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October 2, 2009 | Peter Andres

Connecting to your wine website visitors

In my last blog post "The Experience" I talked about how winery websites face the challenge of sharing a persuasive experience on their website, or share the essence of the winery and wine.

I just wanted to point out a great way to enhance the connection between your winery and visitors to your web site, which is video tasting notes or messages from the wine maker and/or wine owner.

I thought this was really powerful for a couple of reasons:

Builds a personal connection between the people in your winery and your customers. Faces matter more than you think
Although people can't taste and smell wine on your site, seeing and hearing someone doing that might just want to make them come and try it out.
Visitors are more likely to watch someone talk about wine than read a couple paragraphs about it.
Videos are really easy to share.

Here are some great examples:

Inman Family Wines: Video message from Winemaker/Owner Kathleen Inman
Ceja Vineyards: Tasting notes on every wine, here is an example.

If you are thinking about adding videos to your wine website there are lots of ways to get out there from doing it yourself which is totally acceptable in today's social media scene, or go pro - Artisan Media specializes in digital marketing for wine.

Oct 2, 2009 at 11:10 AM

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September 8, 2009 | Peter Andres

The Experience

As an owner of a wine web site one of the biggest challenges you will face is conveying "The Experience" of your winery, facility, vineyard, and wines. At Vin 65 we often get asked to capture as much of the atmosphere of the winery in the design of the web site as possible. We use all kinds of things like flash and photos to give the visitor to the web site as much as we can.

At Vin 65 we have lots of fun ideas, some are really out there. My current personal favourite is offering an online tasting pack. The purpose is give a visitor the option to have a virtual tasting room experience. In a tasting room there is a $10 fee or something to taste some wine and then you get a credit towards your purchase. So why not built a tasting pack around 6 small bottles that are like 200ml or 150ml each and send it out for $25.00 or something with a $20.00 coupon towards their next purchase?

In this way you can give someone the option to try and savour some of your amazing wine if they can't get out to your winery for a tasting. It allows potential direct to trade customers to sample without spending hundreds of dollars. Getting out to the winery is the best, but if someone back East can't make it out this year for your new vintages, give them an option. How are you going to capture new customers or give your current fans a vehicle to send their friends a cool tasting gift.

Anyway, back to the main point of the post and that is sharing what your are all about on the web site, as limiting as a web site is. One thing you never see is a 360 view of your wine bottle. Now, hardly anyone does this, maybe because the impact just wouldn't be worth effort. I saw it for the first time the other day and was shocked how much more impact it had than I thought was possible. It looks really impressed on silk screened labels, but works on any bottle. Take a look at JAQK Cellars - and click the 360 view on the drilldown page. I like it - a lot, I feel like I am experiencing that bottle of wine as much as I can with out opening it.

Sep 8, 2009 at 9:00 AM

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August 24, 2009 | Peter Andres

Fine Tune Your Newsletter Sign Up

In my last blog post I talked about the email newsletter still being critical to promoting your wine website and developing your loyal fans. In this post I wanted to talk about optimizing the sign up funnel so that you get the most out of the pixels that you devote to that widget or process.

I think for the most part winery websites simply put up a form to capture email addresses in the hopes that people will sign up for fun, and to say that there is a newsletter sign up on the website. This strategy or lack there of isn't effective and leads to a very small group of individuals to market to. Which in the long run doesn't create a valuable business resource.

So how can we make this better?

Here are some tips:

Add some benefits. When you ask someone to sign up for a newsletter the customer is giving something up, so you want to give them back something in return. You don't have to give away the farm, but how about 15% off a case or tasting. If you are a low production winery then you can offer them first refusal on new vintages. Give the customer some incentive to give up their email.
Make the sign up as painless as possible. We commonly see wineries asking for every piece of customer data they can think of, which is a massive turn off for people. Why do you need to know my city to send me an email newsletter? Generally we would recommend only asking for the email. Once you have earned more trust you automatically get that information, especially if the prospect becomes a customer by buying your wine.
Make sign up even easier and more relevant by getting them to create an account at the end of the check out. This is makes that sign up even more valuable because they are also a customer.
Offer an example of an email newsletter and tell them how often you send out correspondence so the person signing up knows what to expect.
Sign them up in the tasting room. If someone buys a wine or a tasting why not offer them a discount if they sign up right on the spot.

Building a trusted email relationship and creating a database of customers who want to hear from you will serve you well in the long run. Customers get a lot spam, but if you are willing to work at building the trust and giving the customers on your list something worth signing up for it will mean more sales and stronger loyalty.

