How Liquor Stores Can Increase Sales with Email and SMS Campaigns

Email and SMS marketing are two of the highest-ROI tools available to liquor retailers, but only when used correctly.

This guide breaks down how to use email and SMS campaigns the right way and how liquor stores can turn everyday customer data into consistent sales growth.

Use Purchase Behavior to Segment Customers

The basic principle of effective email and SMS marketing is segmentation, which means organizing customers into groups based on how they shop. Without it, the messages you send can feel generic, and generic messages don’t drive action.

Customer segmentation should be informed by these three things:

Purchase history

What customers buy matters more than any demographic detail. Purchase history tells you:

• Which categories they prefer such as wine, spirits, beer, or RTDs?
  
• Which brands or styles do they gravitate toward?
  
• How often do they shop and how much do they typically spend?

A customer who regularly buys $25 to $40 tequila responds very differently from someone who picks up value vodka every two weeks, and treating them the same leads to wasted discounts and missed opportunities.

Budget and price sensitivity

Price sensitivity is not about how much a customer spends, but about what actually motivates them to act. It shows whether a change in price influences the timing or likelihood of a purchase, or whether the purchase happens regardless of incentive.

Segmenting customers by their response to incentives helps avoid unnecessary discounts, protects margins, and limits promotions to situations where they genuinely change behavior rather than reward purchases that would have happened anyway.

Preferred communication channel

Nowadays, everyone carries a phone, but not every email they receive actually gets read, so you have to be smart about how you communicate.

Because email and SMS are checked in very different ways, email is better suited for messages that require context, such as event invitations, new product introductions, or category updates. 

SMS works best when timing matters, like restocks, limited promotions, or short messages designed to prompt an immediate visit.

Treating email and SMS as interchangeable leads to noise, while treating them as distinct tools with different jobs leads to clearer communication and better results.

How to Use Customer Data in Email and SMS Campaigns

Once customers are segmented, the next step is deciding what to send. The goal is not to promote more often, but to promote more intelligently.

Here are the most effective types of email and SMS campaigns for liquor stores, all driven by past purchases.

Invite customers to events they will care about

In-store tastings and events work best when the right people show up. You should always aim to  invite customers based on what they already buy. 

If you are hosting:

• A tequila tasting, invite customers who regularly purchase tequila or mezcal.
  
• A French wine event, invite customers who buy European wines.
  
• A craft beer sampling, invite customers who buy local or rotating beers.

This approach increases attendance and improves the in-store experience, while at the same time, customers feel like the event was designed for them, and not advertised to them.

Notify customers when similar products arrive

If a customer regularly buys a certain gin, bourbon, or wine region, let them know when you bring in something similar.

Instead of saying: “We just got new arrivals”, you can say: “We just got a new small-batch bourbon similar to the one you buy”. 

Just put yourself in the customer’s shoes. You would be far more likely to pay attention to a message that references something you already buy than a generic update.

Alert customers when products they buy are back in stock

Restock notifications give customers the chance to get an item they were already looking for, without having to check back or ask in person.

This is a good example of a message that is better sent via SMS than email, because of the immediacy and the more personal nature of the channel.

Promote discounts on products customers are likely to buy

Discounts work in a similar way to new product alerts in that they rely on existing buying patterns. The difference is that discounts introduce a time-bound incentive rather than a discovery moment.

Used this way, discounts shift purchasing behavior without training customers to expect permanent markdowns.

Why Relevance Beats Frequency Every Time

We’ve already touched on the importance of being specific about who you target. It’s worth slowing down on that point, because this is where most email and SMS strategies fail.

Most of the time, people do not consciously evaluate most messages they receive. They skim, glance, or dismiss them based on whether the message immediately feels familiar. If it does not, it disappears, regardless of how often it is sent or how strong the offer is.

Messages that line up with existing shopping habits pass that filter more easily. They do not ask the customer to stop and think. They simply register as something that fits, and that’s exactly what makes them easier to act on. The effort required is lower, and the decision feels obvious rather than promotional.

Over time, this also changes how customers perceive the store. When communication consistently reflects what they already buy, messages start to feel informative instead of intrusive. Customers stop treating them as ads and start treating them as updates that are worth checking.

How Santé POS Supports Smarter Email and SMS Campaigns

Liquor store owners want to run more intentional email and SMS campaigns, but the challenge is rarely the message itself. The real issue is that customer data, purchase history, and promotions are often spread across multiple systems.

Santé POS is designed to keep those pieces connected by default. Customer accounts, purchase history, inventory, promotions, and online sales all live inside the same platform, which makes targeted outreach far easier to execute consistently.

Here is how Santé supports more effective email and SMS marketing in practice:

Customer accounts linked to real purchase history

Santé allows customers to create accounts both in-store and online. Every transaction is tied back to that account, giving store owners a clear record of what each customer buys, how often they shop, and which categories or products they return to over time.

Email subscriptions built into customer accounts

With Santé POS, customers can opt in to email communications directly through their account. This makes it easy to send store updates, promotions, and announcements to an audience that has already shown interest, without relying on disconnected mailing lists or third-party exports.

Unified in-store and online data

Because Santé runs both the POS and the eCommerce storefront, customer activity stays unified across channels. A purchase made at the register and an order placed online both contribute to the same customer profile, creating a more complete picture of buying behavior.

Promotions that align with inventory and sales activity

Santé’s promotion tools make it easy to run case discounts, bundles, and category-based offers across in-store and online sales. 

When paired with customer purchase history, these promotions can be communicated more intentionally through email or SMS instead of being broadcast to everyone.

Cleaner execution, fewer tools to manage

By keeping POS, inventory, customer accounts, online sales, and promotions in one system, Santé reduces the operational friction that often prevents stores from running targeted campaigns in the first place.