[January 28, 2025 – Sandra Beals] Greetings Winery Teams! Ready to go from good to great in 2025? Make every consumer engagement count with the 2025 DTC Wine Biz Optimization Audit. Take ownership of these top five proven methods and get your leadership team on the same page about priorities. The old business philosophy, “Build it and they will come” no longer works and hasn’t for quite some time now. Top performing direct to consumer teams engage with wine enthusiasts by knowing their audience, remaining relevant, inviting back, and communicating care as well as commitment.
Cut through the noise and leverage your unique brand differentiators in the most competitive business landscape yet. Today’s wine enthusiast is driving the digital conversation and the ability to create ideal wine consumer personas has never been better. Those consumers who are still on the fence about wine and wine lifestyle crave community/connection first. The NA (non alcoholic) consumer category is continuing to grow and that’s OK. The funnel of ideal wine brand loyalists is still very full across the nation but your leadership team must leverage the right tools at every touch-point to engage and convert.
#1 Be a People Focused Wine Brand
80-90% of new direct to consumer wine sales begin in-person, at the tasting room, winery event, or member party. We need to taste the goods before we will commit to a purchase or reengagement. The face of your wine brand is your hospitality team, winemaking team, and leadership team. In the case of small to mid-size wine brands, today’s connected consumer appreciates face time with winery owners and winemakers. Focus on a Positive People Culture, as this is the first step in ensuring long-term business success. Be sure to equip your people facing teams with essential tools to be successful, including:
- A Hospitality Training Guide
- A Hospitality Toolkit
- Hospitality Service Standards
- Competitive Analysis and Sales Strategy Docs
- A Scenario-Style Training Program
#2 Focus on Community Building
How do top-performing direct to consumer teams get to the second wine sale within 60-90 days of first purchase? They are trained to build communities around a wine brand first. Wine enthusiasts engage and reengage with brands they admire, especially when the winery stakeholders care about commitment, quality, innovations, people culture, local partnerships, and education. The wine must be incredible today to remain in business so there’s no need to lead with a strong sales pitch about why a winery has the best wine. Instead, lead with inspiring stories about how current brand loyalists choose your wines when celebrating, gifting, dining, traveling, etc. Here are tips to get started:
- Identify your wine brands unique access points and share with the frontline (vineyard ownership, innovations, leadership)
- Develop a DTC Storytelling Guidelines Doc based on Customer Type, Sales Channel, and Scenario
- Conduct an Annual Member Survey to glean important Lifestyle Insights, Interests, Ability to Influence, etc.
- Update Annual DTC Events Calendar with Events and Tasting Room Offerings that appeal to your community
- Empower your longtime brand loyalists to co-host an event, share their subject matter specialty at your next member event, lead up a sports team/bike race, organize a park cleanup day with your hospitality team, etc.
- Expand your reach beyond the winery or tasting room by going offsite with your tribes to strengthen communities
#3 Stop Talking So Much and Start Empowering your Loyalists to Share
This is one of the most important items in the 2025 DTC Wine Biz Audit. Stop talking so much about your wine brand. Apply the 60/40 Rule here – 60% of the time, your brand loyalists are sharing the good news through digital outlets, at dinner parties, etc, because 40% of the time, your wine brand has given them something to talk about. Award-winning wines, the winery dogs name, sustainability efforts, blah blah blah blah blah has become noise to most wine enthusiasts. They want to share stories that make them proud to be a long-standing member, VIP, etc. This is the why behind their annual investment in your direct to consumer wine offerings. Here are some tips to get your team started this year:
- Develop a Seasonal Key Themes Calendar that includes interesting lifestyle topics and content to get your social media followers engaging and sharing.
- Appeal to relevant wine writers this year with Seasonal Lifestyle, Commitment, and Partnering Stories.
- Identify your top 25% of Most Influential Brand Loyalists in top regions and meet them where they work and play by co-hosting events that your target audience attends.
