REthink Wine Blog

How do you set yourself apart in a relatively saturated and extremely competitive market? You need to capitalize on every opportunity to strengthen your relationship with your existing customers. While identifying ways to continue to reach new audiences and find ways to acquire new customers, you always need to be finding new and exciting ways to engage with your current customers.

Far too often, the focus on new business trumps the efforts to continuously build upon the current relationships that you have.  Your most valuable prospect is the customer who has already purchased.  By developing key tactics to engage and introduce new opportunities to your existing customer base, you will find their willingness to repurchase and step closer to that “Brand Ambassador” role.

Listed below are a couple things you can do that are relatively easy but go a far way in continuing the experience and strengthening the relationship.

1. Always Follow Up! Follow up with customers within 30 days after they have purchased and ensure the product was great and the purchasing experience was exceptional. If there was a problem with the shipment, correct it.  If you had not reached out, you potentially would have never known about the issue and you could have lost that customer.  This is an opportunity to ensure everything went well and if it didn’t, make it right.
2. Send birthday wishes!  My inbox is full of companies trying to sell me something and rarely ever does the email subject catch my eye.  However, on my birthday, if I get a message saying, “Happy Birthday Stephen”, you can bet your bottom dollar, I am going to open that message and read the entire thing.  It is a way to make sure your customers know how important they are to you.  Regardless of your size, this is something that is relatively easy to do and goes a long way in further strengthening your relationship with that customer. 
3. Make it personal.  In your marketing outreaches, segment your customer database and ensure a personal and meaningful message is coming across.  For example, emailing your customers in Sonoma and reminding them that your upcoming event is only 20 minutes away is a much different message then blasting your entire database and creating a generic event reminder that lacks the personal touch you would offer in a personal interaction.  Perhaps the subject line could even say, Our Wine and Food pairing is only 20 minutes away from your home! Ensure your marketing messages are personal and focused on the customer.  This is definitely a key way to stand out from the rest. 

Focusing on Customer Service and using new creative methods to increase the life time value of your existing customers is a strategy that will always yield significant returns.  Find ways to reach and service your customers that are valuable to them and you will find a customer base willing to purchase more and spread your story!

These are my principles.  If you don’t like them, I have others.   Groucho Marx

As we’re all very much aware, shifting market trends have made it a tough time for wine sales.  Eric Asimov summed it up in a recent article for the New York Times when he stated “Cash may be trickling, but anxiety is gushing forth.”  And while uncertain economic times may make it tempting to pull back on marketing spend or concentrate resources on the latest and greatest trend, it’s worth remembering that huge benefits can often be gained by focusing on the basics.   The essence of marketing is to understand the needs of your customers and develop a plan for meeting those needs.  With that in mind, I believe that all marketing efforts should fall into one of four buckets:  1) Building Equity, 2) Generating Demand, 3) Garnering Loyalty, or 4) Enhancing Channel Sales and Profitability.  By compartmentalizing in this way, all promotional tactics are focused on specific goals and objectives, allowing you to more easily measure results and plan for the future.

Build Equity:  Put simply the focus here is on acquiring new customers.    This includes all efforts to gently guide potential customers through the relationship cycle: from awareness, to contemplation, to preference for your wines (and your brand) and finally to loyalty and word of mouth.  Several tactics fit into this bucket, including but not limited to the following:

• Focus on direct marketing and list building strategies.  Maintain and stick with a promotional calendar.
• Reach out to both traditional media and the wine blogging community.
• Social Networking is a great way to attract new customers of every age (most notably younger generations), to add a human touch, and to build good will.  Whether developing a Facebook page, joining the conversation in Twitter or utilizing YouTube, you will need a strategy for both participating in and monitoring conversations. 
• If you’re feeling adventuresome, consider developing an online video.  Video can be used for many purposes:  winemaker interviews, culinary productions, or telling your story in general.  It can add a whole new dimension to your marketing effort.
• Build traffic to your website using SEM and SEO.  SEM is an often overlooked method of paid advertising which if approached correctly can be very powerful both in building brands and in generating demand.  Use it to build awareness for your winery, as well as for short term promotional efforts.  Focus on niche keywords, your winemaker, your winery and other terms which are important to your brand.

Generate Demand:    This involves the use of promotional methods to generate sales and increase the average spend per customer.

• Focus on the tasting room:  invite people to events, sponsor other local events and work with neighboring wineries if feasible.  Capture information that will allow you to approach these visitors in the future:  incentivize them to sign up for your newsletter or mailing list, and always encourage wine club participation.
• Recognize that tourists are looking closer to home and reach out to locals.  For California wineries, this might mean anyone within a three hour radius.
• Build upon your eCommerce strategy.  Remember the adage that “Content is King” and revisit your web site.  Make sure that content is up to date and product images and descriptions are clean and well thought out.  Also be sure that your site is frequently updated, with news, events and other happenings.  Don’t allow it to get stale or give the appearance of nothing more than an online “brochure”.
• Consider different techniques for increasing average order value:  offer product bundles, case discounts, or shipping incentives on volume orders.

