REthink Wine Blog

No one doubts that when it comes to electronic commerce and e-marketing in the wine industry, wineries with a tasting room have a significant advantage. The visitors that walk into the tasting room immediately become customers or well-qualified prospects that can be added to a winery’s “contact list” for future outreach. But if you don’t have a tasting room, building a contact/customer list is a much more daunting task. But if e-mail marketing and online sales is part of your direct sales strategy, then it’s a task you must take up and address.

Here are some creative strategies for building customer and contact lists that have been successful for other wineries without tasting rooms. 

1. Business Teaser Cards: A few wineries, when printing business cards for all their employees, have used the back of the card to offer the holder a 10% or even 20% discount on their first purchase. Often each card has a code on it that buyers can use to assure their online discount and to track who’s business card led to the sale. It’s a creative way to invite new acquaintances to the website when without the discount/invite you’d only be handing out a business card with no call-to-action.

2. Event Giveaways: One Sonoma winery with no tasting room but with a guest house on their property always brought a sign to the tastings they attended announcing that following the tasting a drawing would take place for a weekend getaway at the winery’s guest house. The sign carried beautiful pictures of the guest house and the property. All the attendees had to do was drop their business card in a fishbowl or fill out a simple slip of paper with name, state and email. Within a day of the tasting the winery did their drawing, contacted the winner and set up when they would visit. But more importantly, the winery would also contact via email every single person who entered the drawing with a “thank you” message and an offer of 15% on their first purchase. Their list continues to grow.

3. Contests: A number of wineries without tasting rooms have found that contests are a fantastic way to draw prospective customers to their website. The best contests should be easy to enter, but also give the entrants a feeling of participation or connect with the winery, winemaker or brand. One winery has used its back label as a canvas for the contest by inviting entrants to design their own 100-word back label on a specific subject. The winner had their entry published on the label when the wine was bottled! The contest was announced with a press release and an ad, and the winner was announced on the website and in a press release. They received hundreds of people visiting their site to participate, all providing their entry of back label copy along with their e-mail address. The winery grew their mailing list and customers were able to engage with the brand. Win-Win.

Prospecting and building your email contact list must be an ongoing project if increasing online sales is part of your marketing strategy. If you don’t have a tasting room, you’ll need to think creatively. The time and effort that goes into a very creative customer prospecting program will pay off in an enhanced email list, and ultimately increased sales.

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.

Inertia’s 5th Annual Direct Symposium will take place on July 11th, from 9-3:30pm at COPIA in Napa. This year, we’ve expanded our agenda to include interactive sessions on topics chosen by attendees. Last month, we released a survey on what we were hearing from our clients and industry partners as the ‘hottest’ topics in the direct industry. Topics included:

• Website Design
• Website Merchandising
• Selling Direct to Trade 
• Direct Shipping Compliance
• Allocation Program Management 
• Wine Club Management
• Wine Blogging
• Online Social Networks

We asked attendees to ‘vote’ on their topics of choice for breakout sessions at our July Symposium. The results were tallied, and we have our winners… 

• Selling Direct to Trade: Access. Control. Sales. 
• Direct Shipping Compliance: A Dynamic Marketplace. Your Options.
• Wine Blogging: Brand Building, Customer Loyalty and Sales
• Online Social Networks: Consumer- to-Consumer, Peer-to-Peer Engagement
• Website Design: Designing for Best User Experience & Greatest Sales
• Website Merchandising:  Sell More Online 

Our Symposium agenda will allow attendees to participate in two breakout sessions of their choice: One in the morning, one in the early afternoon. During each of these sessions, panelists will lead an interactive discussion with the audience around a designated topic. Based on several workshops which we led earlier in the year, we know our clients are eager to engage and look forward to some good interaction.

Because of limited space in each of our breakout sessions, we request that attendees reserve their spot in the session of their choice as soon as possible. Signups will be taken the day of the Symposium, at check in, but to ensure you get a seat in the topic of your choice, send your request through today (along with your RSVP if you haven’t already!) to rsvp@inertiabev.com.

