Oh s***! If the month of October, and the entire whirlwind of holiday email marketing campaigns, snuck up on you, never fear! Email Mavens are here to help you play catch-up.
Today, you’ll learn the most important thing you can do right now to ensure your marketing emails get maximum traction. Do us a favor and give yourself 30 minutes to actually put what you learn into action today. It’ll be your holiday gift to yourself.
Before we give you the secret to getting maximum traction on your marketing efforts this holiday season, I want to ask you: what do you think it is?
- A stylized photo shoot?
- A deep dive on inventory building?
- A holiday catalog on your website?
Those are all important if you want to maximize your ecommerce. But if your emails don’t get delivered, or if you alienate your subscribers by going from a trickle of emails to a deluge, you’re not just going to suffer this holiday season. You’re going to suffer into the new year as well.
The Most Important Thing You Can Do Right Now Is Clean Up and Re-Engage Your Email List
Here’s how:
1. Identify Dormant Subscribers
How do you identify dormant subscribers? This is based on your winery’s unique sending cadence. How frequently you send emails to your list dictates the amount of time it would take for a customer to be qualified as dormant.
Example:
- If you email customers only once a month, don’t qualify someone as dormant until they’ve been on your list for at least a year and haven’t opened any emails in that time.
- If you send emails consistently every week, you can shorten the dormant period to 180 or even 90 days.
One caveat: Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates opens, so where your platform allows it, define dormancy by opens AND clicks or site activity, so quietly engaged subscribers don’t get swept out.
Run the numbers, identify the dormant customers, and be sure to scan for any wine club members or top buyers. You’ll want to reach out to those folks personally.
2. Invite Dormant Subscribers to Re-Engage
Once you’ve identified your dormant subscribers, invite them to re-engage, temporarily pause, or opt out. (That pause option is what email preference management does best: fewer emails beats zero emails.)
We love doing this with a plain text email. It serves two purposes:
- It can “pattern interrupt.” If you typically send image-heavy HTML campaigns, a subscriber’s ISP may have been blocking your emails. A plain text email can sneak through.
- It appears more personal simply by its format.
In the email:
- Lead with a sentence or two acknowledging they haven’t opened your emails lately.
- Ask directly if they’re still interested.
- Remind them of the value of being on your email list: your email program’s value statement, or something specific you have planned for the holiday season.
- Tell them how to confirm their interest: click a link, reply to the email, or go to your online store to claim a win-back code (if you want to turn this into an ecommerce driver). You don’t have to give them a win-back code. You can simply remind them of existing offers like complimentary shipping incentives or case discounts.
- Finally, tell them what will happen if they don’t take action: you’ll remove them from your active senders list.
3. Handle Non-Engagers
Send your email and move anybody who doesn’t respond onto a suppression list.
How to suppress: archive contacts in Mailchimp, or add them to a suppression list in Klaviyo, if you don’t want to lose the ability to market to them in the future. Suppressed and archived contacts won’t count toward your billable contacts, but you keep their history, so you won’t have to jump through hoops later if you want to reconnect with them.
Sending to unengaged audiences is a big red flag any time of the year, but especially when it’s time to turn on the promotional email faucet. Be sure to clean up your list in October!
Want the full system behind this quick win, including the churn data that convinces winery leadership and how to automate the whole flow? That’s all in why you should dump some of your subscribers.
Bonus Maneuver: Ramp Up Before You Blast
We recommend slightly ramping up your email sending volume starting in October so your customers get used to seeing you in their inbox before Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Going from zero to 100 in November and December is the fastest way to land on an ISP blacklist or freak out your customers.
There you have it, your quick win to gear up for holiday email marketing success: pruning your email list.
TAKE ACTION
- Identify your dormant subscribers.
- Draft your plain text email asking if they’re still interested.
- Give them something to do to confirm interest or unsubscribe.
- Send that email.
- Decide whether to archive, suppress, or add non-engagers to a suppression list.
With your list clean, you’re ready to actually plan the sends. Map your season with the nine winery holiday email campaigns that sell more wine.
Once you’ve completed these steps, we’d love to hear about your experience cleaning up your list. Email Erica at erica@emailmavens.com with what was easiest and what was hardest or where you got stuck. We always enjoy engaging with email party people like you!
Speaking of email party people, if you’re not already on the list, now’s the time to opt in for our Friday knowledge-bomb emails. It’ll help you not only by delivering this content to your inbox each Friday, but also by giving you tools and motivation to implement what we teach!
Keep pressing send on your next best email!
Pre-Holiday Email List Cleanup FAQs
When should wineries clean their email list before the holidays?
October. Cleaning before you turn on the promotional faucet protects your deliverability exactly when it matters most, and it gives dormant subscribers time to re-engage before your Black Friday and Cyber Monday sends.
How long without engagement makes a subscriber dormant?
It depends on your cadence. Monthly senders should wait until someone’s been on the list a year with no opens; weekly senders can use 180 or even 90 days. Pair opens with click and site-activity data, since Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates opens.
Should wineries increase sending volume before Black Friday?
Yes, gradually, starting in October. A steady ramp gets subscribers (and inbox providers) used to seeing you before the November surge. Going from near-silence to daily promos is the fastest way to hit spam filters and annoy your list.
