Do you ever wonder why we spend so much money on getting new customers when retaining customers provides more value to our business? Think about the investment your winery is making in customer acquisition (advertising, PR, social media, email, and direct mail campaigns) vs. customer retention (providing an outstanding customer experience for guests in your tasting room, wine club members, and customers ordering wine online). Which direction are your scales tipping?
At the end of each year, many publications “celebrate” the worst marketing campaigns of the year. Less than 40 days into the new year, and there is already a regrettable fail from the wine industry.
Why intuition in the age of management science? Two reasons: First, intuition is a prerequisite for real insight, meaning a fresh understanding of the situation, seeing a reality that you hadn’t noticed before.
First impressions can create a lifelong ambassador or a disappointed grumbler—and those impressions can spread exponentially for the positive or negative, depending on the customer’s experience.
Every time a new guest walks into your tasting room, you are on the equivalent of a first date. Think about it.
If there’s one thing that can make or break a tasting room experience, it’s (no, not the wine) the service you receive.
Anyone who has worked in retail will quickly recognize OND as October/November/December—that three-month period when your sales will either make or break your year’s profits.
In last month’s blog post, Put a Bird on It, I focused on the importance of label design. This month, I share a case study from a southern Oregon winery—DANCIN Vineyards. All it took was a candid observation from a guest in late 2015 to prompt Dan Marca to completely upend the label design he had used since his first vintage in 2010.
When’s the last time you looked at your own wine labels? I mean REALLY looked at them—from the consumer’s point of view? We recently traveled through airports in Amsterdam, Madrid, Barcelona, and Lisbon and—of course—examined the wine choices in each duty-free shop. I was struck by the creativity of some of the packaging, especially in the Champagne category.
Every year, the Wine Business Monthly publishes its annual Tasting Room/DTC Survey results. Did you know that on average 8% of DTC wine sales occur online? What would your business look like if you were able to increase your online DTC sales to more than 8%? How would that impact your bottom line?
Southern Oregon is a little slice of heaven for wine aficionados, regularly earning accolades from esteemed writers at The New York Times, Wine Enthusiast, Sunset and Forbes. And while residents and visitors alike have grown accustomed to the seemingly endless stream of new wineries and tasting rooms opening throughout the Rogue, Applegate and Umpqua valleys, one winery’s tasting room with something new to the region opened in Jacksonville late last year.