See you in July!

On Friday the wine industry lost an American icon.  Robert Mondavi is largely credited with putting California wines on the world’s radar screen as he worked tirelessly to educate a generation of Baby Boomers about the benefits of wine as part of a healthy lifestyle.  He believed in the marriage of food and wine and traveled extensively to feed his quest for knowledge on the subject.  “Wine to me is passion.  It’s family and friends.  It’s warmth of heart and generosity of spirit” he wrote in “Harvests of Joy:  How the Good Life Became Great Business.”

And that message found its way not only to the Baby Boomer and Gen X generations, but I think it continues to resonate with Millennials – today’s 21 to 30 year olds.  According to Nielsen Research, Millennials, also known as “The Next Great Generation,” are approaching Baby Boomers in sheer numbers (70 million compared to the 77 million Baby Boomers) and they outnumber Gen X’ers by nearly 25 million.  What I found interesting about the Nielsen Research study, which was published in November of 2007, is that this group perceives wine to be “relaxing” and “sophisticated”, opting for wine over other alcoholic beverages for more formal nights out.

Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that, probably largely due to the influence Robert Mondavi had on previous generations, this is the first generation in US history to have grown up with wine at the family dinner table.  And the resulting shift in preferences is evident in the numbers:  ten years ago beer accounted for 59% of this age group’s purchases in the alcoholic beverage category.  Today that number is twelve percentage points lower, while wine and spirits have increased in relative proportion.

As they are just now shaping their tastes, Millennials represent an enormous opportunity for wineries. 

The tasting room:
Remember that this group is just beginning to form opinions and that those opinions will be largely based on experience, experiences they are very likely to share with like-minded peers.   The tasting room is a perfect opportunity to begin building long-term relationships with the next generation by creating memorable visits through friendly conversation and enthusiastic sharing of knowledge.  And don’t forget to capture email addresses – Millennials are a “connected” group, far more so than any generation before them.

Online:
This is the generation of social media, and while it may be difficult to justify venturing into social networking simply because it doesn’t lend itself easily to results that are “measurable”, social media can be a great opportunity for branding and for engaging a whole new generation of wine consumers.  It may be a longer term endeavor, but it will ultimately translate into sales, and more importantly, into longer term relationships. 

As a whole, the 21 to 30 age group is unpretentious and hungry for knowledge, knowledge that they’re much more likely to seek out via Internet search and social networks than through wine books or ratings.  This is our opportunity to pay it forward and continue the education that Robert Mondavi started.

Last week I got this call from a younger relative expressing all their plans for the summer. It quickly brought back that feeling we have all experienced. You remember how you felt when you walked out the door after taking that last test of the year. That first breathe of fresh air after 9 long months of schedules, tests, long days and sometimes long nights. I then quickly realized that I will not have that feeling again for at least another 30 years! Now I’m not here to be a Debbie downer but the true take away is the understanding of what TIME means to us. TIME is the currency that can’t be earned, it can’t be given back, it’s all in how you use the TIME that you have been given. So instead of saying that I will give you back the time used to read this blog, I will hopefully provide you a couple quick tips to help you Re-prioritize your time so that you will have a better return in the time you do spend at your job. (These tips are meant specifically for wineries)

Customer Appreciation
During slow times in the tasting room, call your top customers and thank them for their loyalty to your brand

Communication
Instead of being over-whelmed with sending a mailer, send a email to a specific audience providing them a specific incentive to purchase

Support your key supporters
Keep track of your top customers and keep them on the list to call when certain “limited” wines come up. Instead of taking the time to move it through your tasting room, simply make a couple calls to your key customers. This will not only sell through the wine but also bring those customers closer to your inner circle.

