Sell Without Spamming | Erica Walter | Full Battery Media

In this conversation, I sat down with Erica Walter, founder and CEO of Email Mavens, to talk about how businesses can use email marketing to drive real results without overwhelming, boring, or turning off the people on the other end of the inbox. Erica works closely with wineries, but the ideas in this episode apply far beyond wine. 

We got into what email marketing actually is, why permission and trust matter so much, and how businesses often go wrong by sending too many irrelevant messages or by only emailing when they want to push a sale. We also talked about the difference between sending more emails and sending better ones, how to create value that keeps people engaged, why segmentation matters, and how welcome emails and subscriber surveys can completely change the way a business connects with its audience. 

This episode is full of smart, practical insights on customer trust, email strategy, storytelling, sales psychology, and building long-term relationships through marketing that feels personal instead of pushy. What kind of email content actually makes you want to stay subscribed?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Right. Well, and this it's funny the way that that question is phrased, it's two questions, because at least for a lot of winery marketers, they're not sending enough email. However, to your point, why are businesses sending so many? A lot of them are sending too many because they're sending everything to everyone. So backing up a step, let's talk about what email marketing is. Email marketing is a winery or any kind of business, honestly, gets permission from the subscriber. This is key. Gets permission, consent from the person to use their email address to send them marketing messages. That is what email marketing is. I'm a business. I ask you if you want to hear from me. You give me permission and I send you things of value to you that help promote things that I do. That's email marketing in a nutshell. Where a lot of businesses go off the rails is either the permission part, right? You give me your email address because I'm going to email you your receipt. And then I start sending you an email every Friday about bingo at my winery. That's not consent, right? I didn't tell you I was going to be doing that. And then on the other end of it, it's the things of value, right? It has to be something that they want to receive. If it isn't something they want to receive, then they, like you, will quickly unsubscribe because what I promised them, which might be like one email a month, isn't what I actually delivered, which is an email every other day about whatever I feel inclined to send to you. So that's email marketing in a nutshell.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Well, welcome everybody back to the Full Battery Media Podcast. We are already having a good time. I can promise you that this is going to be a fun episode. Uh, I've got an awesome guest with me today. Can you tell people who you are and a little bit about what you do?

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Absolutely. My name is Erica Walter. I am the founder and CEO of Email Mavens. We help wineries send marketing emails that sell that don't suck.

SPEAKER_02 2:06

That's the most important part. The other day, someone was trying to talk to me about a video they wanted to make because I help people make videos. That's what my company is. I do podcasts, but I have a video production team here in Vietnam. And people are like, What should I make? And I was like, Well, you can make anything you want. And they're like, That really? And I said, Yeah, just make sure that it's interesting and doesn't suck really bad. They're like, How do you do that? I said, Well, first of all, don't spew out AI-generated everything. You know, tools are great, but make it unique. Tell people your story, you know? Get out there and show people your life. Talk to people, be relatable, you know. I've got a Harry Potter wand that I sit right over there. Now I'm gonna tell you what this is from, and this is something that is gonna be very unique for me. Editors, include this as a goddamn clip. All right. So just telling my team that. Uh, do you know what this is from? It's special. This is not your it's actually a chopstick or a salad tongue that I ordered in Asia here on like like one of the shipping services. But it's special, it looks like some type of wand. And I got this because my daughter auditioned for Hermione. She doesn't have a British accent, she is a little half Vietnamese, half-American kid. And they were like, But anyone from anywhere in the world can uh can audition. So I was like, Hey, do you want to audition for Hermione? And she's like, Yes, I do. And so this is our little Hermione wand that sits right up there that reminds me that every day can be magic if you want it to. And uh, that's something unique from my life. That's the type of stuff that you want to include that can be interesting, you know?

SPEAKER_00 3:43

When I say that sell that don't suck, I it's important to say that they don't suck for the end receiver of the emails, right? The person that's on the list that gets the communication. And I'm sure we're gonna talk a lot about how to do that. But on the other side of it, the person producing the email, the person working on it, the winery marketer that's creating the email, it also kind of needs to not suck for them. So while we do offer a full service suite where we do the emails for you, which that might be your version of not sucking, is not having to do it all together. A lot of the people we work with were actually teaching how to do it better. We're giving them tools to make email marketing less of a slog. Um, and when it doesn't suck for the marketer to produce, that energy translates to the end receiver as well. So when I say doesn't suck, it's for everyone. I'm changing the world here.

