Customer Spotlight: Wellington Brewery

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Wellington Brewery has upheld an unwavering commitment to high-quality craft beer, sustainability, creativity, their customers, and the community. For the last 14 years, Wellington Brewery has relied on Constant Contact to make connections to ensure their customers go beyond just sipping and become loyal advocates of their business.

By adopting new marketing technologies such as automation, segmentation, and ecommerce, Wellington Brewery has experienced remarkable growth. With segmented and automated emails, they have made every email count. Now, they have the opportunity to meaningfully connect with their customers at the right moment with the right messaging. 

“Connecting with people who want great beer, and really building a community around that, has been a big part of how we’ve grown over the years,” said Brad McInerney, Marketing Director at Wellington Brewery. 

Staying relevant in a crowded industry
As one of the first independently owned craft breweries in Ontario, Wellington has always prioritized communication with their customers. As the craft beer industry began to explode in popularity, they realized they needed to adjust and adapt their marketing efforts to remain relevant. To date, Wellington has grown their email list to more than 10,000 subscribers.

Wellington incorporated newsletter marketing into its overall marketing strategy. As they have evolved their marketing, the foundation of their customer communications has remained consistent. Their commitment to email newsletters led them to prioritize growing their email subscriber base, frequently using sign-up forms and special promotions to entice customers or prospects to join their list.

Wellington Brewery

“[Our email list] is definitely a really important focus for building a deeper relationship with the customer. If somebody goes and buys one of your products, that’s great, but if you get the opportunity to actually speak to them in more detail, share a bit more about your brand, that’s where you get to build something special.” 

Through their email campaigns, Wellington has boosted their ecommerce sales by utilizing the Shopify integration within Constant Contact. This integration provides a seamless connection between their online store and email communications, streamlining the purchase process directly from an email. Integrating with Shopify has helped the brewery to average more than $2,300 in sales through their weekly email newsletter over the past six months, and to drive 50 times their return on investment with Constant Contact. 

List segmentation allows Wellington to divide their email subscriber list based on purchase behavior within their Shopify integration. This integration allows them to pinpoint their most loyal customers, re-engage those who haven’t made a recent purchase, and address abandoned online shopping carts. They have succeeded in delivering content that connects with their audience on a personal level, drives sales, and increases engagement.  

Automating Success

The brewery has continued to elevate their email campaigns by introducing automated emails, allowing them to cut down on manual email outreach. By incorporating automation, they have increased their engagement and sales successfully. Their abandoned cart automation, in particular, has helped them to achieve an additional $36,000 in orders.

Automating your email and SMS communications helps you save time and keep your contacts and customers engaged through a predetermined series of messages. You select the trigger, choose the timing between messages, and customize your message content. Constant Contact’s pre-built templates help you get messages out the door quickly, but are flexible — send a simple message or a complex series to meet your needs.

The Automation Path Builder lets you drag in different actions and rules, then you just have to customize them a bit. If you need to change things, steps can be dragged to different locations or even deleted. Once your path is activated and your messages start sending, you begin to gather reporting data to help you understand how it's performing. 

Each of their automations serves a specific purpose: The welcome series automatically greets new subscribers, sets expectations, and makes subscribers feel important and valued.  Their hops sparkling water automation (for their nonalcoholic product line) provides new subscribers with a coupon code, igniting their interest and driving immediate conversions.  Finally, their abandoned cart automation works to re-engage customers to ensure no sale is left behind. 

A toast to Wellington Brewery

“We’ve seen an increase in conversions based around the automation for following up with customers on their carts,” said Brad. “So if we haven’t seen a purchase in a few weeks, sending them a discount code … [has] been really helpful in terms of driving ecommerce sales.”

This personal touch has not only fostered the strong connections Wellington currently has with their customer base, but it has helped to increase their sales and overall engagement rates. With the help of Constant Contact, Wellington continues to cultivate a vibrant community of craft beer enthusiasts eager to explore their newly crafted products and brews.

“Now we spend a lot less time for a lot more impact.”