- Don’t be afraid of Contests and instead become informed about ABC Luring Laws, etc. Launch 1-2 contests this year to let your longtime members expand reach to their BFFs, Family, Coworkers, and so on.
#4 Do More with Less if Possible
This is not the easiest part of the DTC Wine Biz Audit but it is a necessary action to take this year to remain competitive and thriving. Is it time for your leadership team to rethink the Why behind every DTC Division role and title? We have come so far over the past 15 years with the ability to automate back of the house tasks. For example, there is no longer a need for a full-time Membership Manager unless your active club membership base is 3000 plus. Prior to the pandemic, consumers in the US were drinking less alcohol according to the January 12th Washington Post Article.
Today’s Winery Community Manager can process 2-3 club runs annually, develop and manage 2-3 club parties and manage retention as well as business development efforts. Automatic credit card updater tools, online reservation systems, enhanced custom club run features, and dashboard analytics have reduced time by up to 30%. Tasting Room Managers have also enjoyed a reduction in back of the house tasks thanks to Online Reservation Options and improved CRM features in POS systems. These managers have more time to focus on fostering and growing Referral Relationships as well as Private Client Management tasks. Here are some Top Tips for streamlining DTC ORG Charts and Operations in 2025:
- Start with WHY when evaluating the need for each DTC Division role and ensure that each person is tied to Community Building Goals.
- Conduct a DTC Tools, Talent and Tech Audit to determine how much admin time has been reduced by tech and replace with customer care and business development tasks.
- When updating the ORG Chart ensure that each team member is trained on updated roles and responsibilities.
- For larger wine brands, establish a Quarterly Cross Teams Gathering to ensure everyone is updated on latest innovations, hires, news, etc.
#5 Update your DTC Inventory Strategy as well as Success Metrics
The ongoing wine grape glut, increase in demand for NA and alternative alcoholic beverages, along with continued wine brand consolidation, has forced many of our clients to rethink production schedules. With a 10% decrease in wines shipped from producer to consumer in the US last year, these DTC Wine Biz Audit items must be considered to remain competitive and profitable. Now is the time to take a close look at the current state of Supply and Demand for your business.
- Analyze product performance by customer type and sales channel for the past five years and narrow down your top 2-3 SKUs by wine style. By streamlining your direct to consumer offerings, your wine brand will remain sticky with most of brand loyalists and remove confusion for newbies.
- Stay true to the WHY behind each wine release, and don’t continue to release wines simply to compete with your neighbors. Be transparent with your consumer audiences when updating your DTC Wine Release Schedule. If your winery makes the best Sauvignon Blanc or Sparkling from your AVA based on ongoing recognition, scores, etc. then be sure to maintain that leadership status and continue to release in limited production and at luxury prices.
- Leverage Top Seller, Fan Favorites, Limited Release marketing messages to increase purchases from new audiences. Leave Sold Out messaging on the web store and tasting menus as Scarcity Model drives more sales.
- Revisit contracts with grape suppliers and reduce minimum commitments if possible while maintaining long-term customer pricing. Do some competitive analysis here an leverage industry reports to support your request.
- Track “Length of Time from 1st Time Sale to 2nd” and aim for less than 90 days for local audiences to reengage in-person and out of state consumers to make an eCommerce purchase. Personalized, added-value invitations go a long way here.
- Track “Point of Entry” information for all new tasting room visitors this year and focus on the top five entry points to build more effective engagement strategies. If Member Referrals are including in this list, you’re already on the right path.
- Track and reward Tasting Room Host performance by guest engagement insights. Did host form a connection by inviting back to an event or tasting based on interests? How often are event tickets included in wine transactions? How often did guests book their next tasting appointment while wrapping up their wine purchase? Brand loyalists must be identified outside of conversion to membership as this one path is not the most common tasting room conversion point today.
Ready to schedule your Mystery Shop Program or Leadership Coaching Program with DTC Wine Workshops? Reach out HERE to get on the path from Good to Great in 2025.