REthink Wine Blog

I’ve noticed lately that one of the easiest, most important (and relatively inexpensive) customer service techniques often goes over-looked. In our ever-evolving world of technology, it’s easy to increase automation for improved efficiency. However, one unintended result is that we sometimes end up forgetting our manners.

Just as important in today’s economy as it was when we first learned proper etiquette, is taking the time to properly thank your customers. I think every business owner can remember their first sale. The excitement, the enticement of endless possibility and most importantly - the gratitude. Why should subsequent sales be any less important?

Properly thanking your customers can mean many different things. Do you have an automated email thank you for online orders? What does it say? Does it sound automated? Consider adding a personal touch to your automated responses so that customers know you are paying attention. Add an invitation to an upcoming event since they purchased from you this month. Let them know of next month’s annual cellar sale. Keep it updated often and don’t let it get stale. Good customer service is a key differentiator between you and your competition. Automated “thank you’s” like “Your transaction has been processed.” or “Thank You.” don’t help your customers remember you. Going the extra mile will. What else do you do to say thanks? In addition to a warm and friendly thank you email, also consider calling customers at random to personally thank them, or slipping a hand-written thank you note into some out-going shipments. Even if you don’t have the budget or man-power to do this for every single customer, doing it sporadically will make a difference for that one individual - it’s like winning the customer service lottery for the day.

A proper thank you goes a long way – it is common courtesy and makes a customer more likely to return once you’ve shown you truly appreciate their business. Positive brand recognition and word of mouth referrals are the strongest advertisement you can get. Set the bar high for customer service and you can’t go wrong. Your customers will take note, and your competition will too.

Where direct sales are concerned, the name of the game is connecting with your buyers; with real people who can become real advocates for your brand and products. This is of course the whole point of the Wine Club, a very special collection of folks who have become so enamored of your wines that they are willing to join your club, give you their credit card and tell you, “ship me wine when you are ready to”.

Any chance you have to become even close to this special collection of club members should be pursued. And that’s the purpose of a particular kind of event that every winery who maintains a Club should host: The Pick Up Party.

The Pick Up Party is a simple concept and easily executed. Instead of simply shipping club members their shipment of 2, 4, 6 or 12 bottles of wine, contact them in advance to attend a special party just for club members at which they cannot only pick up their wines, but taste the wines in the coming shipment and mingle with their peers. The basics of creating a fun, effective Pick Up Party are pretty simple.

1. Use e-mail or snail mail to contact club members to let them know their shipment is coming soon.

2. In that communication, let your club members know they are invited to defray shipping costs and come to the winery on a set date to pick up their wines and enjoy an intimate party among club members

3. Make sure you get RSVPs so you can plan how much food and space you’ll need to arrange for.

4. Stress that by picking up the wine they avoid all shipping costs

5. Offer incentive to come such as a deeper discount on a certain wine, the chance to taste from the barrel, good food, entertainment, special guests such as authors of wine books. Give them good reasons to come.

6. Allow your club members the ability to add to their club shipment order in advance of attending the party.

7. Make the party special; “For Members Only,” but encourage them to bring a guest.

The “Pick Up” party is one of the easiest of all Wine Club events to organize. It builds loyalty. It strengthens the bond between the customer and the winery. It always leads to increased sales. And it often leads to the sale of more club memberships. We are at a moment in the economy when retention of your best customers is what will get you through. Don’t let the release of the new club wine be just opportunity for your shipping department to work harder. Make it an opportunity to solidify your relationship with your best customers.

Did you know that search engine spiders may only crawl your site every month or so? Sometimes it’s even longer! If you want to make your products “searchable” come holiday season, it pays to start thinking about it now. Determine when your first promotions are scheduled and count back, you’ll need to update both product descriptions and keywords way before the holiday shoppers hit your store. When updating your information, make product descriptions relevant to holiday buying. Add enticing verbiage to your teaser and descriptions. “Staff favorite”, “Great gift idea”, and “Ships in a separate box” help the buyer picture your wine as a gift. An appealing description that is optimized for search can make the difference between a sale and a missed opportunity.

