Business Blog. A guide to craft beer promotion, sales, and education.

_{Image courtesy of Campaign Monitor.}

Social media, in some form or another, is everywhere. Its reach feels all powerful. So if you're going to market in any sort of online way, social media is the only way to go, right?

Wrong. Email continues to be the marketing platform where businesses—regardless of size or industry— get the most bang for their buck.

Read on to see how email marketing outperforms social media marketing across the board—from ROI to new customer acquisition to good ol' trusty logic.

We sat down with Destination Unknown co-founder Chris Candiano to talk about starting the brewery, expanding it, and how BeerMenus Beer Releases provides the best platform for their beer release pre sales.

BeerMenus Beer Releases saw a lot of growth in its first month, read on to learn about what happened in our first full month!

It's not always clear how search engine optimization (SEO) can benefit brick and mortar stores: attributing an in-person sale to a website view is virtually impossible.

But with more than 224 million smart phone users in the US, you can't skip thinking about SEO just because there's a missing link in your conversion funnel.

Here's why.

A few weeks back I visited Jason Sahler, head brewer of Strong Rope Brewery. We talked beer, sniffed hops, and, in a surprisingly delicious twist, we tasted his very first homebrew. It was 15 years old.

Read on to hear more!

_{Generations three and four: Jared Kane and his son Joshua.}

In the Kane family since 1961, Beverage Barn, a multi-location package store on Long Island, has seen many changes over the years.

But as Jared—the third Kane generation to work at the business—tells it, a keen eye on beer trends and a hearty adoption of modern marketing strategies has kept the Kane family on the path of success.

There's only one wrong choice for glassware, and most bars are making it. You've seen it before, and you'll see it again—the shaker pint.

_Source.

We all know the value of Regulars in the beer business. They come in monthly, weekly, or even daily—they're like a revenue baseline. Without them it would be hard to succeed.

But what if there was an easy way to increase that baseline? What if you could turn that monthly visitor into a weekly visitor? Or a weekly visitor into a twice-a-week visitor? The boost to your bottom line would be huge.

Enter the BeerMenus equivalent of a Regular: a Follower.

What are Followers?

Followers are people who always want to know about changes to your beer selection.

By clicking "Follow," these folks have opted into a phone and/or email marketing campaign coming from you. All you need to do is update your page. When you do, you trigger BeerMenus notifications to these folks about your updates.

These notifications come in the form of push notifications on customers' phones and via emails (which, as we recently investigated, is extremely valuable).

Increasing your BeerMenus followers means instantly increasing your marketing reach. That, in turn, will lead to a boost to your bottom line.

At this point, you probably want to increase your number of followers. Here are 10 tips to make that happen.

Want to make sure you're making the most out of your print menu? Check out this video of our recent Print Menu Crash Course Webinar.

If you have any questions or want to learn more, click that blue square in the bottom right corner of your screen—it will launch a chat and we can help you out!

We're excited to announce a brand new product: Beer Recommendations!

Starting January 25, your BeerMenus menu on mobile web, iPhone, and Android will lead off with an all new "Recommendations" section for all users!

We're still working out some kinks (hence the "BETA" tag), so please let us know if something looks off.

We'll get into the algorithm-y weeds below (grab some popcorn!) but here's the bare bones story: beers land in the "Recommendations" section based on how well they score in 5 categories:

• Is the beer local?
• Is the beer rare?
• Is the beer sought-after?
• Is the beer new to the menu?
• Is it rated well?

As you can see, we also provide an option for your more educated customers: Recommendations by Beer Style. For example, if someone knows they want a hoppy beer but they don't know where to start because you have a ton of IPAs, they can navigate to "Recommended Hoppy Beers."

Like I said, we'll get into specifics below, but before we get any further let's address the most important question: