Wine in the Time of Corona
Shelter in place, closed tasting rooms, restaurants & bars –justifiable fear of contagion. Everyone, especially wine and hospitality businesses have a right to be concerned.
Throughout history, major unexpected upheavals periodically turn our world upside down. Chaos is never fun--but these uncharted waters also present the best business leaders with great opportunity. Now is the time to quickly rethink your business operations, and together with your teams embrace new ways of working. Carpe Diem!
We all know (in the bottom of our hearts) that an overhaul to the traditional wine sales and marketing model is long overdue. We just finished investing millions in new and prettier tasting rooms—in what turned out to be a tasting room arms race. Yes, travel will come back to wine country and these newly beautiful places will see many customers in the near future that prefer to vacation closer to home. We need, however, to invest proportionally in true integrated omnichannel marketing campaigns with digital, mail, social and personal outreach. Like never before, we must shift our mindset and respectfully connect with customers where they are--not wait for them to come to us.
Google has “DO THE FIVE”- 5 things we can do to help stop Corona Virus. Customer Vineyard presents "THE TOP FIVE" for successful wine sales in a time of Corona:
Know who your best customers are and why (Think data!) These insights will help you succeed in all channels—both direct and indirect.
Deploy one sales & marketing action plan across both Wholesale & DTC. The same customer buys your wine at the winery, online, in the store). When one channel has challenges (winery tasting rooms are closed) —the successful winery quickly shifts focus (retail sales and direct online sales are trending up for the first times in months). Have your wholesale and DTC teams plan together – work together – adapt together in the marketplace.
Launch thoughtful campaigns to retain and reward best customers. Millions of people are home right now—these include your customers! For the first time in a long while, we can actually reach them with integrated communications AND be pretty sure that wine deliveries will be received.
Win back past customers & upsell the “seemingly” low value ones. This untapped sales potential is just sitting there in your DTC technology systems. Success here is difficult and requires a targeted, thoughtful and well executed campaign. The worst thing you can do right now is blast these fringe customers with lots of hectic unrelated email offers, random phone calls or un-targeted social media offers.
Get Creative! A wonderful book club I belonged to many years ago in Seattle –and missed--is now revived with monthly Zoom meetings connecting us from all over the country. Overnight, my local yoga studio converted the community to scheduled online classes we take together. It works. Likewise – our wine customers need social interaction right now. What about short daily escape videos from the vineyard or a virtual wine tasting --scheduled 30-minute live online guided tastings with the winemaker –exclusively for customers that buy the featured wine this month. The options and ideas are limitless.
Now is the time for Action. Live long, drink wine and prosper!
MJ Dale, Founder - Customer Vineyard
