For the Monterey County Vintners & Growers Foundation (MCVGF), print mailings were once considered the strongest promotional grapevine. Today, rising costs have led them to taste an online vintage.
In the past, the nonprofit — which represents over 85 vintners and growers in Monterey, CA — did a lot of promotion via print brochures at winery events and direct mail. But tightening budgets meant the group needed to get more aggressive with its online marketing efforts, says Rhonda Motil, executive director.
The MCVGF was working with an e-mail file compiled of event attendees and wine club members. The file of 30,000 names had become “unruly,” says Motil. To solve that problem, e-mail vendor StreamSend helped pare down the list to 10,000 usable names, with criteria such as whether someone had visited a winery in the area within the last two years.
The first blast to the newly scrubbed file — to promote to the Monterey Wine Auction Gala in February — resulted in a 40% boost in Web traffic.
As for judging the ROI, Motil says she’d love to see more conversions directly attributable to e-mail. “But it’s hard to gauge, as the typical visitor to our site has likely had multiple touchpoints, such as print ads and promotional posters.”
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