data. The Product overview explains how Purple Engage turns those logins into campaigns.

What do you need before you start your event campaigns?

Work through this checklist before the first send. Each item removes a common reason event campaigns stall.

1. Guest WiFi with a sign-in page. Guests enter an email address or mobile number to get online. Guest WiFi runs on hardware you already own, including Cisco Meraki, HPE Aruba, Ruckus, Juniper Mist, Ubiquiti UniFi, Cambium, Extreme and Fortinet.
2. Separate opt-ins for email and SMS. Use two unticked boxes, one per channel, so guests choose each one deliberately.
3. A 12-week events calendar. List every quiz, fixture and seasonal date for each site, with start times.
4. Confirmed broadcast rights. Check your commercial subscription covers every match you plan to promote.
5. Four to six weeks of sign-ups. Segments need visit history before they mean anything.
6. One named owner per site. This person confirms quiz themes, kick-off times and table availability before each send.
7. Templates for each message type. You need an announcement email, a reminder SMS, a same-day SMS and a follow-up email.
8. A holdout rule. Keep 10% of each segment unmessaged, so you can measure real lift.

Consent you can defend

GDPR sets the standard for marketing consent. Article 4(11) defines valid consent as freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous. Recital 32 rules out pre-ticked boxes and silence. Article 7 requires you to prove consent and to make withdrawal as easy as giving it.

In the UK, the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) also govern marketing emails and texts. Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) guidance says you generally need consent to send them to individuals. The "soft opt-in" exception covers people whose details you collected during a sale or negotiations for a sale. A free WiFi login is unlikely to meet that test, so rely on explicit consent instead.

Conscious-choice opt-ins do the work here. The guest ticks a box that names the channel and the type of message. That record sits against the contact, ready if a guest or the regulator asks.

How do you build event audiences from your guest WiFi data?

The guests most likely to come to an event already visit on that night. Guest WiFi logins show you who they are. Build segments from behaviour first, then refine them with exclusions.

Start with visit patterns

Event	Who to target	Who to exclude	Lead channel
Weekly quiz	Guests who logged in on quiz night two or more times in the last 90 days	Guests who opted out of SMS; guests with no visit in 12 months	Email for monthly dates, SMS for reminders
Lapsed quiz regulars	Guests with three or more quiz-night visits, none in the last 30 days	Guests already booked for this week	SMS
Live football	Guests who visited during previous televised fixtures or on weekend afternoons	Guests whose usual site is not showing the match	Email for fixtures, SMS before kick-off
Rugby internationals	Guests who visited during the last autumn internationals or Six Nations	Guests who visit only on weekday lunchtimes	Email first, SMS 48 hours before
Christmas parties	Guests who visited on Friday or Saturday evenings last November or December	Guests who have already booked this year	Email
One-day seasonal (St Patrick's Day, Halloween)	All consented guests at the site with a visit in the last six months	Guests who unsubscribed after the last seasonal send	Email, then SMS on the day

Exclude as carefully as you include

Every message to the wrong guest costs you something. On SMS it costs a per-message fee and, often, an opt-out. Exclude guests who opted out of a channel, guests already booked and guests whose usual site is not running the event. For alcohol-led promotions, exclude anyone under 18 if your sign-in page collects date of birth.

Where your event list comes from

List source	Who it captures	Consent record	Visit history attached	Effort to grow
Guest WiFi logins (Purple)	Every guest who signs in to get online, including walk-ins	Captured at sign-in, per channel	Yes: day, frequency and site	Grows with each visit, no staff effort
Table booking system	Guests who book ahead, usually the lead booker only	Set by the booking form wording	Bookings only, no walk-ins	Grows with bookings
Paper or QR sign-up forms	Guests who choose to fill one in	Paper kept on file; QR captured digitally	None	Staff must promote it every shift
Imported list in Mailchimp, Klaviyo or HubSpot	Whoever is already on the list	Inherited from where it was collected	None from the venue unless you integrate a source	Grows only when you add contacts

If you already run one of those platforms, you can keep it. Purple integrates with CRM and marketing platforms, so WiFi-captured contacts can feed the system you use today. The cost trade-offs of each route are set out in Customer data platform cost for hospitality groups: build, buy or use your WiFi data.

What should you send for quiz nights, live sport and seasonal events, and when?

Timing decides whether a message helps or gets ignored. Send detail early by email, then short reminders by SMS as the event approaches. Treat the matrix below as a starting point and adjust it after your first month of results.

