Are your email marketing metrics a bit depressing? Did you inherit a poorly trained email list?
Good news—your marketing emails can make a 180-degree turnaround in less than 180 days, and I’m here to prove it!
Watch today’s video case study (or scroll down to read) featuring one of our boutique clients to discover the key takeaways from a recent 4-week project and how you can replicate these results at your own winery to go from poor to excellent email performance.
Case Study: David’s Email Marketing Transformation Story
When David started his new position, he inherited an email list that was not quite what he was used to. David, a self-proclaimed “old-timer” in the wine business, had been selling wine directly to consumers for over 20 years. He moved from a highly responsive allocation model to a more casual wine-buying mailing list and club setup. His Klaviyo metrics? Fair to poor—across the board.
Luckily, David had worked with Email Mavens at his previous winery, so he’d learned the foundations to create some automations and he knew who to call about the opportunity that there was left to seize.
We worked together to install Email Essentials, the Email Maven’s starter package. This package optimizes every phase of the customer journey with automated email programs.
We’ll stop now and let David tell you about the big wins:
“All in all, we’ve definitely seen better sales from our email marketing. One of the unusual things we’ve seen is getting online wine club sign-ups that we weren’t getting prior. We have better retention through the club through our customers. And definitely improved communication, which kind of feeds into all the other things I just mentioned.”
You know, we love hearing this kind of feedback! But we are always curious to know more—we can see the metrics, but we are not always privy to the conversations happening at the winery or to the direct inquiries and feedback from their customers.
So, Erica pressed a bit: “What do you think really moved the needle here the most?”
David replied, “One of the really important things I learned through this was list hygiene, cleanup, and segmentation. I did a little bit of that before, but it definitely enhanced the way I do it and I learned a lot more detail about how to do it and why you would do it.”
“I also learned to optimize the integration setup between Commerce7 and Klaviyo. Klaviyo was scary to me at first; I’m not very tech-savvy, but having someone walk me through optimizing the integration was huge and hugely eye-opening. That’s the type of thing that helps you understand that, one, it’s very easy to segment, and two, why it’s important for detailed segmentation. It really changed how I look at the email marketing program altogether.”
If there was an email marketing hill we would stand on (besides the importance of a welcome email) it would be this:
You don’t need a bigger email list—you need an engaged email list.
And there’s no way to have an engaged list if you send everything to everyone. You have to segment, clean your list regularly, and be intentional about who you add to it.
A lot of small to medium wineries have someone telling them, “If some email is good, more is better! Just send it to everyone; you never know who might be interested.” But as David’s story shows, the metrics don’t back that up. If you want excellent open rates, click rates, and conversions, you have to send more targeted emails.
The Email Essentials package centers around automated emails, but each email we install in this system will also enhance the performance of all the other campaigns you send.
Working with us to develop the strategy, copy, and design for automated campaigns gives marketers insight into our processes and overall industry best practices.
David shared, “This has been super eye-opening. Probably the most important thing that is really fundamental and probably basic in your eyes but huge to me, is just learning the best practices and trying to understand and implement how you see email marketing.”
“When we re-engaged to do the audit, and you asked what I needed to know, the answer was simple: I need to know what I don’t know. I know this much, and that all seems pretty solid, but it’s what’s beyond that, that’s where the meat on the bone is. And the more you explained to me, from your wider vision of email marketing, it just changes the game. If I had had this knowledge in my early days of wine sales, I would have BLOW WINERIES UP.”
Of course, we can’t give anyone a time machine, so there’s no better time than now to take your email marketing to the next level and unlock transformations like this.
We asked David what the biggest impact was, and he said,
“My open rates and click rates have skyrocketed. That’s through using all of the techniques you showed me—list hygiene, segmentation, all these things. I know these are foundational to you, but they weren’t to me. And then also, understanding the relationship between the email service providers and my actions. That whole synergy started to come together. And now, I love looking at the Klaviyo reports; everything says ‘excellent’ instead of ‘poor.’”
YES! I mean talk about a transformation!
