EMAIL

MARKETING

Winning strategies to use email to sell wine and connect with customers.

EMAIL MARKETING = HIGHEST ROI

Email should be a top traffic channel and source of transactions for your website.

Google Analytics: Ecommerce > Overview > Top sources/medium

IS EMAIL DRIVING YOUR REVENUE?

$1.3m in sales over 12 months. This is a real winery, with a small case production less than 5k.

EMAIL “ASSISTS” OTHER CHANNELS

Email traffic may not always get credit for final purchase, but it will usually be a top traffic channel for “assisted” conversions.

BUILDING YOUR

LIST

How to grow your subscriber list, and sell more wine.

ATTRACTING SUBSCRIBERS

Offer tasting room employees .50 cents/email

KEEP IT SHORT, MAKE IT OBVIOUS

Put your mailing list signup call to action button in a visible place.

Only collect name + email, and nothing else. Offering an incentive or promo helps too.

Create a web-based newsletter repository. By putting an archive of all of your newsletter issues you can

make it more appealing for your visitors to subscribe. You will also generate additional traffic from search

engines.

SHOW PAST EXAMPLES

AUTOMATE IT

Use automated email responders to help facilitate sales, and further interaction with your brand.

CUSTOMIZE YOUR AUTOMATED EMAILS

Further drive engagement by linking to relevant content (recipes, blog), add social media profiles, and link back to the website.

MAILING LIST SIGNUP

Use warm personal letter with special one time, limited offer.

ABANDONED CART CAMPAIGN

70% of shoppers abandon their carts.

A basic cart abandonment campaign recovers 10-20% of lost sales.

KNOW THE

CUSTOMER

Use preference based marketing and segmented lists to creating more personalized offers

SEGMENTING WITH LISTBUILDER

Example lists:

• Customers who purchased Chardonnay during the last six months and spent over $250.

• Customers who purchased Chardonnay in the past, but not in the last six months.

• Wine Club Members who have a credit card on file that is set to expire in the next 60 days.

• Subscribers who have indicated in their Profile that they are interested in attending a winemaker

dinner that you are planning.

SEGMENTING BY MEMBER TYPE

Use to select specific member types. For example, members with birthdays this month might receive a special birthday promo.

SEGMENTING BY ORDERS

Use the Orders tab to select customers who purchased products within a specified time frame, spent a specified dollar amount, or live in certain states.

LEARN THROUGH SPLIT TESTING

Use split testing to send a slightly different email offer to one half of a list, and compare the results.

Consider testing basic things like:

• Cart discount vs. free shipping

• Subject lines

• Placement of call to action

• Using company name vs. personal name in “from” line

CREATE LANDING PAGES

A good landing page should bring visitors closer to the product or introduce them to a special promotion, and then nudge them toward purchasing.

COMMON

MISTAKES

Don’t let your email hit a pothole on the road to the consumer.

WINERY 1

Their email offered 25% off their 2009 Zinfandel, with 50% off to wine club members. However, both the link

from the email and the site itself offered 50% off to everyone.

WINERY 2

Offered a discount of 25% plus free shipping on a selection of wines. But the cart did not offer the free shipping.

This was true for any amount, though the test order was for a case.

WINERY 3

They offered free shipping on a total wine order of $95 or more. Required a promo code that expires on June

14. The order placed for $100 on June 13 did not honor the promo code.

WINERY 4

They offered 10% off and $15 shipping on 6 or more of any wine. But while they did give the $15 shipping, they

did not provide the promised discount.

ALWAYS CHECK YOUR WORK

• Other errors include a winery that sent an email offering 15% off on a newly released $40 Cabernet. But the Buy link brought you only to the home page of the winery that was featuring a different Cabernet, at $100, with no discount. The user had to search the site to get the wine advertised and discounted. They should have used a landing page.

• A winery sent an offer for 20% off all wines. The link took you to their list of wines, but only showed the regular prices and gave only their established discounts of 5% and 10% depending on quantity ordered.

• One multi-brand owner sent a separate email for each of its brands. Each email showed the wines of one promoted brand, but the buy button went to just one winery, presumably the email they created first, and forgot to change the link.

• One winery offered a “today only!” sale. Except the wines were not on sale when the email arrived. When contacted, the winery said “We thought the email would arrive the next day.”

• Another winery promised free shipping on a case order, but neglected to limit that to ground shipments. A customer could place an order for free priority overnight. If these orders are automatically processed, it’s a money-losing proposition.

So check your work! Send it to a co-worker who did not work on that email. Whoever spent time creating the email will usually not spot the errors.

FREE HOLIDAY

TEMPLATES

Use these free templates for your upcoming holiday email campaigns.

FIVE PRE-MADE LAYOUTS

Download the .zip file here

HOW TO USE

1. Go go Newsletters > Add a newsletter

2. Click “Source” in the editor

3. Copy/paste HTML from one of the templates into the newsletter source code. Edit the copy as needed. Use Photoshop to edit images.

RESOURCES

Useful articles and tools .

LINKS AND RESOURCES

A/B Testing 7 myths about email marketing

How A/B split testing works

A/B split testing

Subject line testing scenarios

Exposure Winerymailinglists.com

Wineberserkers.com

Copywriting 37 tips for writing emails that get opened, read, and clicked

Subject line strategies to increase open rates

Services Try a cart abandonment campaign free for 30 days Email marketing audit

Formatting Premailer. The preflight check for HTML emails Data/Analytics Email marketing dashboard for Google Analytics Landing Pages The anatomy of a high converting landing page

If you would like help with any aspect of your email campaign, from template design and copywriting to landing page creation and general performance review, contact me.