National ugly sweater day is December 20 this year. Erica’s got her entry ready.

Sure, her sweater is ugly, but you know what’s not going to be ugly? Your email marketing results in the holidays!

Thanks to the things you’re going to do right now to make sure your best-looking holiday email campaigns come together like a perfectly decorated Christmas tree.

Read to the end for a surprising campaign you can send this quarter that will help you surprise and delight even more of your best customers this holiday.

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

In part one of this Christmas in July series, we shared three things you can do right now so your current email marketing efforts are actually helping you come OND. In today’s part two, we are shifting gears away from email marketing and list growth because there are non-platform related things you should be doing right now so the holidays don’t sneak up on you.

Do this ASAP for a successful October, November, December:

1. Lock in your offers

Now is the time to lock in what your holiday offers are going to be.

• You need to look at inventory to see what you have available to sell. Anything from the library advantage you’re a little long on? Can you bundle together a few special and limited wines with a vintage that you’re long on so that you can move more of all of it?
• Consider any discounts you want to offer.
• Think about shipping incentives and cutoffs too.
• Consider categorizing gifts by recipient, price point, giving occasion, and format.

The time you put into this now makes everything you do between now and then more intentional. So, pick your offers now.

2. Plan a Photoshoot

Now that you know what your offers are going to be, you’ve got to plan a holiday photo shoot. A picture paints a th0usand words, so curate some awesome images of your holiday gifts or your entire portfolio in a holiday context.

• Make a shot list based on the marketing emails that you know you’re going to be sending. Get a good mix of portrait and landscape photos so that you have some flexibility. Make sure that any of your curated gifts are shot together.
• Make it a priority to get those images ASAP. Whether that’s hiring a professional photographer or locking in on portrait mode on the old iPhone, be ready with beautiful on-brand, holiday-specific imagery. This will give you so much more freedom and flexibility when it comes time to build your email campaigns during OND.

3. Assess The Customer Experience

Next, assess the customer experience on your website and in-person. Now is the time to evaluate the operational component of your checkout and of your gift order process.

• Is it seamless to enter multiple shipping addresses during your online checkout process? My guess is no.
• Could you create holiday gift signage for your tasting room? Effectively guide customers to your gift solutions.
• Do you need to hire or train a concierge to handle corporate gifts or large gift orders?
• Use everything you learn going through these questions to create a landing page or even a microsite for your winery’s holiday offers to live on. So, spend the time now to really audit the current state of affairs.

Case Study: Don’t learn this the hard way!

Just recently, the Email Mavens finished an email marketing strategy audit and assessment for a winery based in Paso. We went through the process of really taking a look at everything they were sending—both from a transactional message perspective but also automations flows and their ongoing email marketing campaigns.

One thing that we uncovered in this process was that they had disabled some of the transactional emails that prompted new customers to activate their online account. Now, this isn’t the end of the world. In fact, Commerce7, the platform in question that they were using, tends to send quite a few transactional emails all at once based on when an email address is added to their system, so we get it.

But the problem is, if you have a new customer with an account that’s created for them but the only email that ever gets them to access that account is turned off, the next time they come to your website to spend money, they’re going to have a problem…

“I think I bought wine from these guys before…”
“Where’s my username and my password?”
“Do I have a username and password?”
“Maybe I just need to start all over. Eh, forget it.”
“I thought I had a saved credit card…”
“I don’t know…”
“Eh! I’ll buy my wine somewhere else.”

Listen, that might be blowing it up a little bit, but the fact of the matter is, they hadn’t even considered that this could potentially create problems for their customer in the checkout process down the road.

Are there things like that potentially creating a hiccup for your customers? Figure it out now so that you can create a thoughtful solution.

4. Survey Your Customers

Finally, ask your customers about what they’d like to see this holiday season. Set up a quick three-question survey or simply ask the question in a plain text email to your very best customers: asking them to…

1. Share their experience.
2. What they would like?
3. What they would give someone else? and
4. How you can WOW them?

You’d be surprised what your best customers have to share with you!

TAKE ACTION

That’s your mission for this week!

• Take a look at your inventory and your e-commerce goals to design the offers you’ll make available throughout the holidays.
• Create a photoshoot list of images you’ll use for your email campaigns (and that could serve double duty on social media and website landing pages) and prioritize getting those images now.
• Then audit your customer experience online and remove any friction points within your ability. Some of them you don’t have control over, but figure it out now so you can efficiently address issues when they come up.
• And finally, send an email now to your best customers (or to all of them), asking for their feedback on how you can WOW them during the holidays.

The insights you gain from doing these activities now, while the urgency is a little lower, will be invaluable to helping you create the very best experience possible for your subscribers this holiday season.

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If you loved this part two in our Christmas in July series, you’re gonna love part one and part three.

Oh yeah, baby! There’s more HO HO HO where this came from.

At Email Mavens, we believe that every winery can sell more wine online by sending effective email marketing campaigns. Until next week, keep pressing send on your next best email (hopefully your next one being a survey 😉).