Vin65 Blog

Unified Symposium - Making Your Direct-To-Consumer Work

Below are the slides of my 15-20 minute presentation at Unified Wine & Grape Symposium on "Making Your Direct-To-Consumer" work.

It was great to be a panellist along with Quinton Jay (Bacchus Capital), Stacie Jacob (Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance), and Ray Johnson (Sonoma State University). I also want to thank Jeff Stai for organizing everything, moderating the panel, and inspiring me the night before to make my presentation better.

My particular segment was on customer conversion - something I'm fairly passionate about. Enjoy. 

I believe the audio version of the presentation will be available for sale here soon. http://www.unifiedsymposium.org/audio.html

Feel free to post your questions or comments below (or send an email directly to me)

DTC Wine Symposium - CRM Demystified

Here are the slides and an overview of my 7-10 minute presentation at DTC Wine Symposium on CRM Demystified.  It was great to be a panelist along with Bronwyn Ney from Hall Wines and Susan Hanshaw from Innerarchitect.  Also thanks to Mary-Colleen Tinney for organizing everything.

My particular piece was on customer segmentation.

Slide #1 - Intro

Slide #2 - Segmentation

• You capture names on your website and in your tasting room - you build your mailing list (hopefully you're not using a rolodex but some CRM software)
• You know you get the best results when you send email regularly so you schedule your campaigns
• But do you segment your lists?

Slide #3 - Why Segment?

• Not all contacts are equal. You don't treat your family and friends the same. You don't treat your acquaintances the same. Why treat your contacts all the same?

Slide #4 - Why Segment?
There are a lot of reasons to segment, here are 3:

1. Your response rate increases.
2. You build deeper connections
3. Untargeted email is spam  (not spam in the CAN SPAM legal sense of the word - but spam as in unwanted meat sense of the word)

Slide #5 - How Do Enterprises Segment?

Enterprises segment on RFM. Recency, Frequency, and Monetary Value. 

Recency - when was the last time this customer purchased?
Frequency - how often does this customer purchase?
Monetary Value - how much does this customer purchase?

Slide #6 - CaseStudy: WineTasting.com
A/B test from winetasting.com on a recent email targeting 'inactive' segement of their customers. (Inactive being customers who have not purchase in one year or more)

• 13,722 received same email as Active Segment
• 13,722 received custom tailored "Miss You" message

Slide #7-8 - CaseStudy: WineTasting.com
Custom tailored message outperformed regular message

• Click thrus were 4.59% vs 0.68% (6.75 X greater)
• 9X more orders
• 28X more $$
• 1/2 as many unsubscribers

Slide #9-11 - How can you segment your list?
 

• Customer Type - Prospect vs FirstTime Purchaser vs Repeat Purchase vs Club Member
• Active vs Non-Active Customer
• Location - Local vs Out-of-Town Visitor

Slide #12 - Key To Success
Don't just segment your list, but custom tailor the message to specific target audience.

Slide #13 - Thanks
Special thanks to WineTasting.com and Kristina Palko for letting us use this case study.

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If you heard my talk, I would love your feedback.  Either shoot me an email or leave it in the comments below.

5 Wineries/Wine Retailers that 'Get' the Web

It's fairly easy to pick apart websites and list everything that is being done wrong from an ecommerce perspective (and some of my recent posts have done that) but there are a lot of wineries and wine retailers that are doing it right (both on our platform, and on other platforms). Today as I was browsing through our portfolio, I wanted to highlight a few websites that are doing it right.

WineTasting.com

What I like about WineTasting.com:

• The large phone number in the header, the links to customer service, and the feedback forms on the website make it really easy for customers to contact them. 
• The prominent subscribe form on the left hand navigation is a great way to build the emailing list.
• The mobile version of their website is easy to navigate.  While a large number of wine retailers don't have mobile sites, WineTasting.com has fully embraced mobile.  (Chris Edwards the VP of WTN will be speaking at this upcoming mobile conference). A demo of their mobile site can be found here.

Twisted Oak

What I like about TwistedOak.com:

• While you can debate some of the wackiness, the customized content on this site is fun to read. How many wineries have a 'Find Us from Space' page on their website?
• I like the prominent subscribe form on the right hand side of the homepage - a great way to capture email addresses.
• Similar to WineTasting.com, I like the mobile site.  It's great to see wineries offering mobile versions of their site. (The mobile site represents almost 10% of Twisted Oak's total web traffic).

Ceja Vineyards

What I like about CejaVineyards.com:

• The commitment to blog and all the videos on the blog on this site is great. Video content does sell more products. I also love that there are a number of members from the Ceja team contributing content and video to the blog (it shows a team commitment).
• Social media is everywhere on this site.  The product list pages and product drilldown feature Facebook, Twitter and other social media.  
• The bottle shots on this site are clean, crisp and clear (sure they aren't the size of bottle shots on sites like Inman Family, but the bottle shots are professionally done).