Don’t recreate the wheel
Instead of racking your brain to come up with new ideas in your office, take a day to visit other wineries. Enjoy the day, keep your eyes open and you will not only be refreshed but I guarantee you will walk away with ideas to build upon.

Support your staff
Don’t get so caught up in the busyness that you forget to make the time enjoyable for your staff. This will make everyone enjoy the time they are working. Once you get them to enjoy their time, their time will be more productive.

Listen
Take time to listen to your customers and staff before trying to change your customer experience, tasting room tours, wine club, or events. This will not only increase the efficiency of the transition but will keep you from having to go back to the drawing boards.

Although most of us will not have our summers back for a while, we should make the most of the time we do have so that we can more efficiently do our jobs. Always remember that the goal is to work so that we can live, not live so that we can work.
Enjoy the day!

Email ideas and tips seem to be ever-changing. Below you’ll find a website link
so that you can keep up on these changes, along with a few important tips.

Watch your subject line. Don’t over use upper case letters or punctuation. Make
your subject line identifiable with your company and/or product. Avoid use of
words like  “FREE” or “CLICK HERE HERE NOW!” Instead use the word
‘complilmentary’ in place of ‘free,’ and ‘follow this link’ instead of ‘click here.’

Ensure your FROM email address is an email address that’s checked often. Even
if you state in your email not to reply to this email address, it can happen. You want
to help potential customers replying to this email address with any questions or
issues they may have so they become return customers.

Personalize your emails when possible. Many email modules now have tags you
can use to insert your customer first or last name. We all like to see our names in
print, so take advantage of this option.

Add a note in your email that reads like this: Please add info@yourcompanyname.com
to your address book to ensure our emails are delivered to your inbox.
This will help avoid your email being sent to spam or junk folders.

You’ll find additional information here:
http://emailexperience.org

As it appears we’re moving closer and closer to a recession, one interesting fact has come to light:  the Internet continues to be one of the few areas where many multi-channel retailers are experiencing sales growth.   According to an article by Internet Retailer this month, the web currently accounts for only 10% of The Talbots Inc’s sales but accounted for 68% of sales growth in 2007.  Likewise for many other merchants – Staples, Circuit City and the Gap are three examples cited in the article.  Another interesting statistic mentioned – online spending by households with higher incomes grew more rapidly than households with lower income (this is according to comScore, Inc.).  Year over year growth in the over $100,000 category was 28%, while those in the $50,000 to $100,000 category spent 17% more than the previous year.  This is a statistic which is not lost on the wine industry.  And given the fact that margins are clearly higher for direct sales, I think this year, more than ever before, is a perfect year to concentrate on increasing direct sales.  With a down economy facing us, a secondary goal of course, is to protect against margin erosion as much as possible - which leads to the title of this post.  There are two free tools available today to help you increase online sales and protect against margin erosion.

Google Analytics

I know many people are intimidated by the mere thought of analytics, especially if math was not a favorite subject in school.  And if you’re one of those people, I would suggest taking a look at Google Analytics from a slightly different perspective.  When you get right down to it, all of the numbers and graphs you see are really designed for one purpose:  to give you a glimpse into human behavior.  To further simplify, there are really two things you are looking for in all of the numbers:  1) how are people arriving at your site, and 2) what are they doing once they get there?   Remember that each click you see in your Google Analytics statistics represents an actual human being.
How are people arriving at your site?  Look at specific keywords and search engines consumers are using to find you.  Then take a look at the pages they are landing on.  Are they finding what they’re looking for on those pages?  If not, what can you do to improve your landing pages and increase conversion rates?

What are they doing once they get there?  This is where the funnels available to you in Google Analytics become extremely interesting.  Where are customers leaving in the sales process?  After looking at your Google Analytics numbers, I always feel it is important to go back to the website and look at it through the eyes of your visitors.  Follow the same path you are seeing your own customers taking.  Why are they leaving when they do?  What changes can you make to those pages to encourage them to proceed to the next step?

Even the slightest change in conversion rates can be significant in terms of your top-line revenues.

