Practical Strategies to Increase Wine Ecommerce: Email Marketing

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Part III of the SSU course covers email marketing strategies, and explores how to boost wine sales with effective messaging, content, and tools related to email.

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Email Marketing

Email is not dead. It’s critical to your success and remains the easiest way to directly connect with consumers.

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High ROI

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Easy to measure

It’s easy to track performance, do A/B testing, see what works and what doesn’t.

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A top sales channel

Email should be a top source of traffic and sales on ecommerce websites

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Email assists other channels

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

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Listbuilding tips – make it obvious

Include a mailing list signup prompt on every page, in an obvious place where people will see it.

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Listbuilding tips – keep it short

VS

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Listbuilding tips - offer an incentive

Give visitors a reason to sign up for your mailing list, like a one-time discount or free tasting for two.

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Listbuilding tips – pay employees

Offer tasting room staff .50 cents per email they collect

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More listbuilding ideas Attend pouring events, and require people to

sign up to your mailing list. Create promos and contests, require entry

through email signup. Consider what gets you to offer up your

email?

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Email strategy Welcome/New Subscriber Frequency Content & Creative

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Welcome campaign with reward

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Welcome campaign with resources

• Links to top selling wines• Interview with winemaker• Quick tips• Wine club 20% discount (not

shown here)• Upcoming events• Social media links• Upcoming promotions and

invitations to exclusive events

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Welcome email with nothing

No images. No logo. Just plain text. Missed opportunity for a good first impression.

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Frequency Consistency

Stick to a deployment schedule (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly)

Mix informational emails with promotional ones Don’t be afraid to turn it up during the busy

season or other times of year when you can take advantage of a promo

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Re-engagement

Abandoned cart emails Happy birthday One year club

anniversary Update

info/preferences We’ve missed you

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Segmentation

Content is King. Segmentation is Queen. Varietal preferences (Special offer on Reds) Locals (Come to our next event) Order history (We’ve missed you) Club join date (One year anniversary together) Credit card set to expire (Update your profile)

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Landing pages

Bring visitor closer to the product or introduce them to a special promotion to help nudge them toward a purchase.

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A/B Testing

Use split testing to send slightly different versions of an email to one half of your list. Compare results.

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A/B testing - response Test basic elements

such as: Cart discount vs. free

shipping Subject lines Placement of call to

action buttons Using company

name vs. personal name in “from” line

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A/B Testing Example

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Rendering tips Width of the creative does not exceed 600 pixels Structure the creative with <table>'s, Do not float <div>'s to

position anything Use inline CSS to style your fonts versus basic HTML; i.e.

span style =“” vs. font face = “” Don’t use a <body> tag to set a background color. Wrap a

100% table around the creative and set it's bgcolor instead. Define the height & width of your images within your <img>

tags. Do not use the <style> tag within the <head> tag. Do not use <p> tags. If you would like to specify line breaks,

do so using <br /> Use Premailer to clean formatting and HTML

http://premailer.dialect.ca/

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Spam and mailing lists SPAM – unsolicited bulk email Do not buy email lists. End of story.

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Avoid common pitfalls

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.

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Avoid common pitfalls

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.

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Always be testing• 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.

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On writing 80% of people will read your headline, but

only a small fraction will continue Use “Power Words” Mix up your greetings Keep it short Call to action above the fold Use deadlines to sell Include numbers in the subject Be personal, “Your are not alone”

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Breakout session Dissect your email. Come up with 2-3

positives and 2-3 negatives. What would you test?

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Summary Focus on building list. Set up a decent welcome email. Split test subject lines, content, calls to action. Mix informative with promos and offers Check for mistakes

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ResourcesA/B Testing7 myths about email marketingHow A/B split testing worksA/B split testingSubject line testing scenarios

ExposureWinerymailinglists.comWineberserkers.com

Copywriting37 tips for writing emails that get opened, read, and clickedSubject line strategies to increase open ratesThe Perfect Subject Line

ServicesTry a cart abandonment campaign free for 30 daysEmail marketing audithttp://www.litmus.comhttp://www.mailchimp.com

FormattingPremailer. The preflight check for HTML emails

Data/AnalyticsEmail marketing dashboard for Google Analytics

Landing PagesThe anatomy of a high converting landing page

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