Event	First message	Reminder	Final nudge	Follow-up
Weekly quiz night	Email on the 1st of each month with every date and theme	SMS 24 hours before themed or prize quizzes only	SMS at 3pm on quiz day to regulars who missed the last two weeks	Email next morning with results and next week's theme
Major football or rugby fixture	Email seven to 10 days out with fixture, kick-off time and booking link	SMS 48 hours before kick-off	SMS 3 hours before kick-off, only if tables remain	Email next day with the next fixture
Tournament (Six Nations, Euros, World Cup)	Email two to three weeks before the first match with the full fixture list	Email each Monday listing that week's matches	SMS on the morning of each home-nation match	Email after the final with a thank-you and the next event
Christmas parties	Email in September with packages and deposit terms	Email in October with remaining dates	SMS 7 days before your booking deadline	Email in January with a quiet-month offer
One-day seasonal (St Patrick's Day, Halloween)	Email 14 days before	SMS 48 hours before	SMS at 11am on the day	Email two days later with photos and the next event

Quiz nights

Quiz regulars are creatures of habit. They do not need a weekly email; they need a reason to bring a full team. Send one monthly email with every date and theme, so it doubles as a calendar.

Save SMS for themed nights, bigger prizes and lapsed regulars. A 3pm message reaches guests before they make evening plans. Add a "bring a new player" line to grow teams without discounting. The results email the next morning gives winners bragging rights and gives losing teams a reason to return for a rematch.

Live sport

Fans decide by fixture, not by venue loyalty alone. Lead with the match, the kick-off time and whether you show it with sound. Put the booking link above the fold.

Send the SMS reminder 48 hours before kick-off, when groups are still deciding where to watch. Send the final nudge three hours before only if tables remain. A "plenty of space" message to a full pub creates disappointed fans at the door.

Seasonal events

Christmas party organisers compare venues well before December, so start in September. Include deposit terms and capacity in the first email; organisers need both to get approval.

One-day events need a shorter lead time. Burns Night falls on 25 January, St Patrick's Day on 17 March and Halloween on 31 October. Put each on your calendar now, with the email date set 14 days before.

Write SMS that gets read

• Fit one segment. A standard SMS holds 160 characters in the GSM-7 character set. Some special characters switch the message to UCS-2, which cuts a segment to 70 characters.
• Start with the pub name. Guests should know who is texting before they read the offer.
• One action, one link. Book a table or book a team, never both.
• Include an opt-out in every message. ICO guidance on PECR requires a simple way to opt out each time you market.
• Send between 10am and 8pm. A late-night text earns opt-outs, not bookings.

A working example:

The Crown: Movie quiz tonight 8pm, £50 prize. Book a team: [link] Reply STOP to opt out

What does this look like in practice?

Both scenarios below use illustrative figures to show the method and the maths. They are not reported results from a named venue.

Scenario 1: lifting a midweek quiz at a community pub

Situation. A community pub runs a Tuesday quiz that has drifted to around 10 teams. It holds 2,000 consented contacts from guest WiFi. Of those, 300 logged in on two or more Tuesdays in the last 90 days.

What was done. The pub held back 30 regulars as a control group and messaged the other 270. Those 270 received the monthly email, plus a 3pm SMS on the two themed nights. A separate "we've missed you" SMS went to 60 lapsed regulars. A results email followed every quiz.

Outcome. Across the month, 20% of messaged regulars logged in on quiz night, against 10% of the holdout. That 10-point gap equals 27 extra quiz-night visits. At an illustrative £20 spend per head, that is £540 of incremental revenue. Across 600 SMS and 270 emails, revenue per send comes to roughly £0.62.

Scenario 2: Six Nations across a 12-site pub group

Situation. A 12-site pub group shows every Six Nations match. Last year, some sites turned fans away while others sat half empty. The group had WiFi visit data from the previous autumn internationals.

What was done. The group built a segment for each site from guests who visited during the autumn internationals or on weekend afternoons. That gave 6,000 guests, with 600 held out. A fixture email went out three weeks before opening weekend, then a Monday email each match week. Each guest heard from their usual site only. SMS went out on the morning of each home-nation match. Sites with spare tables sent an extra SMS three hours before kick-off.

Outcome. Of the 5,400 messaged guests, 9% (486) logged in at their site during a match. The holdout returned at 4%, which predicts 216 visits from the messaged group without any campaign. The difference is 270 incremental match-day visits. Site-level results also showed which pubs still lagged, so the group moved SMS budget to them for the next tournament.

How do you know your pub event campaigns are working?

Measure attendance, not opens. Apple's Mail Privacy Protection, introduced with iOS 15 in 2021, preloads remote email content. That can register an open whether or not the guest reads the message. Open rates therefore overstate interest, so treat clicks and attendance as the firmer signals.

Metric	How to measure it	What to do if it falls
Event-night attendance	WiFi logins from the segment during the event window, compared with the holdout	Tighten the segment to guests with recent visits on that night
Opt-in rate	Marketing opt-ins divided by guest WiFi logins, weekly, by site	Rewrite the opt-in wording to name the benefit, such as quiz dates and match alerts
Revenue per send	Incremental visits multiplied by average spend per head from your till reports, divided by sends	Cut the final nudge for events that already sell out
SMS opt-outs per send	Opt-outs divided by messages sent, per campaign	Reduce frequency and check send times
Lapsed guest return	Share of guests with no visit in 30+ days who return within 14 days of a send	Test a different event type for that segment

One caveat matters. Not every guest connects to WiFi on every visit, so WiFi-based attendance undercounts. That is why the holdout matters: the undercount affects both groups equally, so the gap between them stays reliable.

