It’s no longer a question of IF your wine business needs to send text messages.
According to PC Magazine, “85% of smartphone users prefer mobile messages to emails or calls,” and “more than half (55 percent) flat-out ignore marketing emails.”
So for wine marketers in 2022, it’s a question of HOW you text your best customers to meet their expectations.
You’ve probably already received text messages from businesses that didn’t meet your expectations, and you’re not alone. In 2021, 65% of consumers reported they’ve unsubscribed from text marketing messages for various reasons.
But on the flip side, wineries that do text marketing right report game-changing results. With 4-times the open rate and 7-times the click-thru rate of email marketing, today’s digital wine marketers delight their customers and generate up to 100-times more sales conversion by texting them instead of sending another email.
How did they do it? By following the best practices of SMS wine marketing.
In this article, we’ve rounded up the top-10 best practices so you can harness the power of text messaging to grow your business in 2022.
1. Always Add Value
Text messaging is how today’s consumers stay in touch with friends and family. So when they invite your brand into their inner circle, it’s always best to ask yourself, “what’s in it for them?”
Instead of blasting all your subscribers with the same message each week, the best direct marketing practice you can follow is to ask customers about their interests, then only message them about offers that appeal to them.
Discounts, exclusive savings, important announcements, event alerts, and transactional messages are all valuable to wine consumers. Consider testing the use of rich media, like wine country photos or lifestyle videos, to diversify and engage your audience.
If your SMS messages don’t add tangible value to your customers’ lives, your unsubscribe-rates will grow exponentially .
2. Build Compliance Into Your Plan
Since wine marketers sell a highly regulated product, the concept of compliance should be familiar to everyone in the industry.
But since text messaging is new to many wineries, it helps to educate yourself and your staff about the essential rules that govern SMS wine marketing, including:
Obtaining “express written consent” before sending any automated text messages
Only sending text marketing messages to consumers over the age of 21
All necessary disclaimers when inviting consumers to join your SMS lists
Never asking consumers to send payment card data to your winery via text
Just like serving alcohol to minors, the potential consequences of violating the legal requirements associated with text marketing can be severe, so we wrote an entire article on SMS wine marketing compliance that you can read here.
And if you’re ever unsure about complying with the law, we strongly recommend you consult with your compliance team.
3. Text with a Consistent Cadence
One of the most common mistakes wineries make when using SMS is not sending messages consistently.
Their reasoning is sound: they want to avoid spamming customers.
But, send too few messages, and people forget why they even signed up in the first place. So when they finally hear from you, your message might seem to come out of the blue and be potentially unwelcome.
Consumers respond best to consistent messaging. Just like a good social media strategy, successful text campaigns maintain a consistent cadence.
Since the latest research on consumer preference shows most people want to hear from their favorite brands every two weeks, we recommend starting with a bi-weekly cadence.
But since some consumers want to hear from you more or less often, the best practice is to use a preference center that offers them a choice of subscribing to a message feed that meets their needs.
4. PLAN ON RESPONDING ASAP
Many wine marketers just starting with SMS messaging are surprised when customers start texting back.
So if you want to be ahead of the game, you’ll want to consider how you’ll respond in a timely manner.
For maximum consumer satisfaction, the best practice is to communicate your business hours clearly and assign staff to reply quickly, especially when you launch your outbound campaigns.
Using a text marketing platform that offers a mobile app is the best way to minimize response times without requiring your team to spend the entire day in front of their computers.
5. Personalization matters
Like email marketing, SMS messaging works best when it’s personalized.
Today’s wineries can automatically personalize many campaigns by linking their SMS marketing platforms to their wine commerce systems. This approach allows wine marketers to send personalized text messages delivered precisely at the right time to communicate everything from shipping updates to reservation reminders.
And if you link your commerce system to your SMS marketing platform, your business can profit from personalized product promotions. Savvy wine marketers know that one of the best holiday campaigns you can send to existing customers is to offer them a chance to re-purchase one of their favorite wines.
Source: NeilPatel.com
6. SEND EXCLUSIVE OFFERS TO SMS SUBSCRIBERS
When wine lovers subscribe to your SMS list, they’re offering you access to join their inner circle of friends, family, and trusted brands. From their perspective, they’re taking a risk you won’t spam them in hopes they’ll receive something of value.
The best way to confirm they’ve made the right choice is to offer them something they wouldn’t normally see in their email inbox or social media feeds.
So the best practice is to send relevant messages exclusive to your SMS subscribers..
Recent research shows that SMS contacts want to be the first to hear about flash sales or promotions. With that in mind, one easy way to incorporate exclusivity in your SMS campaigns is to offer early access to new releases, special discounts, and tickets to upcoming events.
7. MAKE IT EASY to Opt-Out
Of course, after you spend the time to build an opt-in SMS wine marketing list, the last thing you want to think about is how customers can unsubscribe. But you need to make it easy for consumers to opt-out of receiving your text marketing program if they want.
So the best practice is to communicate this information when you initially confirm their subscription to your SMS lists, then include a reminder when you send outbound campaigns.
It’s as simple as including “Text STOP to unsubscribe” when promoting your SMS campaigns.
Today’s advanced SMS wine marketing platforms can even offer subscribers an option to partially unsubscribe. Using marketing keywords to target outbound campaigns means your customers can text UNSUBSCRIBE instead of STOP if they only want to stop receiving specific messages from your winery.
8. TIME YOUR CAMPAIGNS FOR MAXIMUM SUCCESS
Nobody likes receiving promotional messages outside of typical business hours, so that’s way today’s mobile carriers now recommend SMS marketers observe “quiet” hours, between 8 am and after 9 pm in the recipient's local time zone.
And it usually doesn’t make sense to text your customers when they can’t immediately take action or respond to you and your offer.
But if you want to know more about scheduling your SMS campaigns at a time where they’ll generate the best response, take a look at this article: “The Best Time to Schedule an SMS Wine Marketing Campaign.”
9. Watch Your Language
Since one of the most appealing aspects of text messaging is brevity, less is more when writing SMS marketing copy.
With a typical SMS message, you only have around 160 characters to convey your message. So you might tempted to shorten your words or pay extra for extended length text messages.
A better alternative is to pare down your sentences to communicate succinctly.
For tips on how to make this happen, try reading our article “How Can Ernest Hemingway Help Wine Marketers Write Better Text Messages?”
10. Promote Your SMS Program Everywhere
At its most fundamental level, text messaging is simply another form of direct marketing. So the most important thing you can do to profit from SMS wine marketing is to grow your subscriber lists.
And the best practice is to promote your SMS marketing program everywhere your brand is visible.
The wineries we work with have the most success using these seven customer touchpoints:
Email marketing
Tasting rooms & events
Social media channels
Transactional emails
Mobile website
Desktop website
Product packaging
By growing your subscriber base as quickly and as large as possible, all your other efforts to optimize your SMS wine marketing program will be rewarded with happier customers and more wine sales.
Use These Best Practices to Create a Competitive Advantage Now
In a world where 90% of online consumers want texts from their favorite brands, but only 9% of US wineries are capable of texting customers, this epic mismatch between consumer preference and industry practice spells nothing but opportunity for savvy wine marketers
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 do.
With consumers hungry for brands that engage them with text messaging and wine marketing results 32-times better than email, the best practices we’ve outlined in this article can help you build a competitive advantage for your winery in 30-days or less for the cost of a single case of wine.
Happy Selling!