By Mitch Tarr, CEO - ZinMarketing, Inc.

Welcome to another edition of the WineMarketer.com newsletter.

One of the biggest fears I hear from wineries about sending email to their ‘list’ is the fear of being labeled as a spammer. It’s a real fear but I don’t think the winery industry is overusing email in any way.

I ran a survey this year and of 104 wineries that responded only 21.4% of them sent emails to their list 12 times per year or more.

12 times per year or once per month is not actually very frequent by many email marketer’s standards. Since only 1 in 5 are sending that often let’s examine what might be holding wineries back.

Too Busy?

I would almost believe that except in the list of a thousand things needed to run a successful winery, not many could deliver a return on your time as strong as a well-written email campaign.

With an average order size of $200 and up, it doesn’t take many orders to make it worth a few hours time. If you really are too busy, find someone to do it for you and put this proven channel to work.

You Are NOT a Spammer!

This concept seems to come from our own personal dislike of unwanted email (SPAM). Since we don’t want unwanted email, we fear our customers don’t want to hear about anything. But your customers are more likely to be interested in your latest release and are therefore less likely to hit the ‘report as spam’ button. They’re your biggest fans after all.

Not Enough Good Information to Send?

I’ve heard wineries say, “I’m waiting I’ll I have enough news to send in my newsletter - to make it worthwhile.” What this notion ignores is the fact that we are all busy. Most don’t have the time to read through a long detailed newsletter and then take action.

Give your reader something short and quick so they can read it, act on it (hopefully by ordering some wine) and get on to the next thing.

Don’t Have The Skill or Software?

It’s true there are many moving parts to setting up and sending a good email campaign but these days there are so many good pieces of software and plenty of information sources that learning how to do this shouldn’t be a big obstacle.

Today’s winery software either have an email module built in or there are oodles of mailing software available to help you set up and send emails (and save you time maintaining your list.)

Invest a bit of time now for a payoff that comes month after month.

Don’t Believe in Email?

This can be a tricky one to overcome. If you are a dyed in the wool paper-based direct mail supporter, fear not, email is becoming a more legitimate marketing medium year after year.

In fact, instead of becoming irrelevant, email has become even more relevant as professional marketers develop best practices to help build strong relationships with your biggest fans-your customers.

My message is simple. You will benefit by embracing email, learning how to send it, sending it frequently and using good email marketing practices. It’s not to difficult to do and your accountant will thank your for it!

To a Great Year!

Mitch Tarr, CEO; ZinMarketing, Inc.

Mitch Tarr is an email marketing guru and the CEO of ZinMarketing Inc. a winery marketing agency dedicated to helping wineries profit from the proper use of email marketing. Mitch has honed his Internet marketing skills over the past 10 years in some of the most competitive online industries there are. He brings these skills to the wine industry through his articles, reports, ezine, and website - ZinMarketing.com.

This entry was posted by admin on Friday, May 23rd, 2008 at 7:06 pm and is filed under Clients, Direct Sales, Email. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Other Network Sites: Wine Ratings, Wine Prices & Reviews | Online Wine Videos | Wine Marketing & Wine Advertising