The problem is most wineries don’t have a strong email marketing strategy. Worse, some don’t do it all. In the age of Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) selling, the growth and success of your business depends on adopting and understanding how to sell more wine. Not having a digital selling strategy is a missed opportunity.

Before we get into the campaigns your winery should be running, let’s look at some key metrics about email.

• By 2017, The Radicati Group estimates there will be 4.9 Billion emails worldwide
• Email now accounts for 7% of all eCommerce user acquisitions (and growing)
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is 12% higher than average for customers purchasing via email
• Wines and Vines suggests Direct to Consumer sales exceeded $2B from April 2015 to April 2016

You need to be excited about the opportunity to market your products effectively and efficiently. Email Marketing provides great ROI for your business with the average being 3,200% for the wine industry. Every $1 you invest sees $32 in return.

Email Campaigns

Here are the 7 email marketing campaigns that you should consider for your winery.

Thank You for Visiting

Wineries have a great opportunity for thanking every customer that visits the tasting room. By building a strong email acquisition strategy, you can create an email campaign that is automatically sent to every visitor. A standard campaign will thank a customer for their visit, introduce the customer to the brand, offer them an incentive to repurchase and even provide them an invitation to join your club. There are lots of things you can do to educate and inform your guests about your brand. Research suggests that almost 75% of people who subscribe expect an email. Those that receive a thank you campaign are more likely to purchase from you in the future. Further, guests will be more engaged with each subsequent email you send.

Event or Tradeshow Campaign

Did you try to collect email from attendees at Paso Wine Fest last month? Collecting email from trade events requires you to thank people for coming to your booth. Give event goers an incentive to connect with you so that you can market to them in the future. It is not uncommon to give away prizes for email acquisition. Get a complimentary 2 for 1 tasting for giving us your email. Make a game out of it with corn hole or a prize wheel. Ancient Peaks used a prize wheel at Paso Wine Fest with great success. In the email you send (pending you are collecting via iPad), have another contest involving social media. Get them to follow you and post something interesting using a hashtag. You can go in and announce the winner at a later time. Make it fun and cool for your guests. Be rewarded with a large number of leads for future email marketing and more direct to consumer sales.

Nurture Campaigns

Not everyone on your list is always ready to buy. However, you need your brand to be fresh on your customers’ mind when they want some wine. It is very important to nurture your leads so they remember your brand. There are several ways to do this from newsletters, new release emails, event happenings or just keeping in touch with random communications. Research suggests that nurtured leads are 50% more likely to buy from you in the future. Your email marketing strategy isn’t all about promotions and selling. Nurturing emails are interesting, educational, informative and down-to-earth. Stay in front of your customers; it is key to generating more sales.

Ecommerce Transactions

Ecommerce transaction emails are not marketing emails. Wineries need to understand that there is a clear distinction between when to market to someone and when to provide them critical information about their recent purchase. Your ecommerce system should provide you a set of transaction emails that are triggered when customers complete actions on your website. The most important ones will be purchase confirmations and shipping notifications. Sending transaction emails gets customers acclimated to opening email from you. It is said that customers open 70% of all emailed receipts. Branding is also very important with transaction emails. Customers should receive consistent look and feel from you to build trust and connection. It will make future marketing efforts easier with the recognition of your brand.

Club Recovery or Win-Back

The recurring revenue model is a beautiful thing. Wineries spend a lot of money to train their staff to sell club memberships. One thing that I don’t see wineries doing is leveraging email to recover their canceled club memberships. Keeping record of former club members is critical for recovering their business in the future. We recently built a campaign for SummerWood Winery & Inn where they experienced great success in recovering former members. We actually ended up canceling some re-enrollments because folks had moved to new states restricting wine shipments. Anyone who says this can’t be done, I challenge them to think again. If you still don’t believe it, read the case study we did for this campaign. We made the winery some serious coin when considering lifetime value of their club members.

Shopping Cart Recovery

Wineries supplementing their business with ecommerce need to be up-to-date with best practices. For example, the average shopping cart abandonment rate is 68.68%. This can equate to a lot of lost revenue for your business. Ecommerce systems that are smart can track abandoned Shopping Carts. It is not uncommon to remind people that they have a pending order they need to complete. Shopping Cart recovery, when implemented correctly, can recover up to 20% of your abandoned  carts. This means more revenue with more wine sales.

For those with Vin65, you can generate a sales report of your abandoned shopping carts. I believe Vin65 is the only winery software that automates a Shopping Cart recovery process. I may be wrong. If I am, please correct me by commenting on this post.

