Wineries: Ideas for Marketing Your Wines

VerticalResponse has many wineries that use our service so I thought we'd take a stab at giving up some specific marketing ideas for you.

Forward to a Friend – We’ve seen some pretty rapid list growth from the wine industry specifically. Seems that everyone who loves a particular wine wants all their friends to know! Make sure in each email you send out you include a forward to a friend link. Even if your recipients don’t use the link, they may be inspired to forward it using their email reader. Also, make sure that you always use a link for this instead of a field.

Compliance with Child Protection – If you don’t have total control over who signs up for your email list you may want to consider running your list against the Child Protection Registries for UT and MI. Since you sell wine and if one of your emails gets mailed to a minor who has been registered on these lists you could be facing fines. We work with the registries to scrub lists of those customers who want this program. We offer this service as a pass-through, meaning we don’t mark up what the registries charge us.

Ask at the check-out – On your confirmation page why not ask your users to register for your newsletter? How about at the checkout counter at the winery or tasting room? Someone likes you enough to pay for your wine, get them to fill out a form!

Google Adwords – If you’re not buying adwords through Google, MSN or Yahoo! you should be. It can be a very cost-effective way for you to get new customers or even newsletter registrants. If someone gets to your site but may not want to purchase just yet, they may want a bit more information from a newsletter. Make sure you’ve got a form for them to fill out prominently placed.

Winemaker’s List – I’m sure your winemaker or your winery proprietor has a list of contacts. I’m also pretty sure these friends wouldn’t mind getting a newsletter from them. Get their lists! These could be your most qualified customers.

Hey wineries, got any great ideas? Share!

P.S. Thanks to the folks at Merryvale for the great image!

Comments

[Anthony]

Another great way to get more traffic to your winery and a free way, is to link-build. Basically get the word out about your winery to other sites by placing your links on relevant pages. This way, when someone searches for your site, Google has indexed your page higher than others because it is highly relevant and has a lot of back links. :)

I know this because I am a St. James Winery (MO) employee, and I work in the IT dept. Currently drinking a bottle of Country Red wine. I love my job.