Engender Loyalty:  The use of creative methods to increase the lifetime value of customers and club members

• Attack email campaigns and club promotion strategies with renewed vigor (use geographic and other forms of segmentation to ensure promotions are focused).
• Examine ways in which you can add value to club memberships.  Acknowledge milestones such as birthdays, anniversaries, club longevity.  Offer “members only” events, tours, and tastings.  Include re-order materials with your club shipments.
• Focus on current club members and solicit updated credit card information when necessary.
• Revisit your customer service policies and customer relationship management strategy and ensure club members are treated accordingly.  In turn, this will allow you to rely on your customers to help with marketing - happy customers and the word of mouth they generate can be very positive.  And remember that social media is not just about acquiring new customers; it is also a great tool for generating customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Be sure to utilize relevant metrics so that you always understand the value of your customers.

Enhance Channel Profitability:  The pursuit of new growth opportunities and customer acquisition strategies via expansion into new and profitable sales channels

Direct to Consumer Opportunities:  As new marketplace opportunities become available, the landscape for direct to consumer sales will begin to change dramatically.  Participation in these marketplaces, whether Inertia’s new direct to consumer marketplace “CollectiveVine.com”, or via a Marketing Agent provides many benefits, namely:  1.) A captive audience and the ability to introduce your wines to an expanded customer base.   2.)  New opportunities for market research and testing without the traditional costs associated with them.  3.) Costs for participation are significantly lower than through traditional channels, resulting in better margins.  4.)  Customer acquisition: participation in winery direct programs means that customers are delivered to you for future marketing opportunities.  5.)  An opportunity to build brand equity:  today’s wine buyers are savvier and are accustomed to searching out preferred brands.  Online marketplaces provide an excellent opportunity for building awareness.
 
Direct to Trade Opportunities:  Wine REvolution, our direct to trade marketplace provides an opportunity to reach restaurant and retail buyers directly via an ecommerce platform, providing several benefits:  1) Access to new markets and trade accounts, 2) Control over your brand and 3) Increased profitability.  Make the most of your participation and aid trade partners by providing complete product data.  In short, make it easy for partners to sell your product.

Finally, as you reach out to new customers via channels which have not been available in the past, I think it’s important to remember that you are building a brand. With that in mind it is essential that you maintain a consistent customer experience across all sales outlets:  from sales collateral, product descriptions, prices, and the content and images provided to online marketplaces all the way through to the customer service experience.  Customers should know and respect your brand regardless of the touch point.

Over the last year, and particularly the last few months, Facebook Fan Pages have quickly risen in popularity. In fact, several of our winery clients have asked about putting Facebook Fan Pages on their websites.  Since Facebook provides an icon and code, the task is as simple as copying and pasting directly into the content editor or kicker on your website.  John from Olson Ogden Wines did this successfully on his own last week and is using his Facebook Fan Page to announce news and communicate promotions, events, pairing, etc.  Take a peek!

Some tips that make an effective Facebook Fan Page are listed below and were taken from several articles on the web including one written by Spencer Spellman.

• Make your fan page pop.  Many fan pages fail because they don’t grab the user’s attention.  Successful fan pages have at least some html or flash that is graphically appealing to users.

• Offer incentives.  Make your fan page a resource for people and they will return.  You might create regular promotions on your products and use the fan page to answer questions from your fans.

• Run contests for fans as they help build a loyal audience.  Some contest ideas might be to invite your customers to send in pictures of them enjoying your wine or food pairing ideas.

• Leverage your resources.  Your customers and friends may be using Facebook and be unaware that you have a fan page.  Use your website, email, instant messaging, printed material and other social networking sites to drive people to your fan page.  Rather than competing, consider collaborating with your neighboring wineries.  A group of Silverado Trail wineries joined together  to create a multi-branded product offering which they advertise to their expanded list of customers. In another example, Ackerman Family Vineyard described how they collaborate with other select wineries to host a Winemaker’s Dinner event  in which each winery represents a specific varietal to pair with one of the dinner courses. Combined efforts can oftentimes make a bigger impact than trying to do it all on your own.

• Interact and have fun with your fans which can help spread and promote your fan page virally. A fan page is a fun way to show your corporate personality.  For brands that want fan pages to have added value but don’t want to become a resource portal; consider offering consumers a reason to join by including Facebook only promotion codes.  There’s no way to make sure the promotion code is given to only Facebook fans, however you can require an email be sent to you and email back a promotion code.  If you are networking at an event and hand out take-aways that promote your Facebook page, the potential to reach new fans is exponential to the number of friends each of these new fans has on their list.

