5 Emails in 5 Days? Heck yea, you should.
In the conclusion of our Cyber Weekend series, we’re showing you how to take advantage of Small Business Saturday and Giving Tuesday to shift gears from transactions and create a true connection with your subscribers.
Give your customers a reason to open your email that doesn’t involve a deal. The internet will be a better place for it.
While we are ALL about helping you sell more wine online (that’s the whole purpose of this blog), you cannot send ONLY sales emails and expect your subscribers to gobble up what you’re sending. Black Friday and Cyber Monday get all the attention, but the real winery email heroes show up on the days AFTER these two heavy-hitters.
Taking a break to acknowledge the WHY behind your winery, and how you give back to your community or meaningful causes, is a great downshift from the SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY craze that dominates the sales days. Let’s unpack these unsung heroes, shall we?
Small Business Saturday
Small Business Saturday is the Saturday after Thanksgiving, introduced in 2010 by American Express to promote small businesses in the wake of a fairly significant recession. Since then, the SBA has come onboard as official cosponsor of this day celebrating small businesses and all they do for their communities.
What does this have to do with wineries?
The majority of wineries in the United States ARE small businesses. Small Business Saturday is an under-leveraged opportunity to invite locals to celebrate with you for a tasting, and to remind customers farther away that your online sales help you spread your impact.
So why aren’t more wineries sending something on Small Business Saturday? Usually bandwidth: not having enough resources to pull off the sales stuff, let alone a brand message in the middle of it.
If that’s your situation, this is the perfect spot for a plain text email in your Cyber 5 strategy. Set a timer for 10 minutes and write a heartfelt note about the why behind your small business, thanking your customers for their impact. You don’t HAVE to include an offer, but if you want to weave in an in-person tasting invitation or a reminder about your online deals, sneak it in as a P.S. (Skeptical that plain text can sell? A 176-word plain text note outsold every designed email in one client’s holiday campaign.)
Giving Tuesday
Giving Tuesday is held every year on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, a global movement encouraging giving, collaborating, and celebrating generosity. Created in 2012 by the 92nd Street Y in New York City, it has grown into a worldwide network of organizations on a mission to make generosity part of everyday life.
What does this have to do with wineries?
Many wineries support their local communities or nonprofits with their profits, or even specific wines. Giving Tuesday is the natural vehicle to showcase those initiatives.
But what if your winery DOESN’T have a go-to nonprofit? Even without a large-scale cause, your winery has likely donated wine to local events. Make a list and showcase those organizations in your Giving Tuesday campaign.
Or spotlight your sustainability efforts. A NielsenIQ study found 78% of US consumers say a sustainable lifestyle is important to them, and two-thirds of US wine consumers say sustainable production matters in their purchase decisions. Showcase the efforts you’re making through packaging decisions or work in the vineyard, on a day when consumer sentiment is already feel-good.
You could even send an email that inspires your customers with stories of good deeds you’ve witnessed at the winery, or your team’s favorite causes.
Still drawing a blank? Yeesh. Well, put a pin in this one for next year, and make this the year your winery does a little more good so Giving Tuesday isn’t a total whiff, eh?
Take Action
Now that you’ve read this, are you going all in on 5 emails in 5 days?
(We skipped Sunday in this post, but we cover what to send on Sunday in part 1 of this series.)
Even if you only incorporate ONE of these ideas, your customers will appreciate knowing a little more of your why, AND you’ll feel better about pressing send, because you’re not just asking for sales. You’re sharing your story.
This is the final installment of our Cyber Weekend series. If you missed the rest, go back and get some: part one on cadence and targeting, and part two where our client data settles Black Friday vs. Cyber Monday. And if you hate missing knowledge bomb drops, subscribe to the weekly Email Party, where we go deeper to help you put what you learn into practice.
At Email Mavens we believe every winery can sell more wine online by sending better marketing emails. And while very little of today’s content was a hard sell, only going hard on sales is a recipe for email marketing disaster. Mixing in a thoughtful brand message, ESPECIALLY at the height of Cyber Weekend hype, could be just the thing that keeps your customers connected AND coming back. So go get personal, and press send on a Small Business Saturday or Giving Tuesday email. It could be your BEST email yet.
