Want to drive more traffic to your winery or tasting room?

While getting your diverse wine selection and exclusive offerings in front of a larger, global audience?

If you do, email marketing is one of the best ways to hit those goals and transcend geographical boundaries, allowing you to reach an audience far beyond your local area.

Right now, email is one of the best ways to increase your sales volume and foster more brand loyalty so your customers keep coming back again and again.

It serves as one of the most potent traffic drivers for winery websites and tasting rooms — when it’s done in the right way and the right approach.

It’s also one of the best ways to generate valuable data on customer engagement, preferences, and behaviors so you keep growing your product line knowing that you’re giving customers what they want.

In this guide, we’re going to break down a proven email marketing strategy plus show you how to quickly develop marketing messages that convert email subscribers into new, lifelong customers.

Step #1: Build A Solid Email List

The first step revolves around making sure you’re actually building your email list.

One of the best ways to do it is to collect a visitor’s email from the pages of your website by offering exclusive discounts for their first purchase — if they provide an email to claim that discount.

You also want to make sure you’re utilizing sign-up sheets in your tasting room and at your events.

This helps you push wine club and community sign-ups by showing the advantages of joining those clubs and events and then collecting emails as people sign up.

Periodically running contests and giveaways, especially on social media or through paid advertising, is another great way to encourage people to join your mailing list.

The key here is getting creative with how you’re asking them to subscribe to your list and then showing them the benefits and advantages of being a subscriber.

You can build your first form inside of Mailberry here’s how:

First, if you haven’t already, click here to grab your FREE Mailberry Account now.

Then, when you log in, click “Audience” in the top menu.

When you get to the Audience page, click on “Segments”.

Here, you’ll want to build a new audience segment if you haven’t already.

This segment will become the list that new subscribers will be added to when they subscribe to the form we’re about to build.

After you have the audience segment created, click on “Forms” in the Audience menu.

Once you’re here, click “New Form”.

Then, choose the fields you want to collect information on.

In general, you can get away with just collecting their email address — but being able to personalize it with their name can help increase open and conversion rates.

You’re also able to collect phone numbers if you intend to send text messages or call your subscribers on the phone.

Once you’ve chosen the fields you want to collect information on, click “Next”.

On the next page, you’ll be able to choose what you want your subscription form to say.

The key to increasing conversion rates on this form is letting people know what’s in it for them whenever they subscribe to join your mailing list.

You can see how we’ve included information around getting an exclusive 10% discount just for joining, getting early access to new releases, and getting subscriber-only invites to upcoming wine & food tasting events.

Get creative and figure out what your audience will want to see the most from you — then let them know they can get it by subscribing to your list.

After you’ve included the copy you want on the form, click “Next” and you’ll be able to start customizing what the form looks like so it matches your unique brand.

Play around with the form builder so the font, font sizes, and colors match your brand.

Then, after you have the form looking like the website you’ll plug it into, click “Next” and you’ll be given the option to choose which list you want new subscribers added to.

In our case, it’s our “main” list.

For you, it will be the segment you created in the first step.

After you’ve chosen the right list segment, you’ll want to click “Submit” so you can grab the code snippet for your form — and then plug it into your website (or have your developer do it for you!)

And that’s it.

Now you’re able to collect emails on your website, add them to a segmented list, and begin emailing them using either automations or broadcasts.

Which probably brings up the biggest question most email marketers have — “what do I even write now that I’ve got subscribers to write to?!”.

Step #2: Craft Compelling Content

Once you’ve taken advantage of every opportunity available to collect their email address, the next step is crafting compelling messaging that gets them to take action.

Whether that’s grabbing a discount, purchasing a new wine, getting on a pre-launch list for an upcoming release, attending an event, or sharing your message with their colleagues, friends, and family, every message you create should revolve around a specific goal.

There’s a handful of ways to effectively do this:

  1. Highlighting New Wine Selections & Releases
  2. Educating Subscribers About Your Process
  3. Introducing Them To The Wine, Food, & Music Lifestyle
  4. Sharing Engaging Stories
  5. Showcasing Behind-The-Scenes Experiences

And if you’re drawing blanks when it comes to creating the messaging, use a tool like Mailberry.

It can generate the emails for you — making them ready to plug-and-play into your campaigns.

Take a look at this one:

It was generated using the prompt: “Create an email introducing our readers to the music, wine, and food lifestyle while showcasing our new Cabernet Sauvignon release and pairing it with great food and music.”

The email was generated in just a few seconds — saving a ton of time and energy.

To get started, click here to grab your free Mailberry.ai account now.

Then, when you log in, input your brand information under the “My Account Settings” tab.

Once finished, click “Emails” in your menu bar and then tell the AI what to write about.

In just a few seconds, you’ll have multiple emails that are ready to plug into your email campaign.

Step #3: Personalize For Palette Perfection

To make your email campaigns as effective as possible, though, you want to personalize their delivery.

You can collect customer data to help customize the email messages they see.

For instance, if they’re interested in red wines, you can make sure they only see content related to new or best-selling reds in your collection.

You’re able to segment your customer lists based on what they’ve purchased so you can custom-tailor recommendations to them based on different groups.

This helps ensure your conversion and open rates remain high while you build brand loyalty.

Then, to help incentivize those customer groups to take action now, you can offer exclusive events and pre-releases that are only available to people on your email list.

