Email marketing should be a top revenue generating source for your winery. In this presentation, we explore some basic tips and strategies you can use to build your mailing list, engage subscribers with more targeted offers, and grow your online wine sales.

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

2. 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

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. BUILDING YOUR
LIST
How to grow your subscriber list, and sell more wine.

6. ATTRACTING SUBSCRIBERS
Offer tasting room employees
.50 cents/email

7. 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.

8. SHOW PAST EXAMPLES
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.

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

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

11. MAILING LIST SIGNUP
Use warm personal letter with
special one time, limited offer.

12. ABANDONED CART CAMPAIGN
70% of shoppers abandon their carts.
A basic cart abandonment campaign
recovers 10-20% of lost sales.

13. KNOW THE
CUSTOMER
Use preference based marketing and segmented lists to creating
more personalized offers

14. 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.

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

16. 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.

17. 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

18. 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.

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

20. 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.

21. 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.

22. 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.

23. 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.

24. 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.

25. FREE HOLIDAY
TEMPLATES
Use these free templates for your upcoming holiday email campaigns.

26. FIVE PRE-MADE LAYOUTS
Download the .zip file here

27. 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.

28. RESOURCES
Useful articles and tools .

29. LINKS AND RESOURCES
A/B Testing
Services
7 myths about email marketing
How A/B split testing works
A/B split testing
Subject line testing scenarios
Try a cart abandonment campaign free
for 30 days
Email marketing audit
Exposure
Winerymailinglists.com
Wineberserkers.com
Formatting
Premailer. The preflight check for HTML
emails
Copywriting
Data/Analytics
Email marketing dashboard for Google
Analytics
37 tips for writing emails that get
opened, read, and clicked
Subject line strategies to increase open
rates
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.