Are you planning to do corporate gifting? Determining what product(s) you’ll offer, your decorative packaging, and gift pricing are all factors to start thinking about early. But, coming up with your gift presentation is only half the battle. You also need to consider your targets: companies you already have relationships with, a purchased target list, your own DTC customers that own/operate businesses, etc. How are you reaching out to them? A nice printed piece, a personal visit? Companies often look for corporate gifting options far before the holiday arrives, so have your prep done early and be ready to sell, sell, sell.

Successful marketing programs take copious amounts of time and energy to put into place. Once you’ve found an idea that works, stick with it! Your customers are telling you they like what you’ve got going on, so keep it going.

Rather than jumping from idea to idea exhausting both your resources and your budget, try developing an existing campaign further. You can recycle a concept - a contest, event, pairing, etc. and reinvent it over and over again. A new spin keeps the initiative fresh while the same goals are still underlying.

If a particular campaign really strikes a cord, why not make it a repeat occurrence? Recycling good ideas create annual, quarterly and monthly happenings for your customers to look forward to. So trust yourself, your ideas are good. Recycling and reusing your concepts in fresh new ways are a great way to maximize your return. This summer when you’re stretched in the tasting room, don’t forget to recycle.

PS - It wouldn’t hurt to put your cans and bottles in the blue bin either.

Many online marketers struggle to continuously increase their email conversion rate. In order to make sure your time and effort are well spent, focus your conversion efforts on products that will produce higher average orders and products your customers buy, and buy repeatedly. If the average percent conversion is 1% you want to be sure that your email marketing techniques offers your customers what they want. We’ve provided some ideas to get you started below. There are many ways to increase your conversion rate. Here are some suggestions

1. Segment your list to offer something specific to your customers’ needs
   1. Offer Cabernet to Cab lovers only
   2. Offer to club members only
   3. Offer to X State only
2. Provide incentives to purchase
   1. Shipping included in price
   2. % off Shipping
   3. % off Wine
   4. No Tax
3. Let the world know what you have accomplished
   1. a. Awards you have received should be highlighted
   2. When you get a great score, flaunt it
4. Be proactive when sending
   1. Don’t wait until the last minute to write your email. Think through your offer to avoid making simple mistakes.
   2. Use the best practice examples that Inertia has provided:
      1. i. Keep it short and sweet
      2. Have call outs to specific wines and link them to the product
      3. Tell them where you want them to go and show them how to get there
5. Always provide several links from your email to your site

The merchandising of your online store - for example product merchandising and streamlining of the purchase path - can be measured through promotional results. Google Analytics can be used for a more in depth analysis of how customers are getting through checkout, and where they may be dropping off. At the end of any campaign, the number of orders placed and the average dollar per order will provide you the information necessary to determine the effectiveness of your promotion and provide guidance for your future campaigns.

In the direct marketing world there are three variables that you, the marketer, can affect; number of customers receiving the message, conversion rate of readers to buyers, and an increased average order price on orders.

Here are a few suggestions from our team on how to increase your average order price:

1. Incentivize your customers to purchase more (volume). Set a minimum of bottles that need to be purchased in order to qualify for special deals. For example, a volume discount (off shipping) for purchases of 6 bottles or more. *Please note that it is always better to incentivize by discounting shipping or tax instead of discounting the product itself. Discounting your wine conditions your clients to purchase only when you discount. This devalues your product.

2. Guide your customers to spend more. Don’t underestimate your customers’ need or desire to spend money. Use call outs on your website to direct your consumers to your higher end wines. Don’t forget, up-sell is the best sale.

3. Make purchasing easy. Make it easy for your customers to purchase (three clicks or less), provide lots of attractive options (bundles and gift packs), and suggest additional products (specials and new releases), the more they will spend.

We encourage you to take the time to evaluate what your average purchase price is and set goals to increase your average. Remember that small increases to your average will greatly increase your bottom line.

