Now that wineries have discovered the power of SMS marketing, the race is on to see which wine businesses will profit and at whose expense.
With customer engagement 32-times better than email marketing, even new wineries can quickly grow a small text messaging list that outperforms thousands of email addresses. For wineries with established DTC lists, the news is even better.
If your winery can convince 3% of your existing list to opt-in for text messaging, you'll succeed in creating an entirely new DTC channel that sells as much wine as the other 97%.
And here's the best news of all…
SMS wine marketing is easy to do, inexpensive, and can generate game-changing results in days by following these three easy steps:
STEP 1: Decide What You'll Offer Customers
When you ask your best customers to invite your brand into their mobile universe, it's vital to offer a good reason. And since consumers always control the text marketing relationship, your offers must always benefit them.
Perhaps your customers have already asked to text your winery or receive wine club updates via text. If so, you might already have a list of ways to serve your customers better using SMS messaging.
To start from scratch, make a list of your most popular emails. Then make a list of the most common questions your customers have when calling the winery. Ideally, you'll want to offer them a convenient way to answer their questions via text.
In practice, many winery's needs are met by offering consumers six ways to engage with text messaging:
Concierge Services available via text
Wine Club Updates sent via text as needed
Order Tracking Notifications triggered by new shipments
Periodic updates about New Wine Releases
Monthly updates about Special Wine Deals
Weekly Tasting Room Updates
PRO-TIP: For maximum engagement with loyal customers, perform a simple survey asking them what texts they'd like to receive from your brand. You might learn something, and when you offer your customers the chance to signup for your SMS program, they'll already be on board.
Whatever you decide to offer, make sure you focus on real customer needs. And don't get too stressed. You won't be locking yourself into anything and can always change your text messaging offers later. This step shouldn't take more than a day or two if you're motivated.
STEP 2: Choose an SMS Wine Marketing Platform
Once you've identified the customer services you'll deliver via text, your next step is to choose an SMS wine marketing platform.
Fortunately, many vendors now serve the wine industry and offer a broad range of marketing tools and price points. So do your due diligence by confirming the platform you select has all the tools needed to support your most important SMS marketing goals.
Critical tools for wine marketers often include:
Two-Way Text Conversations
Essential for text-based concierge services. If you have a large hospitality team, make sure the system you select supports multiple team members as needed.
Text Marketing Preference Center
Essential for segmenting customers based on individual interests. Preference-based messaging is the best way to maximize customer satisfaction and minimize unsubscribes.
Integration with Wine Commerce Systems
Essential for automating transactional messages like order confirmations, reservation reminders, and shipping notifications.
Automated Text Marketing Workflows
Essential for quickly responding to customer inquiries and maximizing staff productivity.
Age Compliance Mechanism
Essential for complying with state and federal regulations. SMS wine marketing systems must have an easy way to collect date-of-birth and filter out contacts younger than 21.
PRO-TIP: To send more than 200 text messages a day, use a toll-free phone number since they can deliver thousands of messages in seconds. If customers also call your local number, you should text-enable it too, so your team can engage consumers in two-way text conversations.
As long as you choose a platform that delivers the tools needed to support your top priorities, you can't go wrong. Worst case, if your plans change or your SMS platform doesn't deliver as expected, you'll still have all your data and opt-in contacts. So you can change your SMS marketing system if needed. Even with due diligence, this step should take a week or less.
STEP 3: Launch Your SMS Wine Marketing Program
When your SMS marketing platform is ready to go, it's time to launch your new text messaging service to customers. The wineries we've worked with have enjoyed success launching their SMS programs using a combination of:
Email invitations to existing contacts
Webforms targeting prospects visiting your website from a desktop computer
"Click-to-text" buttons targeting prospects visiting your website from a mobile device
"Scan-to-text" signs that use QR codes to invite tasting room visitors to join your list
Keywords your customers can text to your brand to join your SMS list
Printed offers accompanying product shipments
PRO-TIP: For an in-depth tutorial on the best practices of growing SMS wine marketing lists, check out "The 7 Best Ways Wineries Can Grow Their Text Marketing Lists."
To get you started, your SMS wine marketing partner should be happy to help you with all the tools needed to introduce your new text messaging services and grow your lists over time using drip marketing techniques. Even if you take the time to set up all of these marketing offers, this step can be accomplished in less than a week.
USING TEXT MARKETING TO CREATE A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE NOW
In a world where 90% of online consumers want text messages from their favorite brands, but only 9% of U.S. wineries text their customers, this epic mismatch between consumer preference and industry practice spells nothing but opportunity for wineries focused on growth.
And unless you think text messaging is going away soon, the only real choice you have to make is whether you let your competition profit from text messaging before you.
With consumers hungry for brands that engage them with text messaging and wine marketing results 32-times better than email, now's the time for savvy wine marketers to make a move to text messaging.
We hope the 3-steps we've shared with you today can help your business quickly benefit from SMS wine marketing.
Happy Selling!