SPEAKER_02 4:37

Right? I love that. And there are like, you know, email marketing is one of the things that's been around now for so long. And the cool part is is that it's still it's still sticking. Like people, you know, I know for ages people are like, oh, email's gonna die. But no, man, email is still around. And I still love some really great email newsletters I get, you know, and like there are ones, but there are some that I unsubscribe from immediately, you know, and so it's interesting because I want to ask you, coming back for people who might not be as versed or might be, you know, like my daughter's age, but what even is email marketing? And why do businesses send so many emails? And should they be sending so many or should they be sending the right amount? You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Right. Well, and this it's funny the way that that question is phrased, it's two questions because it looks for a lot of winery marketers, they're not sending enough email. However, to your point, why are businesses sending so many? A lot of them are sending too many because they're sending everything to everyone. So backing up a step, let's talk about what email marketing is. Email marketing is a winery or any kind of business, honestly, gets permission from the subscriber. This is key, gets permission, consent from the person to use their email address to send them marketing messages. That is what email marketing is. I'm a business. I ask you if you want to hear from me, you give me permission, and I send you things of value to you that help promote things that I do. That's email marketing in a nutshell. Where a lot of businesses go off the rails is either the permission part, right? You give me your email address because I want to email you your receipt, and then I start sending you an email every Friday about bingo at my winery. That's not consent, right? I didn't tell you I was gonna be doing that. And then on the other end of it, it's the things of value, right? It has to be something that they want to receive. If it isn't something they want to receive, then they like you will quickly unsubscribe because what I promised them, which might be like one email a month, isn't what I actually delivered, which is an email every other day about whatever I feel inclined to send to you. So that's email marketing in a nutshell, layman's terms. And then why do businesses send so many? I think a lot of the disconnect and in cadence, right, frequency of email is businesses are focused on what matters to them, right? Instead of focusing on what would add value to my subscriber's life. And when that happens, when I'm so focused on hitting my e-commerce number for April that I can't see how what I have to talk about what's in it for the end subscriber. When I'm not looking at that in the perspective of my marketing strategy, I'm going to churn my list because I'm gonna send at the detriment of subscriber trust and engagement to hit a number.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

That's really interesting. And one of the things that's interesting too is because people I think a lot of people don't realize the amount of thought that should go into what you are sending people, you know? And I think that people that are starting to try to create email marketing feel overwhelmed at times because they don't necessarily know. You know, they've been told, oh, you need to email more. But you know, like again, like you said, what is the right thing to email? I know that there's this one email list that I follow constantly because it provides value. It provides value. The guy tells these little tips about how to live a better life, and I just I keep tuning in. I keep coming back because it's so interesting. And then this other email list that I know I follow all the time, they uh it's from one of my local favorite wine retailers here in Ho Chuman City. And I'll be like, you know what? I'm literally not gonna pay that much attention to it. But then they just sent me something the other day and they're like, hey, guess what's on sale? And I'm like, hey yo, hello, sale. You know, I'm right here, you know.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

What's interesting about what you just said is there are two different things of value, right? There's an actual, like, I don't want to miss a note. I don't want to miss a tip for how to live a better life. That's like uh cravable. It adds instant value. It's probably not a ton of content to consume every day or however frequently this person sends, but their whole intent is to like keep you on the hook a little bit, right? They're they're keeping you engaged by adding value to your life. But the other kind of value over here is just straight up dollars off a bottle. And both are value. You need to recognize when you're creating your email marketing strategy that both matter to the subscriber, but not both attract the right kind of subscriber for your business. And in wine, if all we're doing is emailing deals, but people actually care more about story or cause or purpose or technical information or whatever, well, then there's a disconnect between what we're sending and what the subscriber wants. On the flip side, if all we're doing is talking about long-winded winemaker tales and like our eighth generation vineyard, blah, blah, blah. And like the person's just like, well, you told me you were gonna give me $20 off my first purchase. Where's that? Again, there's a disconnect. So balancing some of that, knowing when to use which lever with which subscribers, all of that goes into a good email marketing strategy, but it's not one is better than the other, or exclusively one and not the other. It's really figuring out what's gonna appeal to the kind of customer that makes sense for your business.