Subscribers will receive early access to new releases and limited-edition collections, as well as list-only discounts, fostering a sense of belonging and rewarding your most dedicated customers.

Step #4: Focus On Timing & Frequency

Now, two of the biggest questions you’ll have when you’re just getting started using email marketing to grow your winery are:

“When should I send my emails?” and “How often should I send emails?”

Which the answer to both questions is: it depends.

That’s something only your list can tell you and will require a bit of testing, tweaking, and optimizing to ensure that you’re sending emails out at the right time — and at the right frequency.

As a general rule of thumb, though, sending more often is better than not sending at all.

Yes, you will get people who unsubscribe from your list if you send too often — but, in general, you want to pay more attention to your sales volume, open rate, and clickthrough rate.

We’ll touch more on that in just a minute.

But when you’re optimizing your campaigns, you want to test sending them out at different times throughout the day to see what gives you the highest open rates.

You can use Mailberry’s built-in automations to deliver your emails consistently so your customers remember who you are and you save time while growing your sales volume using email marketing.

The goal here, though, is to collect enough data to tell you WHEN to send your emails and how often you should be sending them.

If you notice your open rates beginning to fall or your unsubscribe rates beginning to climb, you may be able to get better results by sending less often — or at more optimal times.

On the flipside of that equation, if you see your open rates climb as you send out more often or your unsubscribe rates are staying low, you may be able to get away with sending out more emails.

Over time, you’ll find a balance between the timing and the frequency that delivers a consistent increase in revenue while maintaining a strong relationship with your list.

Just remember to sprinkle in education and relationship-building messages alongside your promotional emails so that your audience doesn’t see your emails in their inbox and think “Great, another ad!”.

Step #5: Use Simple Calls-To-Action And Landing Pages

While getting people to open your emails is great for your campaigns, you also want to make sure they’re clicking the links you include in those emails so you can generate more revenue.

That means using clear, compelling CTAs that drive traffic back to your website or product pages.

To give you an example, take a look at these two CTAs:

  1. Click here to learn more.
  2. Click here to grab your exclusive 20% members-only discount on our new Cabernet Sauvignon.

Which one do you think will more effectively get people to take action after reading your message?

This principle flows into every other message you create, too, from your advertisements to your landing pages, order forms, and product pages.

You want to make sure people not only know what to do to move forward but also what the benefit is in them moving forward and doing what you want them to do.

Using clear, compelling, and simple calls-to-action is how you achieve that.

Ensure that you’re not confusing your visitors with multiple different CTAs or a complicated checkout process so that more of the people who click your link convert into new or returning customers.

Step #6: Nurture Relationships With Customers

Like we mentioned in step #4 — while your email list is great for generating revenue for your winery, it’s even better for nurturing relationships with your audience.

That means you don’t just want to send promotional email after promotional email.

If you use that strategy, eventually your subscribers will start tuning out and you’ll notice higher unsubscribe rates, lower open rates and (ultimately) lower sales revenue from your email list.

To avoid that, sprinkle in relationship building and nurture emails into your campaigns.

These can be anything from a simple thank you email after they make a purchase to offering special offers for loyal, returning customers.

You can also request feedback, reviews, and testimonials from your email subscribers by sending them a message shortly after they’ve made a purchase.

Then, when you’re running events, you can offer exclusive customer-only access to your events, tastings, and pre-release sales.

You can put these together with Mailberry, too.

Test out this prompt: “Thank our customers for purchasing our cabernet sauvignon and offer them exclusive access to our next in-person wine tasting event where we’re releasing our new pinot noir.”

Here’s what we got:

Step #7: Analyze & Optimize Your Campaigns

Now, in order to make your campaigns as effective as possible, you want to analyze and optimize.

The main metrics you’re looking to measure are:

  • Revenue Generated Per Email
  • Average Email Open Rate
  • Average Clickthrough Rate
  • Average Unsubscribe Rate

Monitoring each of these metrics lets you quickly determine the overall health of your email list.

Your email list is a living, breathing, evolving ecosystem that you’ll want to always monitor.

If you notice your revenue per email is starting to dwindle, you can dive in and take a look at what you’ve been sending to determine what changed.

It may require an adjustment in your approach, either by sending fewer promotional emails and more relationship-building emails, by reducing the frequency you send, or by adjusting the time you send.

Likewise, if you notice your unsubscribe rates starting to climb, it could be a sign that you’re sending too many promotional emails or you aren’t sending promotions that your people want to see.

On the other side of that, though, if you notice that your clickthrough rates stay high and your unsubscribe rates stay low, you can rinse and repeat what you’ve been doing to achieve those same results.

As time goes on, you’ll find the perfect balance between delivering what your audience wants to see while still increasing your email revenue month over month.

Final Thoughts

If you want to take your winery onto the global stage, you need to use marketing strategies that help you transcend those geographical boundaries.

Using email marketing helps you reach a wider audience that’s far beyond your local reach.

It’s one of the best ways to drive new sales, foster brand loyalty, and deliver valuable data on customer engagement, preferences, and behaviors.

If you follow the steps that we’ve broken down in this guide, and use a tool like Mailberry to help craft those custom campaigns, you’ll see significant growth in your winery’s revenue.

And you’ll have more happy customers, too.
If you haven’t already joined, start your Free FOREVER Mailberry account now.