• by Ray Schultz , February 23, 2021

People have been drinking more wine during the pandemic. And wineries have been sending more emails: 3.63 campaigns per month in 2020, compared with 1.88 in the 2017-2019 period, according to Wine Industry 2020 Email Benchmark Report, a study by WineGlass Marketing. 

However, there has been a steady decline in open rates as volume has ramped up. 

By September last year, open rates averaged 24.66% versus 27% in 2019. In contrast, Mailchimp Retail open rates had fallen from 19.36% to 18.39%.  

And the click-through rate fell from 6% in 2019 to 5.08% in 2020, versus an increase from 2.24% to 2.25% for Mailchimp Retail. The average conversion decreased from .48% in 2019 to .17%. However, that tops the .09% reported in general in a study by Klaviyo.  

But the revenue fell to $2,478.88 per campaign, with an average order value of $255.44.  

Meanwhile, The bounce rate increased by over 20%, from 1.53%  pre-COVID-19 to 1.74%. Why? “With office closures and unemployment hitting the double digits mid-year, we can confidently assume that many email addresses changed in 2020,” the study states.

All this was happening as consumption frequency per month grew from 9.3 times in October 2019 to 9.4 in March 2020 -- still reflecting pre-COVID consumer behavior --  and finally to 9.7 during the lockdown. 

Meanwhile, 55% of the emails contained ecommerce content, while 15% were for events, 13% were for clubs, 6% were newsletters and 1% were classified as other.

The best day to send winery emails? Tuesday — accounting for 26.4% of all sends, it produced an open rate of 26.4%, click-through of 5.31% and a 20.08% share of sales. 

The favorite emoji, used in 50.35% of all subject lines? What else? A wine glass. 

The conclusion?  “If 2020 was a sprint, we made it through on adrenaline,” states Susan DeMatei, president of WineGlass Marketing. “Now, get ready for the marathon.”

WineGlass Marketing analyzed statistics for the past year on 222 wineries with over 9,000 campaigns and almost 46 million emails.