SPEAKER_02 10:20

100%. One of the things, too, is I think that it's really interesting too, because when I look at it, I I'm struck by how some of them feel annoying, you know, and I think that that's like what you said is like they're long-winded, and I don't feel like there's a value provided. You know, the same thing for the video when people are just going on and ranting about. I find it when I work with people and they want to monologue or they want to when I'm helping them make a video, and that they want to like, we've got this great story to tell about the history, and you know what? People might find it interesting, but they might not. They might not. It what might be interesting to you might not be that relevant for someone else, and you have to find ways to balance that because you today, bless his heart. I have a guy who works right there at that spot and he edits videos for me, and he's a wonderful, nice, awesome human being. But sometimes he can get on tangents. And today he was getting onto a tangent, and I was like, Hey, you know what? I've got 25 things to do. I love you, and I'd normally go down that tangent, but right now it's a little annoying because it's not something that can help me. And I said, What if you really want to talk to me? I need you to look at X, Y, Z. And that can be something that can be good. And he's like, sure. And that leads to my question to you like, why do some emails feel annoying and others actually make me want to click? Like, what is the difference there? I mean, we kind of touched on it, but what else is there?

SPEAKER_00 11:54

Well, I'm gonna probably say this 18 different times on this podcast, but I think wineries need to really get in touch with any kind of business. I don't know, I know it's not just wineries, we only work with wineries, but the the sender, the business needs to really get in touch with, not what they have to sell, what they need to tell, what they, what their story is, but making their end subscriber, the hero, the main character, the the winner in all of this. And this matters for email marketing, but honestly, it matters for all of the stuff, right? Branding, digital media, what's on your website, everything is like this long-winded story about me, me, me, me, me. Why should the customer care? Um, and like the the cheesy thing is like everyone's tuned in to W I I F M. What's in it for me? But they are. So let's be real. When we're sending emails, it's just about us, just about a sale, self-serving, tone-deaf, um, doesn't take into consideration who the customer is, where they found you, what matters to them. It's annoying. It's the person that goes to on a date and doesn't stop talking about themselves the whole time or ask any questions. Um, right. I need to stop being the tone-deaf guy on a date because people will swipe left for whichever way it's I don't, I'm out of the dating game. Swipe, whichever way you swipe when you don't want it, um, is what's gonna happen if you're only focused on yourself. And versus the ones that make you want to click, usually it was the thing that inspired you to take that action was like almost feel like, how did they know that about me? Or man, they like they they're speaking to some how did they hear me thinking that thought? Or like, wow, that that's like I never would have thought of that thing, or like I'm curious to learn learn more. When there's an open conversation looper, like, how did they know that about me? That's personalized email marketing. It inspires action because it's giving you something you want a little bit more of. So those are the differences. It's really like a me-centric thing over here that's annoying versus a subscriber-centric strategy that acknowledges the person where they're at and gives them something that will take them to another level with your business.

SPEAKER_02 14:12

I love that. And I love the idea of taking them to another level because at the end of the day, you're trying to provide value, but also move people down a funnel. You know, I mean, let's be real. Most email marketing is trying to get people down your sales funnel. And if you ignore that, um, you know, one of the things for me is like I try to be very there was one of the best books that I ever read was called Trust Agents. And it's based, it's it's an early social media marketing book, and it looks at the idea. So it's so good. It was written a long time ago, and I'm trying to get the uh the I think I have the guy already booked who wrote it ages ago. That's like 12 years old. I mean, and a lot has changed, but at the same time, it hasn't. Like the idea is is that the best way to get people through the front door is by creating becoming an agent of trust and giving them things you trust. Gary Vaynerchuk talked about it in like the jab jab cross book, you know? It's the same thing. The idea of if you want to get people in and and to trust you, you gotta really get them in the door, and they do that by getting to know you and by seeing who you are. You know, I love so many different wineries up in wine country, and I grew up in St. Helena, and I love a lot of the wines up there in my hometown. But I'll tell you this: I have a special spot in my heart for the the wineries that are really ones that I still connect with, even though I'm on the other side of the world, and they do so through their media, through their presence, through their email marketing campaigns, and it draws me in. And like, I I want to ask you a fun sort of uh question because like imagine a person opened a lemonade stand. How would you use email to get more customers? Like something simple like that. What would you do?

