November 3, 2015
I had the opportunity to meet with Craig Camp, Managing Partner at Cornerstone Wine Cellars and Brandon Farley, Community Manager at VinTank this past week. I get a lot of questions from wineries throughout the nation about the true ROI of using VinTank and social media to grow direct wine sales and retain loyal customers. In this informative case study, Craig and Brandon share best practices for leveraging the VinTank tool in combination with a strong social strategy. Craig reveals his measures of true return on investment (ROI) as it relates to sales growth and customer retention. Cornerstone Cellars sees 30 new groups per month in the tasting room with an investment of 10-12 hours per week in social monitoring activities.
While it is difficult to track the true ROI of using VinTank to retain loyal customers, the Cornerstone team has a very loyal club and customer base by staying connected socially in between visits. The annual cost of VinTank Elite is $25,000 and I encourage you to do the math for your winery to determine what the true ROI could mean for your direct business. If we look at the Silicon Valley Bank Tasting Room Survey Report* released May, 2015, we know that the average value of reservation style tastings with large group is $392 verses $75 at the tasting room bar. If 30 new groups visit your tasting room per month, how many people would have an average order of $392? If just two people per group purchased, that totals $784 and at 30 groups = $23,520 in new sales as a result of using VinTank to invite the right groups in for a seated tasting. Deduct staff wages for about 40 hours per month for social monitoring as well as another 30 hours for hosting 30 large groups and you can see the total profit. Based on my number crunching, I can see that VinTank Elite can easily pay for itself within the first two months if used in combination with a strong social strategy. In addition, Craig shares with us the conversion rate of the 30 large group tastings to wine club sign ups in this informative case study.
I hope that you enjoy DTC Wine Video Case Study #5 in our ongoing series. Please feel free to reach out with questions to: [email protected].
Cheers!
Sandra Hess