Anatomy of a Perfect Marketing Email
Whatever you think of online wine club Winc’s business model and brand positioning, it’s difficult to dispute the quality of some of their marketing tactics.
I received the following Father’s Day promo email from them earlier in the week, and it stands out for 6 key reasons. (For one thing, I love giving and receiving gift cards, and it surprises me that more wineries don’t use them.)
1 - Brevity
Many marketing emails are much more verbose than they need to be. Some emails have made me read two paragraphs or more before arriving at the call to action.
The Winc email is verbally and visually clear up front about why that email is in your inbox. Some fun-to-read contextualizing copy appears later, which expertly captures Winc’s laid-back branding, but it is not overly long.
The forty-six tightly composed words that make up the copy in the middle of the email are also worth mentioning because they make clear that fathers don’t have to be biological. Acknowledging that “father figures” deserve a gift is not just empathetic; it expands the pool of potential gift recipients.
Email marketing remains a profitable sales channel, but given the ever-increasing number of emails hitting inboxes, making your email easy to digest is vital for conversions.
2 - Captivating Offer
$150 is not a small amount to spend on a gift card, and it’s a nice touch for Winc to offer 15% off, which is a savings of a little more than $20.
I would assume that Winc understands their audience well enough to know that promoting a $150 gift card for $130 is not an unreasonable ask.
Winc is also capitalizing on the assumption that many of their recipients have not yet purchased their father figures a gift. Winc is hoping that a sense of urgency coupled with a twinge of guilt for not buying something earlier will lead to conversions.
3 - Well-Crafted Calls to Action
Every email marketing expert will tell you that a clear call to action is necessary, and of course the Winc email delivers. There is no ambiguity about what the Winc email wants you to do.
Winc’s calls to action could have been cold and mechanical — “Buy Now” or “Get Card” — but instead they’ve been humanized and given a more emotional thrust.
Sure, at the most basic, transactional level, you’re buying a gift card, but why are you buying it? To “Treat Dad", of course. That emotional layer takes some of the sting out of seeing that $130 exit your bank account.
4 - Three Opportunities to Click: Top, Middle, Bottom
There’s nothing magic about three opportunities to click. There are certainly cases where one or two opportunities is sufficient. Winc’s email is so well crafted, though, that three doesn’t seem excessive.
The first button, “Enter Code at Checkout” is at the beginning of the email, right below the offer lead. The second, “Treat Dad”, is embedded in the main photo. The third, another “Treat Dad”, is at the end.
Once again, Winc knows that some members of its database need more nurturing than others. There are certainly some highly engaged Winc devotees who will click the moment they see the offer without needing to scroll any farther. Others will need more convincing. For some the photo of Dad at the grill is enough while others will need to see what the gift card itself looks like.
And again, from a sales standpoint, seeing “Treat Dad” appear more than once is less aggressive than seeing “Buy Now.”
5 - Rich, High Quality Images
The Winc email features two images: Dad at the grill and the gift card itself.
Once again, Winc could’ve taken a much easier path and simply inserted a couple bottle shots with a generic “Wines Dad Will Love” caption. Instead, they position their products in a much richer, emotionally laden image of Dad doing what Dads love. Grilling. Better yet, drinking wine while grilling. The image has a high-enough resolution and fits perfectly in the space allotted.
Even the gift card has an aspirational image of how wine can add joy to Dad’s (or anyone’s) special day. Many gift cards arrive with an image little better than clip art. Winc has done well to anticipate that concern.
6 - Clear Direction on Where to Go for Assistance
Finally, and I don’t consider this a minor point, Winc’s spirit of customer service is on full display with the inclusion of their support email at the top of their footer.
Approximately half of the marketing emails I receive from wineries or other businesses do not include a phone number or email address for customer inquiries. Sure, the landing page on the other side of the click likely contains this information, but why not make it as easy as possible for your customers to reach out?
Let’s end with a dose of realism. Mimicking this email’s format while substituting your own branding and visuals will not necessarily lead to a radical increase in your e-commerce sales. You must consider several other factors:
Does your brief subject line instill urgency or FOMO?
Is your list engaged? Are your open rates above industry averages?
Is your database clean? Are you repeatedly sending to a high percentage of emails that bounce?
Is your landing page optimized for conversions?
Have you personalized your email to the best of your ability?