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Yeah. Well, I mean, the first thing that I think a lot of businesses miss the boat on is you have to get permission anywhere that you're talking to your subscribers to send them email. Um, and the and let's be real. Like if I ask you, Sean, would you like to get my emails? You know a little bit about me, so you know you're probably gonna send you something you're gonna like. But if the value proposition is just more email, most people are not going to take you up on that offer, right? So the lemonade stand, first and foremost, needs to know what's in it for the end subscriber if they get my emails. Is it knowing when I'm open? Is it knowing when I'm gonna do a limited lemonade drop? Yeah. Is it recipe ideas for how to make your own frozen lemonade at home using our proprietary X, Y, and Z? Is it uh loyalty points that you earn every time you come and you can track and use them online? You have to decide up front what is in it for the subscriber if they give me their email address. So, first things first for your lemonade stand is to decide on a value statement for email that they use when asking. And it can be deals, but it could also be access, it could be loyalty. There's a lot of different angles. Every business needs to decide which matters the most to them, because you could use a mix of all of it, and then use that to fish for email addresses. That's step number one. Then step number two is pretty simple, deliver on the promise that you gave them when you asked them for their email address. If they are excited to be on your email list because you're gonna tell, let's say your lemonade stand is like a pop-up lemonade stand and you never know when I'm gonna show up. Well, then the only way to know is by being on my email list. Because let's face it, if I only rely on social media and their algorithm, I'm never gonna see when you're open. But if I'm on your email list, I know that you're gonna drop in my email on the day that you're open in my neighborhood, let's say. Well, then you deliver that promise. All of a sudden, you've got to line out the door because you built your email list of people that wanted to know when you were open. You say, because you wanted to know when we're open, we wanted you to know we're on the corner of first and poplar from 10 to two today, serving this pop-up flavor. Line out the door. Because you're creating that reciprocity too, right? When you're telling them, hey, you're getting this because you said you wanted this. All of a sudden I'm on the hook psychologically. I'm like, I did say that. And lemonade does sound good, actually. So that's like a like the first thing I would do is decide what's of value, then make sure your whole email program is architected to deliver that value. Everything else, then it that's trust, right? You said you wanted this, I gave this to you. You gave me information about you, I acknowledge that information about you. All of a sudden, we're like having a conversation a little bit more instead of why most email feels boring and monotonous is broadcast, broadcast, broadcast, me, me, me, me, me, no signal coming back the other direction. So that's my little spiel on how to use a lemonade stand analogy. It's like, it all starts with coming up with something of value, delivering on that thing, and then continuing to show up on that same kind of consistent cadence. Don't let people's feedback go empty or or not acknowledged. If they are not showing up, all right, well, we got to tweak something, we had to tinker something. Um, if you give them something and they don't act on it, all right, well, we need to do a follow-up survey and figure out what, like, why didn't this work for them? Was there a problem with my website? Was it not, was, were they not, were they surprised to learn that my lemonade is eight dollars, uh, a glass? You know, some of those kinds of things that can then help you refine your marketing messaging even further and deliver more to your subscribers.

SPEAKER_02 19:37

I love that. You know, one of the things too that I'm I'm hearing from you is that there is a level of refinement. And this is something I tell people with video marketing as well, is that you're not gonna get it right in the beginning. You simply have to do iterate, though, and continue to refine and continue to think about how to get better. And, you know, as you're looking at these things, but you have to be asking the right questions, and that's where you know, getting someone like you who can help with email marketing is a super huge win because some people don't even know the right questions to ask. Like, and I think that's one of the biggest um problems that I see is that when people start creating campaigns, whether it be video or content or email or whatever, they just don't know how to ask the questions to make sure they're doing it right. But I want to ask you like people get all these emails from big companies, and why do we still get them when you forget you signed up for them? Like, you know, what what's that all about?