Site designed by BR Pacific

Pithy Little Wine Co

Pithy Wine gets it. Before we had an iPad app, they bought iPads for their tasting room and used their website on the iPad to collect visitor information.

What I like about PithyWine.com:

• I like that the site was designed by the winery themselves.  It's great to see creativity right from the winery.
• I like that they have multiple product photos for each wine.  Great bottle shots, picture of the back labels, front labels, etc. (Check out the 3 photos on this product here.)  You should not underestimate good photography.
• I like that the site stays fresh and current.  A few weeks ago they had holiday pictures on the homepage, and when I went back today they already had changed the homepage with new content.  It's great to see freshness.

Site designed by Pithy Wine

Inman Family Wine

What I like about InmanFamilyWines.com

• Not all the product pages on this site are the same, but I really like the detail on product pages like this.  I like how they link to recipes and vineyard notes for the product.
• The commitment to simple and easy to understand shipping rates for customers is excellent. The shipping widget (left hand side of the page in the 'Wine Shop') is a great way to show upfront shipping.

Site designed by Sight Design

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Over the last few years we have seen a lot of wineries and wine retailers increase their efforts on the web.  There are a lot of great sites both on our platform and on other platforms. (If your site isn't listed above, it's not because I don't like it.)  Keep raising the bar.

Top 10 Signs Your Winery Website is Stuck in 2008

Its 2011, but a lot of websites I visit still feel like they are in 2008. So here it is, David Letterman style with Wayne's World graphic (for the really retro), the Top 10 Signs Your Winery Website is Stuck in 2008.

10. Your last blog post is dated 2008.
In 2008 you were so innovative that you jumped on the blogging band wagon. Blogging was everywhere and you wanted to take part. Unfortunately your enthusiasm died after about 8 blog posts.

If your blog hasn't been updated since 2008, it's time to remove the blog from your website.

9. Flash on the homepage with no alternative.
Flash animations used to be cool. What better way to express your story? Unfortunately, people got sick of flash intros and have turned flash off. People on the iPad can't see your flash. Mobile visitors usually don't have flash installed, nor do they want to wait for it to load.

If you have flash on your homepage, serve up an alternative, or look to some javascript technology to replace it, or better yet, don't do it.

8. You have birthdate validation on entry.
Birthdate validation on site entry is a visitor turn off (and consumers often enter false dates until they get to the checkout process).

There are so many reasons not to do birthdate validation on site entry that I could write a blog post on it - but consider this - the major wine retailers (wine.com, winelibrary.com, winetasting.com, etc) all don't have it and I know first hand the amount of testing that goes on at winetasting.com.

We do not condone selling alcohol to minors, and believe that birthdate validation should be done on checkout, and ID verification on package delivery.

7. Your product pages don't have your recent vintages and/or contain vintages you no longer have available.
There is nothing more frustrating than seeing out of date product content on a website. It's not only frustrating to customers; it also frustrates your distributors, trade people, and bloggers who all want current images and tasting notes.

6. You're not using a Content Management System
If you have to pay your web designer to update products and other content you are out of date (truthfully you were out of date in 2008 also). It's vitally important for you to be able to update your own content, and content management systems are very mature and pretty much a commodity.

5. Copyright notice still says 2008.
Your visitors know you stuck in 2008 when your copyright still says 2008. If your content is out of date and stale, people won't keep returning to your site.

4. Your heading text is images
The last few years have brought great technology for fonts on the web. It's important that your heading text be text rather than images - important for search engines, for bandwidth, and just for general ease of maintenance.

3. No customer ratings or reviews.
In 1999 Amazon stated that the 2.5 million reviews it featured are what made it popular. We've known for years that customer ratings and reviews help sell products. In 2009 Wine.com revealed that products with reviews sold more. If you don't have customer ratings and reviews, your site is 2008.

2. You have a splash page.
Splash pages were out in 2008 but I still see them. A splash page does nothing for you other than give a customer a reason to not visit your homepage.

1. No mention of social media anywhere
And the number one sign your website is stuck in 2008 - no mention of social media anywhere.  The last couple of years we've seen a large uptick in social media activity. Facebook with over 500 million users is mainstream. If you don't at least have a Facebook link on your website, you might be stuck in 2008.

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And to continue our Top 10 list, here are the Top 10 Signs Your Website Is Stuck In 1998 courtesy of my colleagues.

10. Your web address has the word geocities in it
9. Free hosting ads on your website
8. You have a 'make this your homepage' button on your website
7. You have a 'best viewed in Internet Explorer' button
6. Under construction page
5. Your neighbour’s high school son built your web page
4. The fixed width is designed for 800x600
3. Your site is built in frames
2. Auto playing music
1. Animated gif images

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What signs have you seen that still point to 2008?