Launching a new revenue stream through email marketing

Email Open Rates

Customer Profile

Ballard Vine Works started back in 2013 with the idea of using aged wine barrels to build beautiful decor. Every item is handmade from specialty wood sourced from local aged wine barrels. Starting with Entreprov three months prior, we increased their online sales shortly after starting with us.

Increased Post Customer Engagement

The Objective

Ballard Vine Works receives significant foot traffic to their physical location. However, their website needed to be updated and no follow-up plan existed for customers. Ballard Vine Works wanted to develop a follow-up plan for customers that would increase repeat purchases. Also, having a fluid website makes a repeat purchase a much easier process.

Revenue From Last Two Emails

The Personal Touch Engagement Affect

Ballard Vine Works teams up with Entreprov to layout a transition plan to Shopify platform and develops an engagement plan mostly to follow up with customers. We created a series of email campaigns that focused on seasonality and timely engagement for customers. Specific examples included Mother’s day and Summer promotions.

The Process

Identifying the key roadblocks with the business was the first step to growing. We asked the owners critical customer engagement questions to identify opportunities for growth. We wanted to know what they were doing to build customer relationships.

We discovered Ballard Vine Works didn’t follow-up with customers after their purchase. This meant there were fewer chances customers would repeat after their initial purchase. Ballard Vine Works always depended on foot traffic by being in a tourist destination. We understand from other clients that repeat purchases could increase their revenue by up to 40%. The first objective was to create an email campaign to engage with new customers.

Another issue was they didn’t have a functional site that could take orders. We encouraged them to invest in having a Shopify site so customers could see other items as well. We wanted visitors to see visuals of the items throughout the site. This would help conversions with our email campaigns. Below is a snapshot of the old website versus the new website.

As for emails, they needed designs created that would connect with their audience. During discovery, we found most of Ballard Vine Works customers didn’t repeat purchase. Part of the reason was they didn’t have an engagement plan in place. We developed a follow-up email sequence for new customers and for existing customers. We tested several email styles until we agreed on a final look. We wanted to capture the feel of the brand. And make the purchasing process easy when prospects opened emails.

Our top priority was driving more sales from past customers. We’ve been able to generate a consistent flow of sales since partnering. In fact, our past two emails have generated over $4,000 in revenue. Below is an example of one of the Halloween designs.

Next we mapped out the customer journey for prospects and new customers. By doing this, we developed an engagement plan for every new contact. We factored in that customers and prospects want information about new deals and products. We launched a newsletter to share the latest updates and promotions

After the planning phase, we launched the new plans and tracked results. Over the course of the campaigns, we identified and tagged the most engaged contacts. This helped us create targeted and segmented new campaigns. Repeat customers received a different email campaign than contacts without purchases. By understanding the audience’s interest, we were able to increase sales.

Campaign Results

Since the launch of the new website, we’ve generated over $1100 in online sales within 3 weeks of launching. Prior to working with Entreprov, Ballard Vine Works had no follow-up engagement strategies for existing customers. Their website was outdated and produced little to no sales. Some of our campaigns have generated over $3,000 in a single email. They’re now consistently generating over $800 on average per email.

We created and implemented an engagement campaign to give every customer a personal touch experience. This store went from a few online sales to online sales being the main revenue source. As a result, our campaigns improved customer relationships with the brand.

Engagement Indicators

The initial attempt to build a trusted and long-lasting relationship was a huge success. Even though they had never focused on email marketing, our customer engagement was high. Some of our email campaigns had open rates as highest as 30%.

Their shift came a perfect time with COVID19 sweeping the nation. In fact, due to COVID19, Ballard Vine Works nearly went out of business. I personally talked with the owner to change their mind and I’m glad we did.