If you want to sell more wine online with your email campaigns, you only need to remember three letters – ABT: Always Be Testing. 

A/B testing can increase everything from email deliverability to your open rates and the amount of traffic you’re sending to your winery website. With so many things that you could test, it actually gets a little overwhelming and difficult to narrow it down to the tests that will actually move the needle for your winery and help you sell more wine. Good news! It’s time to KISS. Keep It Simple, Silly!

Today, we’re teaching you three A/B tests your winery can start to experiment with right away to increase your conversion rates.

Use these tests frequently so that you can sell more wine every time you press send.

Welcome to the Email Maven’s blog, the place for winery owners and marketing pros who want to sell more wine online by sending better email marketing campaigns. 

Before we dig into the three A/B tests that will increase your winery’s conversion rates, we’ve got to take you to science class.

Even if your least favorite subject in school was science, we believe you can fall in love with the scientific method now that you’re older. We use the scientific method to design all of our A/B tests. We start with a hypothesis, we design our tests to prove said hypothesis, and then we apply what we know so that we can continue testing.

Okay, so now that we’re all on the same page about how to do an A/B test using the scientific method, it’s time for us to talk about the elements that you should test to increase your winery’s conversion rates.

1. TEST YOUR OFFERS 

How you position what you offer to your customers matters. Your customers are motivated by different things, but identifying which kinds of offers appeal to the majority of your customers can help you refine your strategy down the road. You don’t have to set up totally different offers to A/B test this. You could position the same offer as sitewide savings or member-for-a-week benefits, offer a percentage off on a bundle versus dollars off on a bundle, 72-hour shipping sale versus long weekend shipping sale. You catching our drift? You don’t have to do a bunch of backend different offer stuff. Keep it simple.

So in this example, let’s start with the hypothesis.

• HYPOTHESIS: Member-for-a-week benefits is going to convert more online sales because it’s time-bound, creates urgency, and implies status acceptance.
• HOW WILL WE KNOW IF WE’RE RIGHT? Conversions attributed to the campaign creative with member-for-a-week as the hook will be higher than the conversions attributed to the sitewide savings email.
• WHAT WILL WE DO WITH WHAT WE LEARN? If we’re correct, we will pilot a biannual member-for-a-week promotion on our calendar with a time-bound incentive to join membership for anybody who buys from the promotion. 

See how we did that? Booya!

2. TEST YOUR CALLS TO ACTION

The way you send traffic to your website to buy can impact if they actually do it. Test the words that go on your button, the format of your calls to action (buttons versus plain text), the color on your buttons or links, and where your buttons actually send people.

All right, so let’s apply our scientific method to these A/B tests. 

• HYPOTHESIS: “Save Now” will convert higher than “Shop Now” because “save” will lean on financial gain as the motivator, and our customers have been proven to be motivated by financial gain.
• HOW WILL WE KNOW IF WE’RE RIGHT? The click-through to conversion rates on “Save Now” will be higher.
• WHAT WILL WE DO WITH WHAT WE LEARN? Well, I’ll use “Save Now” more frequently and then maybe even test adding the percentage or dollar savings to see if specificity on the savings works better.

Whammy! We just scientific method-ed that so hard.

3. TEST YOUR EMAIL LAYOUT

How much information you choose to share with your customers to inspire action can impact your customer’s propensity to buy. Test visual storytelling with multiple selling blocks versus a simple straightforward postcard, test technical details versus seasonal inspiration, test featuring multiple products versus just one hero product, and test a plain text letter with no branding versus a more image-based marketing email.

All right, we’re going to do the scientific method this one too. 

• HYPOTHESIS: Having featured products in our spring shipping promotional email will generate more sales than a single hero product because showing them options will make them click to view.
• HOW WILL WE KNOW IF WE’RE RIGHT? Our creative with the featured product block that has multiple offerings will have higher overall sales than the single featured product.
• WHAT WILL WE DO WITH WHAT WE LEARN? Assuming we’re right, we will test featured products that we select vs featured products that are dynamically populated based on our customers’ previous purchases.

All right, we did it. We went to science class and we know what to test. 

Now that you know the three most powerful A/B tests for increasing email conversions, where do you want to start? Pinky promise that you will use one of these strategies in your next email campaign. Start simple, work your way up, and you will become a scientific method hero!

Would you love an entire year’s worth of email testing ideas served up on the digital equivalent of a hot platter? 

Then you’ve got to sign up for the Email Maven’s weekly email party because we will send you our A/B testing cheat sheet as our thanks for opting in. You’ll also receive an email every week that helps you send better marketing emails that sell more wine. Be an email party person and subscribe today! 

At Email Mavens, we believe that every winery can sell more wine online by sending better marketing emails, and the tests you learn today are 100% going to help you sell more wine online every time you press send. 

So until next week, do some A/B testing (ABT) and keep pressing send on your next best email.