Rethink Compliance™

As many of you know already, our REthink Compliance™ tool was released this past week to all US wineries, fulfillment houses, and compliance services.  And the response has been amazing.  As the tool is free to all, I can’t think of a better way to protect against margin erosion.  REthink Compliance™ greatly simplifies your direct shipment reporting for each state, meaning you have more time to devote to increasing those conversion rates.  So if you haven’t already done so, I would strongly encourage you to register and to sign up for a webinar to see exactly what the tool has to offer.

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.

Found an interesting chart today on marketingcharts.com defining the top online retailers by conversion rate.  This chart shows the total percentage of visitors to a website who completed a transaction during their visit in the critical December timeperiod. All I can say is “Wow”.

Check this out:

To refresh any memories, a website conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to a website who took a desired action – in this case, placed an order. So, from this info, it appears that nearly 30% of all visitors to thepopcornfactory.com placed an order in December! It should also be noted that retailers only qualified for evaluation in this list if they had a minimum of 500k page views in a month. That’s a lot of popcorn transacting across the web. 

Again, wow.

I’ve been in the direct, online business for many years now. I have certainly spent my share of time obsessing over my own conversion rates, and how to increase them. I’ve hired agencies to help. I’ve tested different variables to help encourage purchase. I’ve implemented multiple promotional strategies (Free Shipping! 50% off! Buy this NOW!). All paid off in different ways, and I’ve felt relatively successful with my efforts, but never to the tune of 30%!

I have a new personal goal.

So how do you improve your conversion rate?  And what is it that’s driving such high numbers for these sites? I think it’s a number of factors – all of which must play together truly move the needle. Here are my 5 suggestions to start you along the path of improving your conversion rate:

1) Know where you come from.
Do you know your own conversion rate? You better, if you want to improve it. Use Google Analytics or other analysis tools to define your conversion rate.

2) Grab a friend
Grab a friend who may be unfamiliar with the nuances of your website and ask them to help you ‘experience’ your website. I suggest you ask them to do two exercises. And don’t forget to watch the entire process. Literally, stand over them – and DO NOT coach them along!

Exercise A) Ask them to visit your homepage and experience your site. Don’t tell them to shop. Don’t tell them to read. Just see what they do. We’ve talked a lot with our clients about the importance of having an easy and intuitive navigational path for our clients (see an earlier post by Ben Chinn, our Director of Web Design & Development: http://blog.inertiabev.com/index.php/2006/10/09/site-structure-and-navigation/), as well as the importance of asking for what you want with headlines and ‘Calls-to-Action’ on the part of the visitor. Both of these efforts can have the desired effect of leading your visitor through your website – ideally to YOUR desired end. Did your friend follow your desired path throughout your website? Did they ‘see’ and act on the things you intend your visitors to? Or did they miss key messages entirely?

Exercise B) Ask your friend to visit your website now with the goal of purchasing a specific product. Start them at your homepage, and watch the path to purchase. Did they get lost? Struggle to find the right page that the product would be on? Did they find the product and the ‘buy now’ button with the minimal number of clicks? Ask them what information they would want to see in order to make that purchase (price, label, tasting notes, reviews). Did they find what they needed? Did it take a few minutes or many minutes, and a lot of ‘back button’ usage?

3) Resolve to Test and Measure
It’s ok to fail. Seriously. That’s what testing and optimizing is all about. Set a plan for what you want to achieve (in this case, higher conversion rates), list all of the potential tactics for reaching that goal, and get started. There are a number of things you can test: headlines, promotions, graphics/images, positioning of information on a webpage, the order of your navigational links, etc. For each tactic tested, watch “before and after” results. Did things improve or get worse? If they got worse, great! You learned what doesn’t resonate with your visitor. Another item off your list…

4) Take Baby Steps
Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Just because your conversion rates may be lower than you like, and the shopping experience of your ‘friend’ was clunky, doesn’t mean your entire site needs to be overhauled. Commit to taking baby steps to learning about improvements in your conversion rates. Implement small changes at a time, and measure their impact. Learn what helps your visitor along to purchase and what doesn’t. And give yourself some time to learn. Commit to testing something over at least a week, if your visitor traffic is significant enough to give you ‘usable’ data. If it takes a month to get a real read on results, then give it a month.

