Email Breakdown #72: Bright Cellars

Lately, I’ve been studying and exploring the world of positioning. 

Your audience must connect with your brand as if it was another person… and have a reason to pick you over the other brands selling similar stuff.

(Sometimes, selling that stuff at a lower price!)

One way to do this is “meet the team” emails.

Particularly, a “meet the resident expert” email.

By that, I mean the subject matter expert at your brand who helped you develop your offer (if you have one).

Introducing the “brains” behind your offer does a few things:

1. Builds that connection by showing the people behind the brand
2. Sells your product implicitly using your expert’s authority
3. Gives you another chance to infuse your brand mission and values into your messaging

Bright Cellars nails this in the email I break down below. Keep reading to learn how.

Table of Contents

About Bright Cellars The Email: A “Meet the Team” Humanizer (That Sells Without Selling) The Subject Line and Preview Text: The Body Copy Takeaways What to Do Next

About Bright Cellars

Bright Cellars is an online wine club offering a diverse array of yummy-looking wine bundles (can you tell my research for this Breakdown made me thirsty?) as well as margaritas. 

(Check out this post for another wine club Email Breakdown.)

Customers can purchase bundles a la carte…

Or sign up for a paid membership to unlock discounts.

The one-off option’s there to try the wines. Then, inevitably, when the customer loves their selection, Bright Cellars pushes them to a membership.

Excellent business model. 

I should also mention — the bundles have outcome-focused names like “Dinner Party Bundle” or “Red Wine Variety Bundle”. 

This helps customers identify which one they need. Reduces decision fatigue and analysis paralysis.

Bright Cellars was founded in Milwaukee, WI, by Richard Yau and Joe Laurendi in 2014 after they graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). 

It all started as an algorithm that matched paid members to personalized wine selections. It’s a $40M/year brand as of 2022. 

The idea behind the Bright Cellars:

“Finding wine you love shouldn’t be this hard.”

Which means their mission is akin to “breaking down the ‘snob’ barrier,” so to speak.

Wine can feel like one of those “snob” hobbies (I’ll coin the term “snobbies” here). 

Getting “into” wine can be intimidating. People around you seem to “get” wine, yet you don’t. Most of the “good” wines are above your pay grade. And you don’t want to look “stupid” by asking questions, spending hours researching online, or wasting thousands of dollars on bad wines.

Now, look at Bright Cellars’s beliefs:

I can identify with all these.

So I love this. 

Wine is wine. Some people like some wines, other people like others. Bright Cellars offers what looks like a nice range.

But what makes customers buy again and again from Bright Cellars is its very mission. 

The brand takes a STAND. They alienate some people, perhaps, but the best customers say “YES. This is who I’m looking for.”

Absolutely masterful mission-crafting.

(Psst: My very first Email Breakdown covered an email from an “anti-snob” brand in the firearms space, Pew Pew Tactical. Check it out for another great example of the “anti-snob” angle.)

The Email: A “Meet the Team” Humanizer (That Sells Without Selling)

I don’t often cover the more design-heavy emails. But some brands, like Bright Cellars, do them well.

This email is a “meet the team” type of email — which is great for humanizing your brand:

(Pardon the scrunched text; it’s a “tall” email.)

This email does have a CTA, as you can see. You seldom want to leave that out. 

But, at the same time, Bright Cellars does some “nurture” and relationship-building here.

One other note: The entire email is clickable to Bright Cellars’s quiz. Something you can do with more HTML elements.

But notice how there’s still copy despite the colors and images.

So is the copy good?

Read on to find out…

The Subject Line and Preview Text: 

The subject line tells us right away what we’ll get by opening the email:

I like the wine glass emoji. Emojis always catch the eye and add a bit of personality.

We’ve got some preview text, too:

The subject line is decent on its own, but this preview text 100% secures a lot of opens from more skeptical subs.

Based on Bright Cellars’s pricing, that’s around 50% off your first delivery, I believe. 

But this is excellent framing and shows a keen understanding of the market and product. That’s like $9.17 a bottle. You can barely get a deal this good at the grocery store… on bottom-shelf stuff!

Thus, the dollar value resonates WAY more than just a boring old percentage. It’s easier for the reader to compare to alternatives and see why this offer is so good.

Also, notice how “plus” is all lowercase. Another little eyeball-grabbing detail.

The Body Copy

We start with the offer to pay off the preview text:

This scoops up the “readiest” customers. Those that maybe missed the last emails, or needed some time to decide and were ready when this email arrived.

Those that aren’t ready or that want that subject line payoff can read the next section:

Right away, you get a picture of the Master Sommelier, Catherine, with a glass of wine. Excellent for establishing a connection.

Notice the “And learn what that really means” in parenthesis. 

Remember, Bright Cellars is targeting “wine normies” who just want to enjoy wine without the elitism, so to speak. Many may not know what the actual heck a sommelier is.

And speaking of that mission, you see it yet again in the copy below the image. 

Sure, Catherine has reached the very peak of wine expertise. But she’s not here to lord it over you. Her mission (like Bright Cellars’s) is to make wine more approachable.

You feel like you have a “powerful ally.” One of the “elite” has broken rank with the rest to help you out. Lesson in there.

Ok, but what’s so impressive about a Master Sommelier, the reader asks? I mean, the reader trusts Catherine to some degree, as they can guess that a Master Sommelier is a wine specialist.

Bright Cellars builds up Catherine’s (and, by extension, the brand’s) authority in the next section:

That’s a hell of an achievement. 5th woman ever and only one of 28 female Master Sommeliers on the PLANET at the time of writing.

She’s reached a hyper-exclusive level of authority AND paved the way for other women.

One detail I’d add to make this even STRONGER: Tell the reader there are under 300 Master Sommeliers alive. This would reinforce the difficulty of achieving this title AND show how Catherine broke into a male-dominated profession.

After that, we get more context about the Master Sommelier title:

Bright Cellars clears up any doubts about the Master Sommelier title… only after showing what it is by explaining its rarity.

So they showed first. Only AFTER did they tell. Show, don’t tell (until after, for more technical things like this).

(Again, I’d explain briefly how the Master Sommelier is considered one of the hardest tests on the planet with a 2-8% pass rate. Maybe drop a detail or two about what it entails for proof.

Then again, the reader can look that up if they have any doubts.)

We get back to the humanizing and relationship-building:

The reader learns a bit about Catherine so she’s less of an imposing figure and more of a “regular person” they can relate to.

But at the same time, Bright Cellars shows her expertise and style by discussing her favorite unexpected pairings.

What’s nice about these pairings, though, is they aren’t the posh “wine and cheese” pairings. 

It’s doughnuts with Chardonnay and Jalapeno chips with Rose. It’s “normal people food” with wine. Not “dry-aged steak and red” or “caviar and white.”

(I hope those are common “fancy” pairings lol.)

See the trend? The brand’s voice and values are hidden EVERYWHERE in this copy. It’s masterful.

Bright Cellars now gives us Catherine’s wine motto:

Humanization, humanization, humanization. That’s the name of the game. This motto is funny and relatable to plenty of people.

It’s a twist on the “When in doubt, XYZ it out” phrase.

We move to the CTA:

I like the copy above the button. It offers a smooth and intuitive segue from the email body to the CTA, reinforces that personal connection, and builds on the authority this email establishes. Much more impactful than “ready to enjoy our wines?” or something similar.

Button copy’s good, too.

As I said earlier, the whole email is clickable and links to the front-end quiz. But customers don’t always pay attention to that. 

People who want to click are looking for a button or link. And they want to know what’s on the other side.

So just adding the visual element and “Take the Quiz” copy will get you the clicks here.

One more block below the CTA touching on Bright Cellars membership perks:

Everything the target audience could want: 

Education, discounts, shipment flexibility, and rewards for enjoying their vino.

I like how Bright Cellars designed these to look like links… but when you click through, you land on that quiz.

Quizzes are fun. People want to know what quizzes say about them. So this gets more clicks and potentially more quiz completions.

And that means more sales and subs.

Takeaways

Here are some big takeaways:

1. The Copy Mechanics

Less copy here. More design. But it’s done well — the design elements are neat and simple. Not too cluttered.

Bright Cellars leans into the brand voice and values… and the copy feels personal. Plus, it manages to communicate a lot in few words. 

Love the use of proof in backing up Catherine’s knowledge and achievement. The brand leads with the rarity element, thus showing instead of telling. Only AFTER do they tell you why Master Sommelier is such a big deal.

2. The Email Structure

The email structure is as follows:

1. Ready-to-buy CTA
2. Intro
3. Subject line payoff
4. Proof-building
5. CTA
6. Benefit bullets

The benefit bullets don’t technically have bullet points next to them… but they are in list form. So I’ll count them as benefit bullets.

3. The Overall Strategy

Three strategy takeaways here.

First, this email adds a human element to the brand. You get to “meet the team” and see “behind the scenes.”

People love these kinds of things because it makes the brand more relatable. And it adds an element of exclusivity — you get to peek behind the curtain since you’re on the email list.

Oh, and it pairs well (pun partially intended) with the brand’s angle of making wine approachable for the average person.

Second, this email subtly establishes trust and boosts sales with “authority” proof.

Notice how the email didn’t mention Bright Cellars’s products much. The focus is the brand’s Master Sommelier, the in-house wine expert.

Bright Cellars can “disguise” the sales pitch of “Hey, our wine selection is hand-picked by an expert” behind a “meet the team” email. 

The effect is similar to a “celebrity endorsement,” except much more authentic… 

Because Catherine is involved with the company — not just putting her stamp of approval on its product.

If you knew a Master Sommelier was working with a company to produce their wines, you’d trust them a LOT more… especially after learning what a Master Sommelier is.

Third, I bet many wine companies have Master Sommeliers or similar professionals working for them…

And never spotlight them.

There’s a story of ad legend Claude Hopkins touring the facilities of his client, Schlitz Beer. 

At the time, EVERY BEER COMPANY bragged about their beer’s purity. 

*YAWN*

Claude, not a beer expert, was astounded by the details involved in brewing the beer. He asked the brewery why they never told the customer about how the beer is brewed.

“Why, the processes we use are just the same as others use. No one can make good beer without them,” they responded.

Claude knew that customers had no idea how this process worked. I mean, he didn’t until he arrived at the facility.

Why not highlight the story of how the beer is brewed? 

The brewery protested, saying that all beer is made the same way. 

Claude pushed them to try it because no one had told the story of how the beer is brewed.

The brewery gave in to Claude’s demands…

And sold TONS of Schlitz Beer — solidifying Schlitz’s #1 position in the beer market for AGES. 

That was beer. This is wine. And Bright Cellars is taking a similar approach — but instead of how the wine is made, it’s who is helping to craft the bundles. 

So Bright Cellars positions itself as the online wine club working with the best in wine expertise. Masterful.

What to Do Next

1. Get on my email list using the signup form below for more Email Breakdowns and other helpful marketing content.
2. Share this with someone who might find it helpful (or entertaining).
3. Reach out to me if you want help writing emails like this one.
4. Check out Bright Cellars’s tasty wine bundles!