If your cidery is doing direct-to-consumer marketing, the pandemic may have brought a lot more eyeballs when it came to communicating via email as many were used to online communication.
But is what you were doing even a year ago helping or hurting your brand?
Aileen Sevier, VP of Strategy & Marketing for Early Mountain Vineyards, explained that she has been very attuned to what consumers are doing with emails sent out more now. Analyzing what people are doing with your emails can help improve future business relations, she said during the 2022 CiderCon.
“Consumer behavior has changed so dramatically in the last two years,” she said. “I’m fanatical about watching open rates through MailChimp. Just looking at data, you can tell if people want to hear from you or not, because you’re watching the unsubscribes, or watching for the opens.”
Early Mountain went from a frequency of about twice a month to a frequency of almost twice a week during the height of COVID because open rates were ‘through the roof,’ Sevier said.
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“I was doing much longer-form content in emails,” she said. “It was so much content and I was having everyone sending in the recipes they were cooking at home. And I was just like coming up with content for the sake of sending another email because every time I sent an email I would sell $5,000 of wine.”
Now, she pointed out, you can know you’re sending them too many, because a consumer will stop opening emails, or they’ll unsubscribe.
“I’ve dialed it way back, and now I’m back to about twice a month,” she said. “What I’m now focused on is really getting smarter.”
Sevier said that there are many amazing targeting tools available in your email system that can help you get smarter with targeting a consumer inside your entire base.
“Try to get additional and complementary data so that we can not send something to people who don’t want to get it,” she said, pointing out that they will break down consumers by purchasing habits. That’s something a cidery could do as well.
“We can really just focus on, say a Rose buyer. I’m going to hit you with three Rose emails, but you only bought whites, you’re not going to get this email,” she said. “That’s really what I’m upping the sophistication this year.
“It’s not hard to do with the tools that are available.”
Photo courtesy Eastman’s Forgotten Cider
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