Ho, ho, ho! It’s Christmas in July! 

If you’ve got visions of big online sales dancing in your head, I’m about to make those dreams come true with the Email Maven’s Christmas in July series. Keep reading this part one for the three things you should do right now to help you knock out your holiday sales.

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 campaigns.

Listen, if it takes a dorky Erica Claus outfit to get you paying attention to your holiday email planning right now, so be it. She is not above dressing up for a laugh or to make a point. So, let’s get right to it.

First things first, proactively tailor your email acquisition and nurture programs to a holiday mindset. Let’s look at these elements one at a time: acquisition first and then nurture.

Acquisition

You’re already growing your email list, right? Of course you are, because you either watched or read the three-part series with your roadmap to an additional half a million eCommerce sales this year.

• Review your current list growth efforts for opportunities to capitalize on holiday gift-giving. The more people on your email list in October, November, and December, the more people you can tell about:
  • Your incredible holiday gift guide
  • Your amazing, courteous, and helpful gift concierge
  • The events you host at the winery, like Santa visits.
• Since your holiday emails are going to be amazing, use that as the hook to get more people on your email list right now. Add a little holiday plug to your existing email program’s value statement so that your new subscribers are not only excited to receive your marketing emails but also primed for the opportunity to buy from you during the busy holiday season.
• Your mission is to set ambitious targets for email list growth this quarter and coach and incentivize your team around those targets right now.

Nurture

Make sure your onboarding and nurture campaigns are set up for holiday success as well.

According to research by Optimove, retailers experience 50% more transactions from first-time customers during the holiday season compared to the rest of the year.

• So, start thinking now about ways to convert gift-givers into your own repeat purchasers and brand advocates.
  • Educate them on why their gift purchase of your wine was such a smart move.
  • Showcase the reasons their gift was so awesome and why they could probably use some of that in their own lives too.
  • Share reviews from previous purchasers, visitors, and wine club members to help the gift-giver feel like they might need some of this action for themselves.
  • Offer an introductory four-pack or a complimentary tasting to help them experience your holiday magic for themselves.
• While you’re at it, review all of your existing automations to see if they could use any holiday-specific razzle-dazzle.
  • Create shipping deadline banners that can ride along with your cart abandonment campaign to add urgency around getting that sleigh to arrive on time.
  • If you have specific sales or promotions coming up during the holiday season, calendar those and add PS and teasers to your automations and transactional emails during these windows to drive even more engagement.

A/B Testing

You need to A/B Test for holiday success.

• What would be so helpful to know before you go into the holiday season?
• Definitely watch or read our content about A/B Testing for conversions.
• You might also want to know about the top-performing days of the week or times of day so that you aren’t spitting into the wind when the holiday season rolls around.

—

There you have it—three things you can start doing right now to set yourself up to knock out your holiday sales.

In part two of this series, we shift gears and talk about some non-email-specific things you should do ASAP to gear up for the holiday season.

If you aren’t already, be sure you join our weekly Email Party and you’ll be notified when new content is live. Every second you waste right now is a chance that Santa’s sleigh full of e-commerce results could be delayed!

No lumps of coal in here, baby!

At Email Mavens, we believe that every winery can sell more wine online by sending effective email marketing campaigns, and this series is dedicated to helping you knock out your October, November, and December email marketing results. So implement what you’ve learned, and then read part two!

And keep pressing send on your next best email.