Fine Tune Your Newsletter Sign Up

In my last blog post I talked about the email newsletter still being critical to promoting your wine website and developing your loyal fans. In this post I wanted to talk about optimizing the sign up funnel so that you get the most out of the pixels that you devote to that widget or process.

I think for the most part winery websites simply put up a form to capture email addresses in the hopes that people will sign up for fun, and to say that there is a newsletter sign up on the website. This strategy or lack there of isn't effective and leads to a very small group of individuals to market to. Which in the long run doesn't create a valuable business resource.

So how can we make this better?

Here are some tips:

1. Add some benefits. When you ask someone to sign up for a newsletter the customer is giving something up, so you want to give them back something in return. You don't have to give away the farm, but how about 15% off a case or tasting. If you are a low production winery then you can offer them first refusal on new vintages. Give the customer some incentive to give up their email.
2. Make the sign up as painless as possible. We commonly see wineries asking for every piece of customer data they can think of, which is a massive turn off for people. Why do you need to know my city to send me an email newsletter? Generally we would recommend only asking for the email. Once you have earned more trust you automatically get that information, especially if the prospect becomes a customer by buying your wine.
3. Make sign up even easier and more relevant by getting them to create an account at the end of the check out. This is makes that sign up even more valuable because they are also a customer.
4. Offer an example of an email newsletter and tell them how often you send out correspondence so the person signing up knows what to expect.
5. Sign them up in the tasting room. If someone buys a wine or a tasting why not offer them a discount if they sign up right on the spot.

Building a trusted email relationship and creating a database of customers who want to hear from you will serve you well in the long run. Customers get a lot spam, but if you are willing to work at building the trust and giving the customers on your list something worth signing up for it will mean more sales and stronger loyalty.