Emails That Work for You

Vingage Consulting can help your business with all your Email Marketing needs. Our digital marketing firm will help you sell more wine, while building raving fans for your product. Sign up now for a Free Consultation.

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Growth in DTC wine shipments continues to see amazing progress. Wines and Vines suggests sales are up 12% from March 2015 to March 2016. Sales volume also surpassed $2 Billion for the second time in history. With consumer demand stronger than ever, wineries need to position themselves to take advantage of the opportunity to sell more.

Easily Capture Email with Technology

Email acquisition in the tasting room is easy and simple. Guests come to the tasting room to enjoy themselves and try your product. Wineries experience the best possible scenario for building a long-term relationship with customers. Throw away the notepads on the tasting room counter. There is no purpose to collect email addresses on paper. Get yourself an iPad, install an app from your email service provider and start collecting emails from your guests. If you use Vin65 POS, leverage the receipt function for email capture. For a more passive approach, extend free WiFi and capture email from your guests when they connect. Either way, you must figure out a way to get email from as many guests as possible.

Email is More Accurate

My wife can’t read my writing. I doubt the winery employee copying my email address from their notepad can read it either. If a customer volunteers their email and you hand them an iPad, it will more than likely be correct.

Save Time and Money

How much are you paying someone to perform data entry for email addresses? How much time does it take them to complete? How much time surpassed from when the guest visited the tasting room to when you typed the email in your system? My answer to all three of these questions – “Too Much!” Present an iPad to your guests to save time and remove costs.

Tourists May Not Come Back

Are you making money on the first visit from your guest? I estimate a visitor costs the average winery $35. If that visitor is local, then sure, they can come back and buy your wine; however, let’s face the truth. Most visitors are tourists who may never come back. The only way to sell them more wine is to stay connected. Capture their email in the tasting experience, give them a business card with a promo code to purchase from your website and influence guests to buy your product again.

Automate a Welcome Campaign

Now that you have your guests email, send them a Thank You note. Automate this process and leave a lasting impression. Not only will guests be pleased they heard from you, it is a great opportunity to let them know you will continue to send them nuggets of information. After a few days, send another email to have them relive their experience with your brand. Offer them a promo to buy from your website. Maybe automate another email that invites them to your club. A little incentive goes a long way. Trust me, it works.

Customer Engagement Builds Relationships

Capture email, engage guests and sell more wine. Email has a 40x greater conversion rate than social media. Facebook and Instagram generate brand awareness and build community but they don’t sell wine very well. If you don’t have time to email your guests, Vingage Consulting can do it for you. We are experts in our field and we have proven our success with all our clients.

Drive Repeat Purchases with Active Marketing

Understand your customers. Create segmented lists for targeted campaigns with specific purpose. Target local customers with invitations to winery events. Send winery happenings to mailing list members. Give your club members access to exclusive information. Announce your new releases. The list goes on. There are so many things you can market and most wineries don’t have staff or time to do this themselves. For less than the cost of a full-time person, Vingage Consulting can manage customer engagement for you. We demonstrate ROI and guarantee we sell more wine.

Incentives Drive Loyalty and VIP Customers

You don’t need to discount wine, but you do need to offer incentives for engagement. Incentives drives sales and build loyalty. We all know the cost of your estate-grown wine. If you eat a few dollars with penny shipping on a three bottle purchase, that’s worth the sale. That customer becomes loyal and they will spend more money with you in the future. Even with the shipping discount, your margins are still higher than distribution pricing. If that customer keeps coming back, you are in good shape to be more profitable.

Want to chat? Get your Free Consultation today.

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Today, we announce our new business serving the needs of the wine community. Since our inception two months ago, we have already demonstrated immediate value to our clients by engaging their customers for improving top line revenue and bottom line growth. We can compliment your tasting room sales with a robust marketing strategy that is designed to cultivate, acquire and retain customers for your business. We measure our performance and provide you detailed reports that demonstrate our impact. Working with us is a win-win for everyone.

Our Philosophy

We want to help wineries sell more wine by leveraging proven digital marketing strategies and tactics. We believe that every marketing dollar you spend should see a measurable result with a clear return on investment (ROI). Partnering with Vingage Consulting will help your business grow.

Our Services

Vingage Consulting helps you manage customer engagement tactics for your business that drive more sales from your customers. Our goal is to identify the best strategy for growing your list of customers and developing those relationships. For less than a full time person, we can run your digital Direct to Consumer (DTC) sales strategy to achieve your goals.  Our services keep your customers coming back again-and-again.

Free Consultation

If you have any questions for how our business can help you, please do not hesitate to call or email us. We are offering Free Consultations for any winery interested in our services.

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