SPEAKER_00 20:37

Um, so this goes a little bit to because when you uh um when I saw that question kind of in the get ready email, I was like, oh, this one's a good one because there's lots of different ways to attack it. Um, the first one, the first reason you might get an email from a business that you forgot you signed up for is that when you signed up, they never sent you anything. Right? If you signed up for email from a business and then six weeks later or six months later, you got an email. Well, of course you're going to forget. Um, not to throw a local legendary winery under the bus, but there is a winery here in Walla Walla that has a very allocation-style model. You sign up to get on the list to get access. And like, then you just wait and you wait and you wait and you wait and you hope, and years go by, and who knows, you may or may not get access to this coveted wine. The downside of this strategy is that for six years, I'm on a list waiting to get up to the point where I can buy the stuff, and they don't send me anything in the meantime to either update me on my status or to tell me what's going on and why I should still want to be on the list. Um and so that like six years from now, when I get on the you can now buy this stuff list, well, am I even gonna notice that email? Is it gonna go straight to my spam folder or my junk because I've never received anything else trustworthy from them? So So the one thing is like maybe they only get you on a list and then they don't have a consistent cadence of sending emails. So there's nothing between opting in and receiving that first notice that could like bridge the gap and nurture you and build trust. That's one reason. Another reason is, like I said, deliverability and inbox placement. You might be getting their emails, but they're going straight to your promotions folder on Gmail or uh Apple Mail has something now similar. I should know that off the top of my head, but I don't, so forgive me. But there's like inbox routing that's happening that you're not seeing that could be sending, you know, that business's communications to a folder that you don't regularly check. I get an email like every single day from the gap. Every single day. I'm sure I gave them permission to market to me at some point. Um, and I don't unsubscribe because eventually I will want their 50% off Black Friday offer, or I will need the ultimate summer, uh, summer ensemble, and I'll open that email and engage. But I get an email from them daily and I don't open a lot of them. I just kind of glaze over them. So that's another reason that you might be like, What? I don't remember getting emails from these people because you just kind of glazed over or they're going somewhere that you don't regularly check. And then the third reason is just like you didn't actually give them permission to market to them. Like a lot of wineries I'll be like, where are you capturing email? And like, we don't know. And then surprise, they've got some like elementor gravity form back end thing on their WordPress website that's been capturing email addresses over years and years and years. And they're like, Well, sweet, 6,000 email addresses, let's go. No warm-up, no cleaning, just dump them into their email service provider and send to them. So there's a couple of different reasons you could get email and be like, I don't remember subscribing. But at the end of the day, it still is that disconnect between what did I sign up for and actually delivering on that promise as quickly as possible.

SPEAKER_02 24:05

I love that. Yeah, well, that comes back to like what's the biggest mistake businesses make with email? And I know we touched on this a little bit, but is there something that people are just really messing up time and time again?

SPEAKER_00 24:18

I mean, it definitely depends. There's, I mean, people is like a broad term. Wineries, I think the biggest mistake wineries make with email marketing is that they do not have a program strategy, they have a campaign strategy, if at all. So instead of having an overarching narrative and a plan to nurture people at every stage of the relationship with your winery, um, I have a narrative arc that takes someone through a 12-month year with the business. If they don't have a plan, a strategy at the program level, every campaign is going to feel just that much more hollow because they're not, there isn't a bigger picture. There isn't a next logical step. There isn't a here's why this matters to this subscriber more than this subscriber. They're just sending their Memorial Day sale and hoping that it generates $500,000 in e-commerce, right? And that's, you should still send the Memorial Day sale. Don't get me wrong. But if you didn't have a program strategy overarching that, you wouldn't know that, like, okay, all month of April, I need to be nurturing people that they're gonna need these drops that are happening in May and saving up, you know, making sure that we don't uh um cannibalize our efforts with our Mother's Day offer when Memorial Day comes around. Like, there's all this bigger picture strategy that's not going in because businesses, wineries, I specifically I see them just being like, okay, the next one, the next email is my event email, the next email is my wine club email, and there isn't a program strategy, it's just this email has one job and I'm gonna see if I can get it to do it. And so that churns your list and creates a lot of disconnect for the subscriber and it sucks. Nobody likes it.

SPEAKER_02 25:59

I see with video that people put all their eggs in one basket. Like they're like, this is the one. Like, this is gonna be it. Uh, we're gonna knock it out of the ballpark with this one thing, and then that one thing doesn't convert, and they sit there and go, where did we go wrong? What did we do wrong? And I'm I look at them and go, You didn't do anything wrong. You just have to be consecutive with what you're doing right, you have to be consecutive with where you're trying to get to, and that might not be one video is gonna knock it out of the ballpark. And I remember once I was doing these videos that were converting for uh my company, and I was in-house, and I they had me on an argument. This was one of my first jobs, and I did like 45 videos for them in a short period of time. This is even before short form, and we were getting people flying in from around the world to our business in Los Angeles to get to buy our product and get our service, and then they were like, Oh, so video's the key. And so they went and spent a hundred thousand dollars on four videos. And I was just like, dude, you could have sent me to film school and I would have worked for you for a couple years for that, you know. Uh, and the videos fell flat because they weren't what people wanted, you know, and and I think that that's again is looking at what's really going to matter, but also just you gotta be it's a numbers game at this point in time. You have to be consistent and you have to be consistent with your awesomeness, to say it one way. Yes, but you know I don't know, that's at least at least how I look at it.

SPEAKER_00 27:29

No pressure, just be consistently awesome, and your email marketing will kill it.

