OVERVIEW
With strict guidelines in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19, many industries have suffered financial losses. The alcohol industry, however, has actually seen an overall increase in sales during the pandemic. Short Walk Wines is using the momentum they have gained in the past few weeks along with a comprehensive marketing campaign in order to boost sales further.
Short Walk Wines has proved that supplementing email campaigns with text message marketing can improve sales and customer response. Texting is the dominant form of communication for most consumers; further, individual online presence is only going up during COVID-19. Mass texting leads to conversions about ten times faster than email, and text message open rates exceed email by 80%. Businesses like Short Walk Wines are adding texting to their marketing campaigns in order to incorporate trends that are increasingly relevant to their customers.
ABOUT
Short Walk Wines founder Lewis Sheats had a vision to bring “small batch, unique wines” to downtown Raleigh. In 2018, he opened Short Walk Wines, a “neighborhood wine shop” that specializes in a tasting bar, wines by the bottle, and free delivery to downtown Raleigh. Sheats wanted his small business to communicate with its customers as effectively and conveniently as possible. When customers purchase products from the shop, Short Walk Wines takes down a phone number which will then receive updates, marketing messages, and product introductions.
“We sold over $1,600 worth of wine directly contributed to our first mass text sent to 300 customers.”
“Since then, we’ve regularly seen a 20-80% increase in sales when we use texting in our marketing campaign.”
STRATEGIES AND GOALS
For Short Walk Wines, CanaryTEXT is a strategic addition to their marketing campaign. They wanted to implement a mass texting service to their pre-existing campaign in order to highlight the things about their business that were already working. The goal was to use CanaryTEXT to increase online sales and customer response.
- Introduce New Products
- Short Walk Wines recently introduced “Wine Packs,” a mix of two to four different wines paired together for specific events and settings. When they introduce new products like these packs, they send a text to their customers announcing and promoting the product.
- Encourage Customer Response
- Using CanaryTEXT has also created an avenue for direct customer response by encouraging feedback and reviews via two-way texting.
- Increase Online Orders
- Short Walk Wines is using text message marketing to guide their customers to their website in order to promote online orders and increase conversion rates.
RESULTS
%
Average increase of wine pack sales with each texting blast
%
Between 20 - 80% overall increase in sales
+ Significant increase in website traffic
CONCLUSION
By incorporating mass texting service CanaryTEXT, Short Walk Wines has increased sales, deliverability, and customer responses during COVID-19. The addition of text messaging to their pre-existing marketing campaign has given Short Walk Wines the ability to take customer relationships to the next level. This expansion has not only opened the door for customers to share reviews and ask questions, but it has also increased sales. Any given week in which Short Walk Wines sends a text blast to existing customers announcing or promoting a product, sales increase by anywhere between twenty and eighty percent. Owner Lewis Sheats plans to continue using CanaryTEXT as a branch of Short Walk Wines’ marketing strategy to interact with customers and increase sales.
