The holiday season is the busiest time of year for DTC wine marketers.
Wine lovers will soon celebrate Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Hannukah, Kwanza, Christmas, and the New Year with friends and family.
And chances are your best customers’ inboxes will be bursting at the seams with unread emails.
To put this problem in perspective, on Black Friday 2021 alone, over 6.9 billion emails were sent.
So how can a motivated wine marketer cut through the noise to reach their customers despite this competition?
For savvy wine merchants this season, the answer is text marketing.
Not only do they know that opt-in text messages sent by wine brands are 32-times more effective than email marketing, but they also know the holiday season is the perfect time to text their customers.
According to wine industry expert Lewis Perdue, the DTC sales boost driven by marketing messages delivered to mobile devices is particularly apparent during the holiday season. The research he shared last year Wine Industry Insight shows “mobile and desktop about evenly divided for e-purchases, but that changes big-time with the upcoming holidays.”
For today’s wine merchants, consumer demand for mobile commerce coupled with 98% open rates and the 14% click-thru rates reported by SMS wine marketers have created the perfect environment for maximizing holiday wine sales.
2022 HOLIDAY SMS WINE MARKETING PLAYBOOk
If your wine business is ready to take advantage of the enormous opportunity presented by opt-in text marketing, here’s a simple checklist you can follow to get started immediately:
Sign-up for an SMS wine marketing service
Wine is a highly regulated product requiring merchants to comply with strict age verification and customer consent rules. So, working with a text messaging service built for wine marketing is essential. The great news is that with the help of an SMS wine marketing service, a fully customized system can be ready for your use in 10-days or less, with prices starting at $29/mo.Promote your SMS wine marketing channels
SMS marketing is purely opt-in, so you’ll need your customers’ permission before sending any texts. Fortunately, most consumers enjoy text messages from their favorite brands. So use email, social media, your website, and tasting room to offer your best customers a chance to connect via text. They’ll be thrilled while you’re building your opt-in list.Deliver a predictable cadence of helpful text messages
Wine marketers may see text messaging as a way to grow sales, but consumers view business texts as a customer service they control. So successful wine merchants pay close attention to the text messages customers want and how often they want to receive them. Using an SMS preference center to target your messages and sending them on a regular schedule is a proven recipe for success.
5 PROVEN HOLIDAY SMS IDEAS TO BOOST SALES REVENUE
Whether you’re new to SMS marketing or are looking for new ways to use it over the holiday season, here are five proven ways to tap into your opt-in list to increase sales revenue using text messaging:
Schedule Bulk Text Messages in Advance
If you use a business texting platform, you’ll be able to schedule text messages in advance. Using this capability enables you to concentrate on other pressing matters over the holiday season while knowing your text messages are being delivered at the right time to the right audience.Send Cart Abandonment Messages
Did you know that nearly 70% of online customers abandon their cart before purchasing? An automated abandoned cart message can salvage lost holiday sales effortlessly If you use an SMS wine marketing platform linked to your commerce system.Create a Post-Purchase SMS Campaign
When new prospects sign up to receive your text messages, you’ll want to engage them at every step of their customer journey. SMS drip campaigns are perfect for automatically asking for reviews, sending links to learn more about your wine, and offering new customers an opportunity to buy more.Leverage Existing Holiday Campaigns
If you create holiday campaigns for your other DTC marketing channels – email, social media, clubs, or tasting rooms – do yourself a favor by promoting your offers via text. Even a tiny SMS list can generate record sales results with better message delivery and customer click-thru.Use Time-Limited Offers
Many consumers wait until the last minute to finish their holiday shopping. So why not use this quirk of human nature to drive more sales? Time-limited offers are a proven way to motivate last-minute shoppers, especially when coupled with holiday delivery deadlines.
HOLIDAY WINE SALES ARE JUST THE BEGINNING
For DTC wineries using text messaging to stay in touch with their best customers, holiday sales are just the beginning.
Any success you achieve with text messaging now will continue to pay handsome dividends next year with happier customers and more DTC sales, courtesy of SMS wine marketing.
By continuing to build your opt-in list of text marketing subscribers, 2023 can be your happiest holiday season ever.
Happy Selling!