Wineries: Why Relevance Matters
The importance of the customer
I love talking to wineries about their customers, and how they strive to keep them engaged from vintage to vintage. It can be a struggle. But when it comes to enhancing customer retention and loyalty, I am often asked the question “how much is too much?” in terms of the frequency of emails, phone calls, or other outreach.
I’ll get to some takeaways later on this post to address this more fully, but let me first put the problem in context.
I find this question to be a challenging one because, when asked in a vacuum, there is no right answer. If every contact with a customer is a relevant one for the customer, then there really are no limits. This means once a week, once a month, or once a quarter could be okay if there is a “what’s in it for me” approach, with the “me” being the customer. But if it’s just a batch and blast approach to a general email list, then even one email may be too much.
However, right now we are not in a vacuum. We are in an unprecedented pandemic with no real end in sight. So right now, the answer is the limit does not exist. Your Facebook Ads and Mailchimp accounts should be firing at full capacity, so long as the content is clever, generous, and overall, relevant.
Relevance is the key. Typically, the messaging is about what’s only relevant to the winery and not to the customer, like inventory to move, an event to sellout, or something the winery thinks is important to their brand. But what you should be asking, especially right now, is what’s really in it for the customer? What does the customer want right now? What would they think is a great deal or an awesome idea?
Why Relevance Matters
Relevance = Content + Context………If you miss either, you’re sunk. A perfect example of this is the local butcher offering an organic, hand-raised turkey at a great price right before Thanksgiving, which sounds compelling. But make the same offer the week after Thanksgiving, and it falls on deaf ears. Context is everything.
If you want to take advantage of the online purchasing going on during this pandemic, relevance should be your motto. “No end in sight” doesn’t mean you have a few weeks to prepare a winning strategy to launch for the summer. It means this could all end in May, and then what? You stood by while your customers were getting special vintage offers or thoughtful care packages from other wineries, and whatever you had planned is no longer relevant. So you have to drop the prideful disdain against offering $1 shipping or opening club-level access to nonmembers. These are uncertain times, for sure. But one real, solid fact right now is that people are drinking and they’re buying online. So contrary to how it may feel, now is not the time to play it safe when it comes to your brand’s traditional content or usual monthly strategy. Like my grandfather always said, “Don’t worry about the mule going blind, just load the wagon.”
This brings me to the “fear of marketing”. For years, I’ve met with wineries who sought me out because they were treading water in keeping up their wine club rolls and growing their email lists, two vital components of the DTC channel. The common theme among them is that their wine club enrollment is falling, as are wine purchases from these same constituents. In addition, their email marketing and ecommerce sales are unsatisfactory to their expectations.
What these wineries share in common is a philosophy about their customers and about themselves. Whenever they send emails to their wine club members, they get a significant number of customers canceling their memberships. And when they email their non-wine club members, they get significant numbers of unsubscribes to their email list. Their “logical” response is, therefore, to communicate as little as possible, in the order of 1–2 times per year to each segment.
Where's the loyalty?
We tend to think of loyalty in business as just customer loyalty, but like all relationships, reciprocity is crucial. You have to be loyal to your customers, too. But rather than trying to find out where the love went and how they can make their customers fall in love with them all over again, wineries will run for the hills out of fear of rejection. The self-fulfilling prophecy here is obvious.
The same goes for phone contact, direct mail, and other channels of communication. Some wineries have expressed their concerns to me that phoning their customers would be a “pestering form of communication”. But these wineries forget that they are actually a positive difference maker in consumer lives; that they remind their customers of the great experiences and relationships that they have built with the winery. The phone call therefore becomes an extension of the true service heart they exhibited on their customer’s first visit to the winery, and is a highly relevant act of reaching out.
So, what to do? Some tips for the wise in sending out your emails:
Think of how you can make your customers love your emails rather than just worrying about how to make sure they land in the inbox.
Know your audience — demographics, location, average purchase, history, etc.
Find out what your subscribers want and deliver on that.
Have a clear value proposition for subscribers and customers — deliver value, not just email.
Don’t just batch and blast — segment your list and use preference based marketing data.
Think responsibly, and responsively — make sure your emails are mobile optimized.
Lastly, learn from your fellow wineries. Certain ones are killing it right now with their offers and content. Why? Because they didn’t waste time or shy away, and they care about their customers. They didn’t drop off the face of the earth when the quarantine hit — they thought, ‘Our tasting room is closed, our events are canceled, our customers are stuck at home. How do we let them know that we’re still here, we miss them, and we can still enjoy wine together?’
Some deals and content we’ve seen work:
Special Shipping for a dollar, a cent, or included on certain order amounts.
Branded Care Packages with two bottles plus something from your winery, like merchandise, a food you serve, a voucher for a future tasting. You can get really creative with this one.
Virtual Tastings or Virtual Vineyard Walks with the winemaker and owner(s). We’re seeing attendances north of 150, and those attendees are buying massive amounts of wine before and after the Virtual Tasting.
Opening the Cellar or Storewide Sales of at least 15% off to sweeten the pot. Anything lower is dust in the wind.
Wine and Food Pairing Tastings where wineries partner with cheese, caviar, or charcuterie businesses to provide the fuel for the fire.