In our interview, David repeatedly emphasized that being careful and thoughtful about what and when they send emails was key to his success.
And while all the wins we’ve discussed so far make for a great story, getting started with email marketing as a revenue channel wasn’t second nature—it was a leap of faith for David.
“I am naturally curious with these things,” he shared, “I fear becoming a dinosaur in the business. If webinars pop up, even if they are things that don’t interest me, I really try and watch them and pay attention. But, I am also skeptical. Having done this a long time, a lot of people do this and they are trying to sell me something. Everyone’s going to tell the way they are going to build me more traffic. But watching your webinar, it was really eye-opening. It really knocked me back. I didn’t realize I was that far behind.“
“And in that webinar, you provided a toolbox that let a small to medium winery, who are often in my position, they have one maybe two people doing these things… I’m never going to have the marketing team that Opus One has, but I got to borrow some tools that are kind of on that level and that put me a little bit in the game.”
Let’s just pause for a second and acknowledge that how David discovered the Email Mavens was from a free training we did in collaboration with Bodie from Digimatic and our friends at Commerce 7. David felt he was given a toolbox to get him in the game from a FREE training!
Yes, he went on to engage with us to install email marketing automation programs at the winery he was at. But you can get light years ahead from actually doing something with what you learned in a free training (or a free blog post you read online *WINK*).
And you can decide right now that your time is money and then spend it on training and commit to following through with what you learned. It’s the best investment you can possibly make.
Okay this is a great natural segue, because now we want to talk about one of the lesser amplified, but no less important, aspects of installing automated marketing emails in your business. We all want to sell more wine online – that’s MORE MONEY. But you know what else is money… TIME!
Talking about the automated email programs he’s installed, David says,
“It works in the background. That’s probably one of the most important overarching benefits of all this; is it really freed up a lot of time for me. It’s doing a lot of work while I can’t be doing it… I don’t have time to call everyone who abandoned a cart today, but that’s just happening now. The club welcome series, it’s happening now. We have a tiny team. We don’t have people to do that. So these things, that’s invaluable. I guess that’s a real compliment to you because, I barely think about it. It’s just happening and it’s working. And it’s out of my mind. Thinking of all these ways that it can work in the background is just glorious.”
Investing in your email marketing automation programs is like BUYING TIME. It’s time your team isn’t spending, and it’s operationally doing things that help your customers save time. If your wine club members log in to their account online, they’re able to claim their benefits without calling you for help, and that’s saving everybody time and helping them spend their money!
Now, we’ve worked with wineries of all different sizes and scales to install Email Essentials, from huge brands with 6-figure subscriber lists to wineries with 4-figure subscriber lists.
This programming works for wineries of all kinds.
Just ask David:
“I recommend it for people who are doing little to nothing with email marketing, to people who are pretty sure they have a highly tuned up email marketing program. Everyone on that entire spectrum will benefit. And I would personally guarantee that.”
Wow David! Coming in hot with a personal guarantee. We love that!
Now let’s talk about return on investment.
Most wineries have a limited email marketing budget, which was initially a concern for David too. But as he shares,
“Everything I’ve done with you has more than paid itself off and on a faster timeline than I expected. I think it’s an investment in people’s personal futures and their futures at whatever workplace they are currently at. I’m learning skills that if I had to leave Meadowcroft tomorrow, I am going to carry these with me wherever I go. It’s a hugely different awareness; 360-degrees of communicating with your customers.”
David’s words speak joy into our hearts here at the Email Mavens. And I hope they inspire you to take a leap of faith today and take your email marketing seriously.
Your email marketing program can make a 180 degree transformation faster than you might think when you invest the time and energy in your customer experience.
Ready to fast-track your transformation?
Check out our Email Essentials starter package. Or learn with us for free here each week on our blog. Be sure to subscribe to our weekly email party so you never miss a free email marketing knowledge bomb!
At Email Mavens, we believe every winery can sell more wine online by sending better marketing emails. Until next week, keep pressing send on your next best email!
