Since the broad acceptance of email as the most efficient way to communicate, the medium has grown exponentially. According to an article written by Sharon Hurley Hall, more than 74 trillion emails are sent every year and the number continues to go up year after year.
I remember as far back in the early 2000s asking people at conferences at which I was speaking “How many of you don’t receive enough emails?” No one ever raised their hand and emails have become much more pervasive since then.
While emails make it easy to send information to your customers, these same customers are also receiving emails from many of your competitors. In the next couple of blogs, I am going to talk about many of the ways you can make your email stand out from the crowd.
Create individual emails for different groups of customers
Segmentation of your email list is one of the most important things that you can do. The top 10 to 20% of your customers who buy the most wine and buy more frequently should receive more emails from you than those who purchase once each year. Sending too many emails to infrequent buyers could cause them to buy less rather than more
Sort your customers by their buying patterns:
- How often they buy
- What products they buy
- When they buy
- The process (buy through email, in person, over the phone, at events)
Subscribe to your competitors’ emails
How many emails for businesses that you in some way compete with do you subscribe to and read? Take your 10-20 closest competitors and make sure that you are on their email list. I subscribe to many winery emails and most of them are very much alike. Create your emails to incorporate subjects that others are not.
Personal stories connect
Make the lead story one that will further connect your customers to your brand. Many of your customers feel connected with your winery and with the people who own or work for the winery. Feature a different employee once per quarter or solicit stories from your customers about your wine. Use those topics as the opening story though keep the stories short. You can add information about the grapes and the wines further into the email.
People connect with people more quickly than they connect with grapevines. Once you have secured the connection, then move onto product and what you want their response to be.
Subject line
As I mentioned in my tip last Friday, “47% of email recipients open an email based on the subject line alone.” That being the case, create a subject line that will connect with recipients and make them want to read more.
Next week more insights on creating successful emails.
A tip of the glass from me to you.
E Column
by Elizabeth “E” Slater, In Short Direct Marketing
A recognized expert in the fields of direct marketing and sales in the wine marketplace. Slater has taught more wineries and winery associations how to create and improve the effectiveness of their direct marketing programs and to make the most of each customer’s potential than anyone in the wine industry today.
Follow E on twitter @esavant and facebook.