The holidays are always busy. Between selling holiday presents and wine dinner pairings and organizing your own holiday celebrations and getaways it’s easy to forget about the reason you have so much to celebrate.

Take the time to thank your customers. Thanking them for their continued support and loyalty throughout the year is twofold. First, a “thank you” goes a long way – it is common courtesy and makes a customer more likely to repurchase when you’ve shown that you truly appreciate their business. Second, positive brand recognition is key this time of year. A nice little thank you note will reinforce your brand in a positive light. When it comes time to pay the credit card bills in January, you can bet they’ll continue their wine club membership with you over a brand who hasn’t taken the time to thank and appreciate their customers.

These two reasons should be plenty to get you contemplating a thank you email or snail mailing to your customers. But if you need one more reason (albeit a little more selfish) to send a thank you note - use it as a purchase trigger. Add a little extra incentive into your “thank you” to purchase one more time this year. It’s a great way to squeeze in a few end of the year sales while satisfying your customer at the same time.

Ask your client development manager if you need help sending a thank you email before the end of the year, those two little words are much more powerful than you think!

Consumers today are empowered - they’re better educated than in any previous generation thanks to advanced technology. Customers decide what they want, when they want it, and technology allows them full access to buy it on the spot. The difficult task that any online winery must undertake is anticipating the needs of the consumer. You must know what they’ll want before they do, so you’re ready for them when they want it. To do this you must know your customer.

Do you know your customer well enough? Your product has to be more than good, it needs to be exactly what they want. The only way to do this is to understand consumer buying habits. Knowing them better than they know themselves allows you to decide what the next trend will be. With the influx of technology and Web 2.0 there is an overload of information about your customer. Focus on user generated content, what are your top products according to your customers? Which websites are referring to yours, and which top 3 pages do these visitors view most often? In order to find these answers, you need to look at your monthly sales reports as well as your website statistics.

We’d like to continue this discussion in subsequent blog posts to come. The aim is to equip you with enough information to become the innovator not the follower. We are hoping to spark a discussion on this topic and look forward to your feedback.

Michael Coffey and Angela Sanchez

With the holidays right around the corner, we would like to present every opportunity for you to catch your customer’s eye. It’s still busy in the tasting room, harvest is still going strong and there are many other things tearing you away from updating your website.

We are here to help. One of our partners, Givens and Company, creates gift baskets centered around wine. You can place your wines in a lovely holiday basket and increase the chance of a holiday purchase. Remember, the sooner you prepare for holiday traffic the faster you can make those holiday sales. Not to mention the value you provide your customers by making it possible to share the wine they love with others. The best part of the Givens and Company gift basket option - you have someone to help you all along the way. All of the details will be worked out for you, contact patty@givegivens.com for more details. You can also visit http://ibg.givensandhalpern.com for a full selection of the gift baskets that are available.

Gift items are attractive items for corporate gifting! If you’d like more ideas for holiday promotion or are interested in hearing more about gift options, please contact your Client Development Manager.

Let us help.

As most of you know, staying in contact with your customers is a great thing. They enjoy hearing from you and communication helps retain loyalty. But staying in contact takes time and during the harvest season - that is a luxury most wineries cannot afford. Even those with the best intentions, often procrastinate when it comes to sending emails regularly. So the days become weeks and the weeks become months, we end up too busy to say thank you to those customers that mean the most to our wineries. We forget to engage the people that showed interest by signing up for the newsletter or visiting the tasting room.

With these challenges in mind, we have put together the artwork to make your life easier - eight email template styles for you to choose from. Don’t spend your time doing what we can do for you. Once you purchase the template of your choice you will be able to reuse it as much as you like. We will even update the template for you - provide us with the new text in a word file and for a $25 dollar update fee – we’ll do the heavy lifting. (Note : email templates are available to purchase for $150 each or 4 templates of your choice for $300).

These templates are designed by folks who know what catches your eye. You just have to ask yourself, do you want your emails to sizzle or fizzle?

Click Here to view the templates and contact your CDM to get started.