SPEAKER_02 27:33

Right. And I mean, no, no, no, no, no challenge there. Just be consistently awesome, you know. But you know, easy. Do people actually buy wine from emails or do they just ignore them? I I know wrote this question, I know it's gonna be stupid because I just literally said at the beginning of this, I bought from an email. But I'd love to hear your perspective.

SPEAKER_00 27:50

You've added yourself, Sean. Well, here's the thing. Yes, people do buy wine from email, and wineries don't only need to sell wine with their email campaigns. I know when I talk, it's like my intro on my podcast and everything else, is like, we're gonna help you sell more wine online. There's lots of ways to sell more wine online. You can sell more wine online by getting people to join your club. You can sell more wine by getting people to visit you in person. Take the online out of it. You can get people to show up to the Denver Food and Wine Festival that you're pouring at because of email marketing. And so, email, if it's exclusive's job, is to drive e-commerce, you will always have lower margin sales because all you're doing ultimately is attracting people who are looking for a deal. If your job with email is connecting your business, your brand to your subscribers, you're going to have a much more profitable email marketing program because you're taking into consideration that some people will never buy from you online. Some people will only buy from a text, some people will only use their email connection to you to tell friends about you or understand what's coming next with their club shipment. Like email itself shouldn't only be to sell wine, because if that's all you're doing, you're just gonna end up bashing people over the head with sales offers and degrade, like people will get trained to only buy when you're discounting, and then you've got a whole different problem. So I think it's important to recognize that yes, people do still buy wine from email. And sometimes they only buy once because you did a dope $120 case offer on your rose, and that's fine too. But at the end of the day, if that's your whole vision for email marketing, I don't think you're gonna get the long-term program value that is possible with a medium like email as your marketing channel.

SPEAKER_02 29:40

I love that. One of the things, too, that I was thinking too is like I see this with videos. Like when I do videos for a podcast, I will create reels from that podcast and I share them. I found that four is about the limit that I can get before people start feeling like I'm spamming them from their own episode. You know, so like if I start doing seven and I'm like tagging people seven times, they start going, wow, it's another video that they gotta share. But four, people feel fresh for all of them, they feel excited for all of them. And it leads me to ask you this like, how often is too often to send emails before people start getting annoyed, you know?

SPEAKER_00 30:18

Um, this is a great question. And truly, anytime I speak, anytime I get interviewed for something, it's one of the questions that comes up. It's like, what's that silver bullet perfect number of emails to send? And unfortunately, there is no silver bullet perfect one size fits all answer to that question. Sorry. Um, I love that you found that um, you know, with like with video that there's like kind of a sweet spot around for, that's your sweet spot. Every winery also has a sweet spot. And the problem is not very many wineries care to find it. Most wineries either err on too few emails and giving those too few emails too many jobs to be truly effective, right? Oh shit, it's been six weeks since I sent an email. I better send this email that has 18 different things in it because I don't want people to unsubscribe. Well, they can't even read to the bottom of that email because you sent them the Bible. Um, you know, so they either err on the side of too free infrequent, or on the other end of it, it's like, well, Erica said to send more emails, so I'm just gonna blindly send more email every other day. Let's go. Let's see what happens. And we do email marketing for businesses. We also consult smaller businesses on how to do their email marketing more effectively. I will say the bigger your email list, like the more opt-in subscribers you have, the more flexibility you have to send a lot, right? Like if I'm a small winery with only 500 subscribers, I'm probably not sending an email every other day or even every week. But if you aren't, this is the one thing I will like stake a claim on, put a flag in the ground, you can like come at me. If you aren't sending at least one email every month to everyone on your list, you are losing engagement and you're losing sales opportunities. Any fewer than 12 emails in a year and you run the risk of people forgetting they opted in to hear from you, um, you're not giving them something of value and you're missing seasonal opportunities. Every single month of the year has a reason to tell someone what's going on or to check in with your subscribers and see where they're at so that you can continue to deliver value. If you don't architect a program plan that includes 12 must-win key touch points that everyone on your list is gonna get, then I think you are for well, I know that you're gonna run the risk of losing engagement the next time you send and you're gonna get fewer conversions because people are like, oh, I guess I have to sell some stuff because I haven't heard from such and such wineries since January, and now it's May, and it's Memorial Day sale. Like there's just no bridging the gap in terms of delivering value there. So 12 emails at a minimum in a year. Anything more than that, start monitoring the feedback loop, right? Are people converting? Are people unsubscribing? Are people replying and saying, literally, stop sending me so many emails? Well, those are some indicators that maybe your cadence is off. But usually wineries don't have a cadence issue. Most wineries have a relevance issue. They're sending everything to everyone when they do send, and that is a disconnect for the subscriber who doesn't live close enough to come to bingo on Friday night, or who only ever buys from you online and doesn't want to come visit you in person. So that's my little sh my little soapbox. You got to figure out your relevance and solve for relevance before you decide what cadence makes sense. But most wineries are simply not sending enough.

SPEAKER_02 33:49

I love that. And I completely agree. That's why people ask me, Am I gonna do too much video? And I said, I have four podcasts that post two episodes a week, and I have each, you know, I have like I have a ton of videos going out every day, and it's working. Today, I had someone like I have all these people starting to message me going, Hey, how might I get on your podcast? And uh, you know, it's like I now have a wine podcast that people are talking about. Yeah, I I know, I know I like my reds, I like my whites, I like my bubbles, and that's about it. I don't have any certifications, but people really like to be on my podcast because I bring a fresh voice to the wine industry, and like and then the other day I was having someone on my financial podcast because why not? I have multiple podcasts, and the lady's like, Are you a financial planner? I was like, No, no, I suck at money, but I'm learning, and that's why I started this podcast because I wanted to help other people like me learn about money, and she's like, That's kind of cool. And I said, Exactly. And like, if you're not doing it, if I'm not spamming people and I'm not doing too much, man, dude, you're you're you're good. You're good. Yeah, you know, just get out there and create, you know.

SPEAKER_00 35:08

You're saying what I'm saying in a different way, right? Which is that you're paying attention to the signals people are giving you. That yours might not necessarily be an email marketing signal, like an unsubscribe or a click, right? Yours might be a response, a request, uh, someone DMing you and asking to be on your podcast. But those are all signals that tell you that what you're doing is working. And we need to be better about checking in on the signal that our subscribers are giving us, that the people that we want to engage with are giving us. And I think that's another piece of this story that gets missed is like we're either looking at the wrong signals or we're just not checking them because most of the time the businesses like put email in some wine club or events coordinator's world, and they have 18 other things they have to do. Going back and doing a quick post mortem mortem on their email marketing campaign isn't on their list today. So they don't even know what worked. They don't know who's opening, they don't know who's clicking, they don't even know if there's email generated sales. That's another piece of this. Like, check the signals, keep track of what's working, adjust, right? And we talked about this earlier in the podcast that that we have to iterate and like you can't get any feedback if you don't send. So that's step one, but then iterate, optimize, get better as you go so that you get better at delivering on the promise that you're giving your subscribers.

SPEAKER_02 36:25

Yeah, I a hundred percent agree. And you know, you know, with that email, there's this like secret sauce. Like, what makes someone trust an email enough to spend money? What is it that you're doing that actually gets them to spend?

SPEAKER_00 36:40

Yeah. Well, wine is so challenging because it isn't a product that gives you instant status, right? It's not like you can wear it outside, you know, when you order a bottle of wine, sometimes you can't even open it for years, not let alone like a couple of days, right? So with wine, we're working with different levers than like a traditional retail thing where like someone orders makeup and they can wear it the day they get it. Someone orders a pair of shoes, they can rock them and put like unbox them and post them on the gram. With wine, you're dealing with something that you have to taste to enjoy. It's a social thing, it might need sellering. So it is, you're just dealing with a lot of different levers. So that's why all the stuff I talked about leading up to this is so crucial for a campaign, any like sale communication you're gonna send to be successful. You have to have done the work way before that to establish trust, know who your subscribers are, understand why your product would add value to their lives and position that value effectively to the subscriber. So when I talk about sending uh at least 12 emails in a year to everyone on your list, I do not want you to send the same email to everyone on your list 12 times. I want you to send your spring rose release to your wine club members first and differently, calling out their discount, letting them know this is the one they wait for year after year. And then I want you to talk to people who bought it last year, different vintage, but people who are wine club members who just support rose, they like to drink that pink, right? Talk to them. Hey, you bought this last year, the new vintage is available. We wanted you to be one of the first to know. Then you take everybody else on your list who's bought from you before, but maybe they didn't buy your rose last year, and you tell them, this is the one people wait for, y'all. Like, we know you enjoyed our wines in the past. You come to us for this, that, or that other characteristic. Our rose delivers that, but in a pretty pink package. And then the people on your list that have never bought anything from you before, you're taking that group of subscribers and you're saying, um, it's time to get off the fence. This rose sells out in two weeks uh every year, and you don't want to be the one that misses it, right? So you have to use different levers. You notice I'm taking the same email, but I'm using a different lever with each group to make that product matter to that subscriber. And you can't sell a bottle of wine someone's never tasted with a blanket approach unless you just discount the crap out of it. And most wineries don't want to do that. And even then, what are you doing? You're winning a race to the bottom, and that's not a win at all. Yeah. So that's my sort of philosophy of like you have to build the trust leading up to it, and then you have to be cognizant of again, why does this matter to that subscriber? And it won't usually just be a discount, it has to be something else, something emotional, something um psychological. It's not just the price or the savings.