Aug 24, 2009 at 7:30 AM

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July 24, 2009 | Peter Andres

The boring old newsletter signup - what's the point?

These days it is all about the social media. You need to be getting your facebook page up, your Twitter account going, and blogging...don't forget to blog at least two or three times a week. Oh and just to up the bar a little are you getting every one you know to rate and comment on your wines on Snooth.com? It is no wonder the email newsletter list is getting completely neglected. Let me just say that you should start with the email list and then move onto the other stuff.

Social media is about building connections and trust with potential and existing customers, not about making hard sales. On the other hand the email list if built correctly is made up of individuals who have given you permission to send them some information and some solid sales pitches. A list of 1000 qualified customers on your email list is way more valuable than 1000 twitter followers. The fact is that well crafted email campaigns give better ROI than social media (http://directmag.com/email/1014-email-roi-dma/). It is just more intimate, and therefore a more powerful tool to reach out to your customers and convert to sales. When your wine fans say to you..."Send me information when you have a special or release new product", then your should be doing that. They want to buy from you - right now!

There are a lot of reasons why email list building has started to slide recently. Focus on social media, spam blockers, lack luster response all add up to email list abandonment. Email marketing is the holy grail though. It would be unwise not to concentrate on building your email list and consistently delivering good emails targeting your customers desires and concerns. That list if built over years could number in the thousands and become a large source of immediate sales, and even a large segment of your sales. It is so important to work on building your list and sending email to your customers. Once you have that dialed then move onto the social media scene.

If you want to know more about email list building and how to get the most out of your website send us an email.

For another good article on email marketing copyblogger.com put up a great article.

Jul 24, 2009 at 4:50 PM

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July 7, 2009 | Peter Andres

New promotional tools on the Vin 65 platform

This week we enhanced our List Builder® tool to include two new features that we think are very cool. These were features requested by clients and we liked their thinking.

Feature 1: is NOT
What is this??? This feature allow clients to create a more powerful and targeted lists by excluding groups. Here is an example of where you might use this. What if you wanted to find everyone who has bought from your store, but isn't a newsletter subscriber, now you can.

Feature 2: Location specific parameter
Now you can search for members in a specific area by entering a zip code or postal code and then specifying a distance from that zip code. This is a great tool if you are hosting an event and want to invite everyone from that area. Another great way to use this tool is if your wine has been picked up in a restaurant or wine store, you can then email your members in that area and let them know that a local store or restaurant now carries your wines.

If you have any questions about our winery ecommerce platform, or would like to see a demo give us a call at 604-852-8140 or send Brent an email.

Jul 7, 2009 at 1:00 AM

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February 4, 2009 | Peter Andres

You Are Expected To Do It All!

As a small winery owner you are expected to do it all. You are running the big show. You are on the hook for the results.

Here is a shortened list of responsibilities:

Grow the grapes
Pick the grapes
Fix the tractor
Manage the workers
Make the wine
Ship the wine
Market the wine
Create a brand
Design the labels
Manage selling channels
Stay on top of compliance
Manage the website
Run the tasting room
Manage the books
Collect the money
Remember the customer is always right
Enjoy the lifestyle

As a web service provider we also like to add some, because if you have a web site you should also be doing these things:

SEO - Search Engine Optimization
Key word optimization
Managing organic search results
Managing paid search engine campaigns
Optimize your site for different visitor profiles
Run effective google ad campaigns and measure results
Measure conversion
Tweak your customers e-commerce experience
Know everything about Google Analytics
Create funnels to measure your sites effectiveness
Know some HTML and CSS
Keep up on product reviews and ratings
Put all your content into snooth.com and corkd.com
Get your facebook group going
Blog - What was that again?
vBlog - huh?
Twitter - come again?

My guess is that all the things that go into making the most of your web site and making your web site great fall between the cracks. Unless you are a larger winery who can afford to have a dedicated staff or multiple staff in the web department most of those web tasks simply don't get thought about, much less accomplished.

At Vin | 65 we are passionate about the web and making your sure your customers have a great experience buying your wine. We also bring a lot of experience and a great tool set to our customers so that they don't have to stress out about a lot of this stuff because it is built right in. We know our winery and wine retail customers are busy enough already. Let us be the web experts in your corner, so that you can focus on making amazing wine.

Want to know more about what we offer, how we can make your life easier, what the heck a blog is...contact us.

