What to have written before hurricane season, and what never to send

The season is six months long and the decisions get made in one bad hour

Atlantic hurricane season runs June 1 to November 30. Over that window a Florida business will probably have at least one week where a storm is in the forecast, staff are distracted, and someone has to decide what to say to customers.

That hour is the worst possible time to write anything. People are tired, the information is changing every six hours, and the marketing calendar has a scheduled email sitting in the queue that nobody has thought about. Almost every genuinely bad piece of storm messaging you’ve ever received was written by someone in exactly that state.

So write it in May. This is a short, boring, one-afternoon job that pays off the first time it’s needed.

The five things to have drafted before June

Have these written, approved, and saved somewhere anyone on the team can find them. Not in one person’s drafts folder.

1. A watch-stage note: a storm may affect the area, here is our plan, here is how to reach us, here is what happens to your appointment.
2. A closure note: we are closed as of this time, here is when we expect to reassess, here is the emergency contact if there is one.
3. A "we are safe and reopening" note, with hours and any change in service.
4. A post-storm note for customers with an open job or matter, telling them specifically what happens to their timeline.
5. A voicemail greeting and an away auto-reply that say the same things, because most people will hit those before they read an email.

The operational list is shorter than the writing list

Alongside the drafts, there are a handful of switches you want to be able to flip fast. Know who has the login for each one before you need it.

The Google Business Profile is the big one, because it’s where people check whether you’re open. Special hours, a post saying what’s happening, and the phone number that will actually be answered. Then your website — a banner is enough, and it should be something you can turn on without a developer. Then the phone: where calls forward when the office has no power, which is the failure that quietly loses the most business.

And pause the automation. Every scheduled email, every drip sequence, every ad that mentions an event or a deadline. This is the one that goes wrong most often, because nobody remembers that the CRM will keep cheerfully sending sequences into a disaster.

• Google profile: special hours, a post, the right phone number.
• Website: a banner you can switch on yourself.
• Phones: know where they forward when the office is dark.
• Automation: a documented way to pause everything at once.

What is not acceptable to send while a storm is happening

Some of this should be obvious and it keeps happening anyway.

No promotions. No sale tied to the storm, no "hurricane special", no discount code named after a named storm. It reads as profiteering because it is, and people remember it long after the roof is fixed.

No urgency language borrowed from the emergency. "Don’t wait — act now before it’s too late" is fine copy in May and grotesque on the Tuesday a Category 3 is offshore. Read your scheduled sends with that filter before they go.

No storm imagery used decoratively. A satellite photo of a hurricane on a marketing graphic is somebody’s house.

And no forecasting. You are not the National Hurricane Center. Point people at official sources and your county’s emergency management, and say what your business is doing. That’s your lane and it’s enough.

What is worth sending, and when

Useful beats clever throughout. Before the storm: your status, your hours, what happens to scheduled work, how to reach you. If you have something genuinely helpful to your specific customers — a law firm telling people which documents to photograph before they leave, a property manager listing shutter deadlines — that’s worth sending and people are grateful for it.

During: as close to nothing as you can manage. One short factual update if the situation changes. No one is reading marketing.

After, in order: are we open, are our people okay, what is the status of your job. Then, once power and normality are back in the area, you can resume regular communication. Give it a few days. Coming back on with a newsletter about your new service the morning after a bad storm is tone-deaf even if the content is fine.

One more thing that’s worth doing and costs nothing: if you’re open and your neighbors aren’t, say what you have. Power, wifi, air conditioning, water, a bathroom, a place to charge a phone. Businesses that did that are remembered for years.

Contractors and insurance-adjacent businesses have a specific problem

If you’re a roofer, a restoration company, a public adjuster, or an attorney handling property claims, the post-storm period is when your year happens. It’s also when your entire category gets tarred.

After every major storm, out-of-state crews arrive, door-knocking starts, and a certain number of them take deposits and leave. Local news covers it. Regulators issue warnings. By week two, a homeowner who gets an unfamiliar knock or an aggressive text assumes fraud — including when it’s you, a licensed local business that has been here twenty years.

That’s a reputational trap, and the response to it is mostly proof of legitimacy, offered before it’s demanded.

• Lead with the license number and how to verify it independently.
• Say how long you have been at this address, and show the address.
• Point at reviews that predate the storm.
• Put the contract terms and the cancellation rights in writing, up front.
• Do not door-knock or cold-text if your category is currently in the news for it.

The legal and regulatory edges are real

Florida has specific rules in this area and they are not marketing conventions. Contractor solicitation after a declared emergency, assignment-of-benefits agreements, and public adjuster conduct are all regulated, and the rules have been amended more than once in recent years. If your revenue depends on post-storm claims work, get your current campaign language checked by someone who follows that legislation — not by your marketing vendor.

For attorneys there is a separate layer: Florida Bar rules govern direct solicitation of people who have just suffered a loss, including timing restrictions. Any post-storm outreach from a firm needs to be reviewed against those rules before it goes anywhere.

We flag this because the marketing side and the compliance side are usually different people, and the storm week is exactly when nobody checks.

The season is also a content calendar, if you plan it

For businesses whose work relates to storms, the useful content has a schedule and it is not "after the storm". May is when people buy shutters, service generators, trim trees and review policies. That is when the audience is receptive and the competition is quiet.

A rough shape: May is preparation and checklists. June through August is maintenance and reminders — the season is here, here’s the thing you meant to do. Late August through September is the peak of activity and the time to say less. October and November is recovery, claims, and lessons. December is the annual review of what to fix before next year.

For everyone else, the storm content is one piece a year: what we do when a storm comes, published in May, linked from the website, and reused as the basis for the drafts above. That’s the whole obligation.

Afterwards, write down what broke

The week after things settle, spend twenty minutes on it while it’s fresh. What did people call and ask that you hadn’t answered anywhere. What automation went out that shouldn’t have. Who couldn’t log into what. Which phone number rang somewhere useless.

Fix those four things and next year’s storm is an inconvenience rather than a scramble. Most businesses skip this because the relief of it being over is powerful, and then repeat the same failures in fourteen months.