Reinforcing
We got this postcard in the mail yesterday. It came from Moore Brothers, a small, regional wine distributor.
If you were to describe them, you’d call them a boutique of sorts: Great customer service, unique selection, always have a tasting going. Their email marketing, done by one of the cofounders, is a weekly missive on a bottle of wine that they’re promoting, interwoven with a personal story about him drinking it with family and friends.
(I don’t drink wine, really, but I read the emails and love visiting the store.)
Anyway, back to the postcard. They’re running a sale right now.
Check the details:
January, we’d guess, is probably pretty tough for a boutique wine distributor. Traditional resolutions, holiday hangovers, etc. Recently, the arrival of “Dry January.”
But this sale caught our attention, because of the timing and the reasons:
It’s at the end of January, when the gluttony of the Holidays has begun to fade and the willpower around “new year, new me” is waning.
What better way to crush intended behaviors than by reminding your customer that existing ones are what their memories are built around? What better way to do it than by creating a reason to re-embrace?
In the DTC space, at least, the go-to topic for stoking flames is sales. People seem to have a religious-like belief that they’re either good or bad.
Per usual, that’s a pretty imbalanced way to look at things. Sales are a lever to pull when you have a specific goal in mind. (And, rarely, is “more sales” a specific enough answer.)
Moore Brothers, here, shows us the value of sale. It reinforces an existing behavior that may be at risk.