Creating a Facebook Fan Page is simple, though it will take some time, dedication and planning. Remember to build good content which is easily accessible, and let people know about it. While you may not have a huge following immediately, over time your community will begin to grow.

I recently read a great story about the importance of customer service by e-tailers. If you don’t feel like following the link, the short summary is this: customers buying the same popcorn popper from different online stores gave radically different ratings of the product itself based on the level of service they received when the product broke.

Given the subjectivity at work in how we experience wine there’s an enormous opportunity to influence how people experience this product through customer service. The importance of tasting rooms has already taught us this lesson, but are you providing that same level of service to online customers?

We’ve talked about the changing nature of of marketing and consumer involvement here before, but a post at California Life got me thinking about the topic again. In general I believe that the movement toward a flatter more inclusive market empowers consumers and weakens the power of producers and marketers to shape their audience’s perceptions. When word of mouth is amplified and given wings by a global communication platform like the internet, it dwarfs the unilateral broadcast muscle of marketers.

Wineries may be uniquely positioned to take a more active role in the conversation. Thanks to the popularity of tasting rooms consumers are already used to the idea of talking directly to the wine producer and being educated by her. Wine drinkers crave information about what they are drinking and wineries have the opportunity to participate in the space that folks like Gary Vaynerchuk have already rushed into.

The hardest part of this is going to be that wine producers will have to trade the safe turf of their own tasting rooms and converse with consumers on an equal footing – on the internet there are no pourers, just fellow drinkers.

We sometimes think of winery websites as "virtual tasting rooms". Okay, you can't actually taste the wine on a website, but in other ways a website can, and should, achieve much of what a tasting room does. Next time you're thinking about the content of your web site, or if you're building a new one, a lot of what you already know about your tasting room will help you with your online presence.

Making A Connection

Tasting rooms allow customers to make a personal connection to your wine. Tasting room employees engage with customers in a way that captures a customer's attention in a way that no other kind of promotion can. A winery website has the potential to make a connection in a similar way. What are you saying on your website? Can you imagine an employee in your tasting room talking like the text reads on your site? You have an opportunity to connect directly with customers on your website – don't lose sight of the human being on the other side of the screen.

Honoring the Journey

When somebody shows up at your tasting room you know that they have traveled to get there. You appreciate they have taken the time to visit your winery and you try to make sure they don't regret that investment. A customer visiting your website has also made a journey. Maybe they arrived after searching for your wine on Google or following a link from another site. However they got there, they made a choice to visit your site and have invested some time in exploring it. They should feel like they are getting some value in return, whether it's a special offer on a wine, an opportunity to join your club or an invitation to a winery event.

Beating the Competition

Especially in the big wine centers there are plenty of opportunities to visit tasting rooms. Many people who visit your winery may already have been to one or two others and may visit more after they have left. You need to create a memory of your winery that stands out among the other tasting room visits that day. One the web the competition is even more severe. You are competing with millions of other web sites and all of them are only a click away. How have you distinguished yourself and made sure the memory of your web site stays with each customer?

In an Interview with Wine Business Monthly tasting room consultant Veronica Barclay says that the purpose of a tasting room is to "create memories". A good winery website can do the same thing. But what about the purpose of selling wine? I'll get to that in a future post.

Last week the San Jose Mercury News reported optimistically on the state of the wine industry in these economically troubled times. With the not so original title “Wine Industry See The Glass Half Full” the Mercury News presents the conventional wisdom that people are continuing to buy wine, though may be looking for more value at lower prices. I have to wonder: is there anybody who turns down a good wine value at any time? (more…)

It has often been argued that the true value of social networking, whether in blogging, Facebook, consumer generated content, Twitter, or otherwise, lies in the transparency it brings between you and your audience.  That is especially true if your ultimate goal is in building long term relationships with your customers, partners, vendors, or employees.

As technologies that are now considered cutting-edge become main stream, and as Millennials, with their reputation for being fully connected and passionate, begin to overtake Baby Boomers and Gen X’ers in numbers, a tremendous opportunity presents itself in the form of Social Media.  Exactly how are Millennials staying connected?  Are they reading newspapers or are they reading blogs and other forms of Social Media?

For employees, partners, and customers alike, transparency provides clarity behind the direction of your company and your brand.  For employees, it’s a constant reminder of why they come to work each day.  For customers, it answers the all important question “Why should I stay”?

