We used to have a free email marketing course called ‘Send Email. Make Money.’ It was a catchy hook, but it was probably a little bit misleading. A LOT goes into producing an effective email marketing campaign.
Today, we’re going to teach you step by step the process we use with our one-on-one clients and that we teach to our PRESS SEND students, so you can get the best results from your email marketing efforts.
If you’re skipping any one of these steps, you’re probably missing out on valuable insights AND revenue to help you reach your goals. Keep reading (or watch the episode) to find out where you may be leaving money on the table.
Erica has been creating and sending marketing emails for wineries since the late 2000s. She has almost two decades of experience helping brands send effective campaigns that have generated millions of dollars in revenue. Not just in total, adding up to millions over the years. But like, A CAMPAIGN that has generated 7 figures.
We’re telling you this not to brag. We’re telling you this so you believe us when we say…
EVERY winery can sell wine online when they execute effective marketing emails.
But unfortunately, many wineries are missing key steps in producing their marketing emails, resulting in missed opportunities and sometimes flat-out awkward experiences for their customers. In almost 20 years of email marketing for wine brands, we’ve created a 6-step process that we follow to create and send our most effective emails, and we’re teaching it to you now.
The Email Mavens Email Marketing Process
1. Strategy
What is our goal? And how will we accomplish it?
This is also when we define who it’s for, and what assets we have in our toolkit to help us accomplish the goal: pictures, stories, reviews and scores, website landing pages, anything and anywhere our customers may interact with our content to help us drive them to take action.
2. Copywriting
We craft compelling narratives that inspire our customers to take action. (The strongest ones lead with the customer’s story, not the winery’s. That’s winery storytelling.)
Once we’ve written our winning email draft, we move on to…
3. Design
Using images, videos, and text, we tell the story in the inbox.
We work with all our clients to establish their email brand standards, and use those standards combined with available assets identified in the strategy phase to create a beautiful, on-brand email design. (If your winery doesn’t have documented standards yet, here’s how to create an email brand guide in under an hour.)
4. Build & Test
Building is the process of coding the email itself or using a template in the email service provider.
Testing is a quality control process where we ensure it looks and functions well across the wide variety of devices and platforms out there.
5. Deploy
Now it’s finally time to send the email to the target audience or audiences at the optimal time for results.
AND many marketers stop there. We sent it. On to the next.
But there’s a 6th step that every marketing email needs to go through, so that you not only get the message out there, you actually understand your customers better and can craft even more effective campaigns next time. We call it:
6. Analyze & Optimize
We look at critical data like email click rates, conversions, unsubscribes, and bounces. But we also dig deeper by looking at what was clicked on, who clicked, and where our customers hung out on our website after they clicked.
Just looking at the metrics is important, don’t get me wrong. But by digging a layer deeper you can uncover insights that help you refine your strategies within the campaign itself, for resends and such, and to refine your strategy for future campaigns. (Formal A/B tests belong in this phase too.)
Example: the extra layer in action
Last week, Erica was on a call with a student who had created a campaign to sell some holiday collections. While the campaign had strong metrics in terms of opens and clicks, she was disappointed with the sales results.
So we dug that extra layer and identified that the first call to action generated an email to her instead of sending traffic to the website to peruse available offerings. Not the easiest experience for a customer. We moved a link to see what was on offer above the scroll, and the button to email her for personalized support to the bottom, after the customer had a chance to see a little more.
We also identified that one of the top-performing links was low in the email hierarchy. One collection was particularly interesting to the customers who were engaging, but they had to scroll to get to it. So we moved that collection up to the first featured spot to amplify the top performer even more.
Analyze & Optimize is one of our favorite ways to learn, but it’s easy to skimp on this phase when you’re rushing or creating campaigns at the last minute. Of the six stages we teach, I’m guessing it’s the one that gets skipped the most.
But…
Wineries also skip strategy. They don’t use effective copywriting, and may not have a defined email identity in the inbox to inform their design.
When you take each of these six steps seriously, your email marketing will improve. And your sales will improve. You’ll get better results faster, every time you press send.
Take Action
So, which step are you going to add to your own email marketing process? Are there any missing steps in OUR process? We’d love to hear your insights, so email us at erica@emailmavens.com and let us know what you’re going to add or refine.
And if you want the full system, every one of these six steps taught in depth with worksheets and examples, that’s exactly what PRESS SEND is.
At Email Mavens we believe that every winery can sell more wine online by sending better marketing emails.
Keep pressing send on your next best email.
Winery Email Marketing Process FAQs
What are the six steps of an effective winery email campaign?
Strategy, copywriting, design, build and test, deploy, and analyze and optimize. Each one compounds the next: strategy defines the goal and assets, copy and design tell the story, testing protects the experience, and analysis makes the next campaign better than this one.
What step do most wineries skip?
Analyze and optimize. Most marketers stop at deploy: sent it, on to the next. But the post-send layer, what was clicked, who clicked, and where they went afterward, is where the insights that grow revenue actually live.
What does “analyze and optimize” look like in practice?
Go past the topline metrics. Check whether the first CTA sends people where buyers actually want to go, whether top-performing content is buried low in the email, and what the click data says about which offers resonate. Then fix the hierarchy and test again.
