After last week’s e-mail and blog post, How we moved $15,000 of wine in one week, we got a lot of questions. We love this, because it shows interest in one of the most effective sales tools wineries have: E-Mail Marketing.
The first thing we do when we get a new client is evaluate their e-mail marketing efforts. This is because e-mail marketing is more effective at driving sales than Facebook, Twitter, online ads, and print ads. It’s even more effective than your website.
So, in this week’s e-mail, I thought I’d answer some of the questions we received last week. So, without further ado, here are some that we thought were important.
Q. How often should I be sending e-mails to our subscribers?
A. It depends. We like to see 1-2 per month, 2-3 if you’re running a campaign. Of course, we’ve gone as high as 15 (12 Days of Christmas campaigns), and have had tremendous results.
At the very, very least, you need to be e-mailing once a month to remind your customers you are there, and to provide them with a sense of dependability.
People are busy. If you don’t remind them that you’re there, they will spend their money with wineries that are actively telling them about their wines…
Q. But isn’t 2-3 time per month spamming? Won’t people unsubscribe?
A. E-mail is opt-in. People sign up because they want to hear from you.
They either had a good experience with you, or they are interested in your product, and they want to establish a relationship with you. Your job is to nurture that relationship.
Provide good content (news, events, specials, promotions, tasting notes, reviews, invitations, “exclusive” offers), and you’ll reap the rewards of a beautiful relationship (many, many sales).
Ignore the relationship, OR, only contact them when you want to sell something (we call that the e-mail booty call), and that relationship is going to go down in flames.
Q. I still think that’s too much.
A. Watch your open rates and unsubscribes. If open rates are going down and unsubscribes are going up, you’re doing it wrong. Try something else. Otherwise, you’re talking to the people who love you. Love them back.
Also, don’t sweat the few unsubscribes you’ll inevitably get…particularly when you start seriously e-mail marketing. The ugly truth? They weren’t going to buy from you anyway. The ones that stick around…that’s where the sales are.
Finally, take yourself out of the equation. Maybe YOU don’t like getting any e-mails from any business. But that’s you. Don’t confuse yourself with your customer…because you probably would not have signed up for the e-mail newsletter in the first place.
Q. How do I get more people to open my e-mails? Better subject lines?
A. Subject lines are important. However, the BEST way to make sure people open up your e-mails is to make sure the e-mail before it provided them value.
Q. I like sending long e-mail newsletters. Should I not do that?
A. If that’s what you’re comfortable doing, then do it. We prefer short e-mails “Just thought you’d like this recipe to pair with our Pinot Noir”, but you do what you want to do.
Our point with the last e-mail was that you don’t hide promotions in long e-mail newsletters. Make promotions about one thing, and have one clear call to action.
Q. What e-mail marketing service do you suggest?
A. We looooove Mailchimp and have moved most of our clients to it.
Not only is Mailchimp among the most affordable e-mail marketing services, but it offers great features that really let us get great results (we love “thank you” specials to those who open and read our e-mails regularly).
Plus, it’s super easy to use.
Plus, plus, it offers mobile-friendly designs. This is vitally important to the success of any e-mail newsletter. After all, don’t you open your e-mail on your phone? So do your customers.
Q. Can we just hire you to take care of this for us?
A. Absolutely. Let us take this off your plate and make sure it’s done as effectively as possible for you.
Simply fill out our contact form and we’ll get back to you shortly.
Have a great week!
Allison & Jeremy