Review results monthly, by site and by event type. Drop the messages that move nothing. If you want to automate send times or segment selection, AI for restaurant and venue marketing: an implementation checklist covers where automation helps and where it does not.

What goes wrong with pub event marketing, and how do you avoid it?

Messaging everyone about everything

Sending every event to every contact trains guests to ignore you. Match each event to the segment that already visits on that night. Cap SMS at a frequency your opt-out rate can tolerate, and check that rate after every campaign.

Promoting a match you cannot show

Showing live sport needs a commercial subscription, not a domestic one. Confirm your subscription covers the fixture before you promote it. UK football also has a broadcasting closed period: matches kicking off between 2.45pm and 5.15pm on a Saturday are not shown live in the UK. Never advertise one as live.

Promotions that breach licensing or advertising rules

In England and Wales, the mandatory licensing conditions under the Licensing Act 2003 ban irresponsible promotions. Examples include unlimited drinks for a fixed price and rewards for drinking quickly. Scotland has its own rules under the Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005. The CAP Code, section 18, also bars alcohol marketing aimed at under-18s. Promote the event, the atmosphere and the food, not volume drinking.

Sending to contacts without clear consent

Old spreadsheets and bought lists rarely carry a consent record that meets GDPR. If you cannot show when and how a guest agreed, do not message them. Rebuild the list through guest WiFi sign-ins, where consent is captured per channel at the moment of login.

Badly timed SMS

A reminder that arrives after kick-off is noise. A text at 10pm is an intrusion. Schedule every SMS against the event start time, and keep sends between 10am and 8pm.

Group-wide sends that ignore the site

A guest in one town does not want an invitation to a quiz 40 miles away. Segment by usual site, and let each site owner confirm details before the send goes out.

No follow-up

Most venues stop at the event. The follow-up email, with results, photos and the next date, sets up the next visit. It costs one send, and it lands with the guests most likely to return.

Frequently asked questions

Does Purple work with the WiFi equipment our pub already has?

Yes, Purple is hardware-agnostic and runs as a cloud overlay on access points you already own. Supported vendors include Cisco Meraki, HPE Aruba, Ruckus, Juniper Mist, Ubiquiti UniFi, Cambium, Extreme and Fortinet. There is no rip and replace. Purple layers on top of your existing infrastructure, adds the guest sign-in page and starts building your consented contact list from the first login.

Is collecting marketing consent through guest WiFi GDPR compliant?

Yes, when the sign-in page asks for consent properly. GDPR Article 4(11) requires consent that is freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous, and Recital 32 rules out pre-ticked boxes. Purple uses conscious-choice opt-ins, with a separate box for each channel, and stores the record against each contact. In the UK, PECR also applies, so every marketing email and text must offer a simple way to opt out.

How is Purple Engage different from Mailchimp for pub marketing?

Purple builds the list; Mailchimp sends to a list you already have. Mailchimp works with contacts you import or collect online. Purple Engage starts with guest WiFi logins inside your pub, so each contact arrives with consent and visit history attached: which nights, how often and which site. That lets you target quiz regulars or match-day fans, rather than sending every event to everyone.

Can we keep using Mailchimp, Klaviyo or HubSpot alongside Purple?

Yes. Purple integrates with CRM and marketing platforms, so contacts captured through guest WiFi can feed the system you already use. You can start that way and move venue campaigns into Purple Engage later, where visit history sits alongside each contact. Whichever route you choose, carry the consent record with each contact and keep one master opt-out list across every system.

How is Purple priced?

Purple quotes on request, based on the plan you choose: Connect, Capture or Engage. Ask for a quote that covers every site you want live. Ask how SMS sends are charged too, because text messages carry a per-message cost that email does not. Then compare the total against what you pay today for a separate email platform plus the staff time spent growing your list.

How long does it take before we can run targeted event campaigns?

You can send a first event email as soon as consented contacts start arriving. Allow four to six weeks of guest WiFi sign-ups before relying on behaviour-based segments such as quiz regulars or match-day fans. During that period, build your 12-week events calendar, write your templates and agree a holdout rule, so you can measure lift from the first targeted campaign.

Does this work across a pub group with many sites?

Yes. Purple runs across 80,000+ live venues and works with multi-site pub operators. Segment each campaign by a guest's usual site, so guests hear about events at their local rather than a pub in another town. Comparing attendance against a holdout at each site shows which pubs respond, so you can move SMS budget to sites with spare capacity.