SPEAKER_02 39:40

I 100% agree. And it's interesting too, because again, it comes back to that book I was talking about earlier, being an agent of trust.

SPEAKER_01 39:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:47

And uh, you know, I I think that that's like the core thing with all marketing is to help people figure out why they can trust you, your brand, and why they should care. You know, and I want to ask you this one last question. What's one email you wish every business would send, but almost none of them do?

SPEAKER_00 40:05

Um, I this one was another one. I was like, oh, it's always always a welcome email. But I've talked about the welcome email enough, right? Establish why someone should be on your list and then deliver it right away. That's a welcome email. If your business doesn't send something immediately upon opt-in that acknowledges why they opted in, tells them what they have to look forward to next, and delivers something of value right off the bat, you're missing a ton of opportunity. I have tested this in rooms of people. Fewer than half of wineries actually deliver anything automatic, let alone a personalized welcome email. So that would be like the number one. It's the most important email any business sends is the welcome email. But the one that I would say is like more of a batch email is a subscriber survey. If you've never asked your subscribers why they're on the list in the first place and what they'd want to hear from you about on an ongoing basis, this is for those marketers that are like, well, shit, Erica's is telling me a lot of stuff I don't know, and I don't even know where to go to get the information. Go to the source. Ask the people who've already opted in to hear from you what they love about getting your emails, what they wish you'd do more of, what they wish, what they wish you wouldn't do so much of, and let them have their voice be heard. When you get that, like, you know, first party coming at you with their feedback, you can refine your program very quickly to deliver what people are already responding to, as opposed to having to like wizard this out of your brain. Um, and so I I I've pushed for surveys with winery clients over and over again, and a lot of them are hesitant to do it because what's the get for the subscriber, right? Like, well, I would we don't want to borrow their attention to tell us stuff. But when you tell them you you matter to us, and we want to make sure that when we send you an email, you're stoked to open it and receive it and engage with us. How can we do what we're doing in the inbox better? When you position it that way, you will get feedback from the people who matter the most and the people that don't, they're gonna ignore a lot of the stuff you send anyway. So they probably don't matter. But actually sending something at the front end, even that gives your subscribers the opportunity to tell you how they want to hear from you, what matters most to them will help you create content that resonates with them, not just in the inbox, inbox, but like across all your touch points, hospitality, club, social media, website. And that's one of the reasons I love email marketing so much, is because it really isn't just a digital marketing medium. I like can't, I'm like a serial entrepreneur. I want to solve all of the problems everywhere. And like with email, I can see, I have to look at a winery's business from such a higher level than just like send a reputation, deliverability, open rates, subject lens. I'm like thinking about how they respond to things, how they fulfill orders. Like, there are so many other conversations that take place with a well-thought-out email marketing strategy that'll really have anything to do with email, but it touches operations and it touches so many other pieces. So that's what I just like get so excited. And if you don't do a survey email, you never have the opportunity to get that high-level strategic insight from your subscribers that would ultimately create a much more sustainable email marketing program for you over the course of months and months and months. We're so busy sending sales emails because we try to get that quick dopamine hit and that quick 10K instead of getting a feedback loop from your subscribers that would help you refine your content forever.

SPEAKER_02 43:30

Right. So true. Where can people go to find out more about you and what you do?

SPEAKER_00 43:36

Well, thank you for asking. Um, our website is emailmavens.com, and we are also on YouTube, youtube.com forward slash emailmavens. We publish content every other week that's designed to help put into action what I just said, right? Which is creating marketing emails that sell that don't suck. So it's step by steps, it's tutorials, it's strategy briefs, it's breakdowns. Um, and that's a great way to learn more about how. We deliver what we do, but also in a free channel. And of course, I would be remiss if I did not offer to send you a weekly email called the email party at emailmavens.com forward slash party. We send a weekly email filled with knowledge bombs and hot takes that will help your winery send marketing emails that sell that don't sell