Feb 4, 2009 at 10:15 AM

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October 21, 2008 | Peter Andres

Great Label Implementation

Your label is the one piece of your organization that most people see. This is especially true if you are distributed in stores and restaurants and in many different geographic regions.

Get a pull tab on your label, here are 5 reasons why:

People collect and keep wine diaries, this makes it easy.
For people who love your wine this is a great way to get them to your web site.
Great for fans who want to refer wine to friends..."hey check this great wine out - just use this tab it has their website on it".
Use pull tabs to offer direct to consumer incentives that they can redeem on your web site. Coupons for example. Direct sales = better profits
You can use these to build customer loyalty programs. More you collect the more you could save on your next purchase.
Bonus Dumb Idea: Create a game and generate buzz in the ground swell.

This is a basic all around great way for wineries to get their customers to cross the line from retail to direct sales, and to also tell your story the way you want.

Thanks to thedieline.com blog

Oct 21, 2008 at 9:46 AM

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October 8, 2008 | Peter Andres

Profiling Customers Based On Their Emotional Profile

You can profile your customers in a couple of ways. For this post I am going to talk about how customers make buying decisions based on their emotional profile. There are 4 basic types of customers out there: competitive, spontaneous, methodical, and humanistic. There is lots of good info out there on these types of customers, but here are the highlights.

1. Competitive Types

These guys love to be first. They respond really well when you highlight new wine releases or best sellers. They will probably be wine club members and if they are big fans of your winery or store will subscribe to your newsletter so they can be “first-in-the-know”.

Competitive customers are skimmers. They want to see some wine specs and a brief description without drilling down. Details aren’t as important as being the first.

For the competitive customers you want to make sure your site has featured wines and good summary information. You may also want to have some exclusive offers in your wine club to give this type of customer the edge they look for in the products they buy.

2. Spontaneous Types

Spontaneous customers are more interested in sales and coupons. They will respond to emotional hooks like limited stock, time sensitive offers, and overnight shipping.

These customers also respond well to customer reviews and ratings. Show how many reviews there are and how each wine or gift ranks. This will help to build trust in your wine.

3. Methodical Types

Just like you would imagine the methodical shopper will do as much research as possible before taking the plunge. They will read everything on a product and want more. In depth wine descriptions, tasting notes, and technical details are going to be very important.

Ratings by trusted sources and even video are going to score big points.
On the flip side impulse tactics like limited time offers can back fire for this customer. The could become sceptical and want to see the fine print.

4. Humanistic Types

This type of customer is swayed by peer opinion. What other say will weigh heavily on their decision to buy or not. They will like to dwell on the purchase and make sure they are making the right choices. These are the kinds of customers that will want to call in and talk to someone at the winery or use live chat support.

Humanistic types also are influenced by customer reviews and ratings and will really appreciate a link to call for advice or for buying options which could be accompanied by a welcoming photo.

Resources:
http://www.getelastic.com/persuasive-emails-with-review/
Future Now's Always be Testing Webinar

Oct 8, 2008 at 11:13 AM

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September 18, 2008 | Peter Andres

How can the Wine 2.0 trend fit into your winery? Let's look at Blogging.

One of the growing trends in the industry is blogging. But a lot of wineries don't understand how a blog can work within the framework of their organization, and what kind of positive effects it can have if done properly.

Selling wine through the wine store is great for large wineries who produce massive amounts of wine a year. The wine store takes their cut and the winery ends up with their 50%.

For smaller wineries where this isn't a great fit, and even for bigger wineries connecting with customers and creating a direct to consumer sales channel is way more lucrative, and a better way to make a living. Connecting with customers, and then building a long term relationship with them is more rewarding and edifying. But how do you do that practically. Well connecting with customers in your tasting room is an obvious way, and then getting them to join a wine club keeps you intouch with them.

Connecting with fans and potential customers online with a blog is another way, and also gives you a forum to talk about and express your passion and love for the product you produce in way that a tasting room or a formal sales web site just doesn't offer.

Use a blog as a connection point to build relationships, tell your story. You will have a chance to convince marginal customers that your wine is worth buying over and over again, and you will give your winery fans something to stay connected with even if they are far away or can't make it in every month.

"Every winery, and every winemaker, has a story and a personality that appeals to people on a much more profound level than just what someone enjoys drinking. Tell your story with pride!"

-- blog.americanwinery.com

Sep 18, 2008 at 10:13 AM