January may have just started, but for outdoor summer attractions, it’s the right time to start accelerating your marketing tactics for the upcoming 2016 season. Your past customers and visitors do not simply disappear in the off-season, and as a brand, it is crucial that you do not disappear, either. Off-season interaction, when executed properly, has the potential to benefit your brand tremendously in the long run. One good way to establish touch points during the off-season is to survey your past visitors and customers.

Here are 5 off-season marketing challenges for outdoor summer attractions and how email surveys can help overcome them:

1. Keeping your attraction top of mind in the off-season. Indeed it is January and travelers may be focused on the now – i.e. their next ski trip or winter getaway – but that doesn’t mean that you can’t prime customers to actively think about your attraction in the off-season. Incorporating the winter season into your survey (while keeping comments about frightful weather to a minimum) can get the initial gears turning in customers’ minds about planning another visit in a few months.
2. Bridging the distance to far away visitors. Not all of your past visitors reside in the same state as your attraction, or even in the same region. As consumers begin to assemble their summer travel plans, this distance could put your attraction further down on their list. Including these past visitors in your survey allows you to reestablish a connection and gain insights into their experience as longer distance travelers. Bonus Tip: Email segmentation will allow you to customize your messaging to recognize visitors from afar. In addition to location, here are some other helpful email segmentation tips from MarketingLand.
3. Reviving off-season ticket sales. Naturally in the off-season, ticket sales tend to decline. Hopefully your attraction pushed ticket sales over the holiday season in the form of gift ideas on social media, but now that things have settled back down, you’re likely waiting for the few weeks prior to re-opening for sales to rise again. Sending an off-season survey inquiring about what your customers would like to see during their next visit can help entice early ticket purchases, not to mention valuable word of mouth.
4. Scheduling special events and experiences. If your outdoor summer attraction holds large musical or entertainment performances, you have likely already lined up those acts for the season. Smaller scale events like overnight stays, behind the scenes experiences, and meet-and-greets may require less planning, but can often be just as demanding. Finding out what your customers have enjoyed in the past and would like to see again can help you determine the right event lineup to make your time and dollar investments worthwhile. Bonus Tip: Families are often willing to pay more for special experiences, so identifying in-demand events can help boost your bottom line even further.
5. Generating excitement about returning assets. Everyone loves new, but one of the biggest off-season marketing challenges for outdoor summer attractions is generating excitement around returning and permanent assets. Surveying past visitors about their favorite existing rides, exhibits, and displays can provide insights into how they interact with assets and how you can improve them.

Email surveys can help you plan ahead for the summer season by gathering input about sentiment, assessing how and where visitors spend the most time at your attraction, and determining what they hope to experience this summer. To encourage participation, offer an incentive such as discounted or free admission for the coming season, or even behind-the-scenes or sneak peek experiences prior to your official re-opening. Also, consider creating variations of the survey to send to influencers and bloggers. Their insights into your audience, and ties to relevant social media and PR networks, can prove invaluable in the off season and year round.