Web 2.0 has provided a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.  It allows for real people to connect with others – in vibrant and open discussions about what interests them most.  Gone are the days of hiding behind the corporate brand.  With transparency comes trust.  It is your opportunity to display your company’s human side and begin building a direct dialog with customers.

Developing a Social Media strategy means adapting to change and understanding that your brand is now in the hands of forces outside of your control, meaning it’s in the hands of your consumers.

As you begin to develop a Social Media strategy, there are several important principals to keep in mind:

• Know your audience:  Are they customers, employees, industry veterans, or colleagues?
• Give more than you receive:  Blogging is about the sharing of information.
• Always place the needs of your customers first.
• Admit when you’ve a mistake:  Your customers will respect you for it.
• Work with customers to improve your product and your brand.
• Don’t be afraid to show your weaknesses as well as your strengths.
• Reveal your true corporate identity: in the form of your product, your services, and your employees.

Social Media is a whole new ballgame.  If the goal is to display authenticity, you can’t address your audience through a corporate filter.  They want to know the real you.  This is your chance to talk openly and honestly with them.  It is the perfect opportunity to expose the people and the vision behind your name.

So, whether you’re just getting your feet wet by posting comments on blogs or on Facebook, or are diving right in and starting a blog of your own, the easiest places to start are in answering some of the following questions:

• What makes you proud to be sitting where you are today? 
• What is your story? 
• How about your winery’s story?
• Who are your customers and what motivates them?

Social media presents a tremendous opportunity to learn, both from the good news and the bad. 

From Jonathan Schwartz’s (CEO of Sun Microsystems) blog:   “Sunlight’s not just a great disinfectant, it’s a wonderful safety net, too - you can’t fix the problems you don’t know about. But once you know about a problem, even small attempts to help, multiplied over the long tail of the internet, can make an extraordinary difference.”

Everyone knows that the key to building a successful online marketing initiative is building a good database. The more contacts you have in your database the better, since these are the people who will continue to receive information from you on new wines or any special promotions. The people who know and enjoy your product will repeatedly purchase your wines, and will become your best customers. These repeat buyers are the cheapest to market to, and the easiest to convert. This is why it is always important to maintain customer contact and reach out to recent buyers on a personal basis to make sure you continue to nurture that relationship.
As we ramp up our Direct-to-Trade platform, we are finding that the same mentality holds true for trade accounts. A few weeks ago, Andrea spoke about the importance of building and segmenting your trade database on the REthink blog. By harvesting business cards from your tasting room staff or reviewing depletion lists to see what accounts have purchased in the past you are slowly building a list of reliable trade accounts that have tasted or purchased your wine. You should segment these by type of account, level of relationship, and what wines they purchased.
By using your DTT channel to sell wines direct to these accounts; you are enabling your winery to better build these direct relationships with the trade, which is what will allow you to have the personal touch you have with all of your consumers. So what are the first steps to make sure your trade accounts become repeat buyers?

• Make sure all orders ship quickly and on time to trade accounts
• Include materials that are directed towards members of the trade such as shelf talkers and detailed tasting notes
• Always follow up with the account to make sure the wines arrived safely, this can be as simple as a short phone call made shortly after the wines are sent
• Note what wines accounts purchase and buying patterns for follow up efforts

All of these simple steps will help you maintain a relationship with trade accounts that will encourage them to continue to purchase your wines. And remember, repeat buyers are easy targets so the better the relationships you have with your accounts in your trade database, the more sales you will see come through your direct channel.

Recently, some friends and I went wine tasting here in Napa Valley.

Our first stop was Rutherford Hill Winery where one in our group was a club member. A pick up party was in progress for club members and we were given the VIP treatment. We had our own section in the front patio, several staff members to chat with and pour and a terrific snack spread. The Cabernets are always wonderful here and the new realease Syrah was terrific! We spent quite some time there and several extra bottles of wine were purchased–a direct result of the special treatment we felt we’d recieved. I mentioned this to the club manager and she confirmed that pick up parties for club members were very successful compared to having club members stop by when they could.

Next was Baldacci where an appointment is requested. Luckily, they had time for us that day and shared some wonderful Pinot’s. We took our time, savored every sip and were rewarded with one on one time with the staff here once the tasting room cleared out. Stories were told and recommendations for other wineries were shared by the staff members (big score in our books!). Again, more wine was purchased, partly because it’s so good and partly because of the friendly out-going staff that made us all feel special.

My point? Throw a pick up party for your wine club members. Make sure your staff is friendly and spends time with your customers. My other point? Go wine tasting. Meet the winery staff. Take your time and enjoy yourselves. Ask questions. Ask for recommendations. Winery staff members have a wealth of knowledge and the willingness to share–take the time to find out what they know. Your wine tasting experience will be hugely enhanced by doing so.

Cheers,

Jennifer