5) Be Relevant and Meaningful
Your visitor is going to engage with you, and continue to engage with you if you provide something relevant and meaningful to their needs. Think about your own online shopping experience. When you need something and a site has it, that’s relevance. But when you make that relevant product or information entirely MEANINGFUL to them, you’ve now started a relationship. How do you make things meaningful?

•  Watch how visitors move through your site. Which pages do they spend the most time on? This can give you an idea of the type of content your visitors are most interested in. Finding a lot of activity on your Recipe’s page? Put it up front! Make it easier to find your Recipe pages, add a link to this page from relevant product pages.
•  Watch what visitors are purchasing. Likely the bulk of your sales are on products you’re well known for, have greatest distribution on, and/or highlight the most on your website. But if a sleepy Zin that’s getting no play on your homepage is actually selling fairly well, it’s telling you to give it some presence. Try it out. Suggest to visitors that this is a “Customer Favorite”, and post any reviews that you can get from your customers on that product.
•  Don’t forget about your follow up marketing, as well: Email. Once you know what people are purchasing, and where they are going on your website, send emails that demonstrate this. I buy a lot of products on Amazon.com. And, at least once a month I receive an email suggesting other relevant products. This makes my experience with Amazon more meaningful to me. I buy. They suggest. I like that. 

What are you doing to stimulate conversion rates? Have you ‘experienced’ your website? Are you bringing something meaningful and relevant to your customers? Think of it this way: if your website was achieving a 15% conversion rate, what kind of sales would that translate to?

Again. Wow.

Over the past few months we have blogged about various ways that our winery partners leverage the REthink Engine to increase their sales, and a topic that comes up time and again is conversion (check out some of the recent BLOG entries that touch on this subject: How much is your average order? & Email Campaign Effectiveness). The subject of conversion should begin with one question: how much does 1% of your total sales represent? All things being equal in the world of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools, the best solution is one that drives the highest % conversion. In speaking with wineries who struggle to justify the cost of such a solution, especially when they currently possess all the CRM “pieces”, some simple math usually helps them to see the light…so to speak.

What do I mean by conversion? Well, there are many types of conversion when it comes to Direct Sales. One common example of conversion is the % of sales transactions relative to the total # of campaign/promotion recipients (email, direct mail, etc.) For example, if you send an email blast to 1500 people which results in 15 orders, the conversion rate is approx. 1%. Unlike email campaigns which have relatively zero cost (depending on your email solution), this conversion rate for direct mail campaigns is critical to understanding ROI associated with cost of paper, stamps, etc. Here are some other examples of conversion that are the result of a sound CRM solution: conversion rate for customers vs. club members, conversion rate for declined credit cards, conversion rate for allocated wines vs. non-allocated, and so forth…

What is the relevance of 1% of sales when it comes to conversion? Again, if all CRM solutions are the same in terms of cost, the solution that provides the highest compound rate of conversion will provide the highest ROI. By doing some simple math to determine the % of sales and/or cost savings (i.e. declined credit card conversion) that can be achieved through leveraging the right CRM solution, most wineries come to the realization that a significant amount of the costs are offset. One more factor in the conversion equation is Time: by converting time previously dedicated toward costly administrative activities to customer-facing, revenue-generating activities a winery can focus on what they do best…making great wine and building customer loyalty for their brand. The conversion rate math is simple, especially when it comes to calculating based on sales, but the tough question is…what is your time worth? By answering this question, you will undoubtedly come to the conclusion that working smarter and leveraging a better CRM solution is the best decision for your direct sales business.