REthink Wine Blog

1.  Start planning your holiday newsletter timeline and assemble newsletters now while you have time.
2.   Be sure to test your newsletters. Create (free) email addresses for yourself in hotmail, gmail, and yahoo and send tests to each of these addresses. Send copies to a few coworkers (or friends) and ask them to look for typos and confirm that all links are working as they should.
3.  Do not overuse punctuation. Excessive exclamation points are spam-like and will cause your newsletter to get caught in the Spam filter.
4.  Avoid using ‘free,’ use ‘complimentary’ instead
5.  Be careful with special html characters as most of these do not render well in email applications.
6.  Consider adding the following to your newsletter, at or near the top of the page “Please add emailaddress@winery.com to your email address book to ensure our emails go to your inbox.”

Research email deliverability, content and/or subject lines. You’ll find a wealth of information.

Vertical Response Suggestions

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Vertical Response, Creating Subject Lines

Get started now so you and your holiday newsletters are ready before the holiday rush is here.

Cheers,

Recently, some friends and I went wine tasting here in Napa Valley.

Our first stop was Rutherford Hill Winery where one in our group was a club member. A pick up party was in progress for club members and we were given the VIP treatment. We had our own section in the front patio, several staff members to chat with and pour and a terrific snack spread. The Cabernets are always wonderful here and the new realease Syrah was terrific! We spent quite some time there and several extra bottles of wine were purchased–a direct result of the special treatment we felt we’d recieved. I mentioned this to the club manager and she confirmed that pick up parties for club members were very successful compared to having club members stop by when they could.

Next was Baldacci where an appointment is requested. Luckily, they had time for us that day and shared some wonderful Pinot’s. We took our time, savored every sip and were rewarded with one on one time with the staff here once the tasting room cleared out. Stories were told and recommendations for other wineries were shared by the staff members (big score in our books!). Again, more wine was purchased, partly because it’s so good and partly because of the friendly out-going staff that made us all feel special.

My point? Throw a pick up party for your wine club members. Make sure your staff is friendly and spends time with your customers. My other point? Go wine tasting. Meet the winery staff. Take your time and enjoy yourselves. Ask questions. Ask for recommendations. Winery staff members have a wealth of knowledge and the willingness to share–take the time to find out what they know. Your wine tasting experience will be hugely enhanced by doing so.

Cheers,

Jennifer

Email ideas and tips seem to be ever-changing. Below you’ll find a website link
so that you can keep up on these changes, along with a few important tips.

Watch your subject line. Don’t over use upper case letters or punctuation. Make
your subject line identifiable with your company and/or product. Avoid use of
words like  “FREE” or “CLICK HERE HERE NOW!” Instead use the word
‘complilmentary’ in place of ‘free,’ and ‘follow this link’ instead of ‘click here.’

Ensure your FROM email address is an email address that’s checked often. Even
if you state in your email not to reply to this email address, it can happen. You want
to help potential customers replying to this email address with any questions or
issues they may have so they become return customers.

Personalize your emails when possible. Many email modules now have tags you
can use to insert your customer first or last name. We all like to see our names in
print, so take advantage of this option.

Add a note in your email that reads like this: Please add info@yourcompanyname.com
to your address book to ensure our emails are delivered to your inbox.
This will help avoid your email being sent to spam or junk folders.

You’ll find additional information here:
http://emailexperience.org

With the Holidays upon us, the time is right to reach out to your winery customers and offer special shipping rates and/ or discounts. We’ve listed a few quick tips below to help make this process a little easier for you.

1. Whenever possible, personalize the email by using the customer’s name.

2. Be sure to add pertinent links in the email. If you are inviting the customer to view new wines or specials, include the link in the email so the customer can go to that page, without having to hunt for this information on your website.

3. Always check the “From address.” This should accurately reflect the department or winery name sending the email.

4. Be especially careful copying a word document into the template. Use only ISO characters. Several common non-ISO characters will appear as bad characters in email clients, and should therefore be avoided in the textual content. The most common improperly displayed character is the Windows “em dash” or “–” character, often inserted by word processors. Other non-ISO characters to avoid include:

&82; , &93; ”

&83; f &94; ”

&84; ,, &95; *

&85; … &96; -

&88; ^ &97; –

&89; ° / °° &98; ~

&8B;

&91; ` &9C; OE

&92; ‘

(You may also wish to consult the W3 Consortium’s list of Character entity references in HTML 4. Not all browsers recognize the complete set of entity names, so you may wish to use e.g. - - instead of — to enter an em dash.)

Also, you may want to brush up on this module before getting started. We’ve included our online webinar here.

Warm wishes for a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday.
Jennifer Gibbons
Inertia Customer Support

Special thanks to iPost for supplying bad character information and links!