Wineries are a beautiful blend of art, science and business. Crafting a great wine is one thing, but selling it is another. As inflation drives up costs and shipping restrictions hinder the distribution of wines, revenue and customer reach are significantly impacted. Additionally, changing customer preferences have been keeping wineries on their toes. These all have contributed to the first decline in direct-to-consumer sales in a decade. How can you overcome these obstacles and maintain profitability?
It’s time to get creative, embrace winery software technology and revamp sales strategies for wineries to drive growth in wine clubs and tasting room sales. Review and enhance your wine club benefits, host strategic and memorable on-site experiences and integrate your online store with winery software to get the most out of your wine club and on-premise efforts.
Enhance Wine Club Membership Benefits
A wine club creates a loyal customer base and a consistent source of revenue for wineries. By cultivating a solid and engaged membership, wineries can establish a direct and ongoing relationship with their customers. Furthermore, wine club members tend to make regular purchases, providing wineries with a predictable revenue stream. Knowing this information enables wineries to plan production, manage inventory and allocate resources more effectively.
However, the allure of free wine club shipments, once offered as a perk to members, has proven financially unsustainable for wineries. What other options are available for wineries looking to grow their wine club membership?
Offering exclusive benefits to wine club members drives membership growth and nurtures customer loyalty. Why do these exclusive benefits matter?
- Sense of exclusivity: Customers appreciate feeling special and part of a select group that enjoys privileges unavailable to the public.
- Incentive for membership: Limited-edition wines, VIP events or early releases motivate wine enthusiasts to become part of the club. These benefits act as a powerful marketing tool, capturing the interest and attention of those people seeking unique experiences and opportunities.
- Increased customer retention: Members who receive special treatment and personalized offerings are more likely to remain loyal to the winery, continuing their membership year after year.
- Word-of-mouth promotion: Satisfied wine club members share their exclusive experiences, special events and unique wines, effectively becoming brand ambassadors.
- Increased sales and revenue: Exclusive benefits encourage members to continue purchasing wine and explore additional offerings, such as new releases or high-end wines.
- Customer data and insights: As important as sales and revenue, data and insights – collected in an end-to-end winery software solution – give wineries a deeper understanding of their customers.
Some of the more popular benefits wine clubs offer include:
- Limited edition wines
- Early access to new releases
- Discounts
- Complimentary tastings and tours
- VIP events
- Personalized experiences
Treat your wine club members like royalty, and they’ll become your most passionate ambassadors! Enhance the royal treatment by including ideas like these in your wine club growth strategy:
- Building on personalized experiences, allow members to customize their shipments to what they want, not necessarily what the winery wants to sell.
- To nurture your out-of-town members, offer exclusive virtual meet and greets with winemakers and leadership.
- Another way to nurture out-of-towners? Encourage them to transfer their benefits to local friends or family members. You might even get some new members out of it!
- Celebrate longevity with milestone awards they can show off. Maybe it’s a commemorative glass, a special discount, exclusive apparel, a customized wine label on their next shipment or an invite to a chef-prepared mixer with other key customers. Make a big deal out of those members who have been with you a long time, and they’ll stay with you and spread the word.
Whether traditional or new, these benefits don’t have to be à la carte. Combine and tailor these benefits to create unique packages and tiers within the wine club offerings. By understanding members’ preferences and desires, wineries can design benefits that resonate with their target audience and foster a sense of value and exclusivity. Regularly reviewing and refreshing these benefits ensures that wine club members continue to feel excited, appreciated and motivated to remain loyal.
Host Memorable On-Premises Experiences
On-site sales at a winery’s tasting room or cellar eliminate the middleman and allow wineries to keep a larger portion of the revenue. This direct-to-consumer approach allows wineries to set prices, maintain better profit margins and build customer loyalty. Creating memorable on-site experiences captivates customers and leaves a lasting impression. When visitors have an extraordinary and enjoyable time at a winery, they are more likely to remember, spend a little more and share their experience with others.
Some traditional experiences include:
- Winery tours
- Tastings
- Food pairings
- Educational events
Winery tours give visitors an immersive experience, allowing them to explore the winery’s facilities, vineyards and winemaking process. By witnessing the various stages of production, from grape to bottle, visitors gain a unique perspective and develop a stronger connection to the wines they taste.
Tastings are at the heart of the winery experience. Customers can sample various wines to explore styles, varietals and vintages. The guidance and expertise of knowledgeable and congenial staff during tastings help customers appreciate the nuances and characteristics of each wine, enhancing their overall enjoyment and understanding.
Food pairings offer a sensory experience that elevates wine and cuisine enjoyment. It doesn’t have to be a chef-prepared dish. Something as simple as a piece of chocolate paired with a specific wine or a specific cheese to go with another wine gets the job done. Visitors discover how certain wines can be enhanced or transformed with particular foods.
Educational events like wine seminars, workshops or classes allow customers to expand their wine knowledge and engage in interactive learning experiences. These events can cover wine-tasting techniques, grape varietals, regional differences, or wine and food pairing principles.
Winery tours, tastings, food pairings and educational events add tremendous value by offering immersive, educational and enjoyable experiences. They deepen customers’ appreciation and knowledge of wine and foster a stronger connection with the winery and its products.
Wine experiences that WOW!
In a competitive wine industry, it’s a good idea to think outside the box to drive growth in your on-premise sales. Planning unconventional yet effective experiences can set your winery apart from the competition. Ignite your creativity and go beyond traditional events to create extraordinary wine experiences that leave a lasting impression on your customers.
Some ideas could be:
Wine and art fusion: Work with local artists to host wine and art events where guests can sip your wines while enjoying live art demonstrations, exhibitions or even interactive painting sessions.
Wine blending workshops: Invite enthusiasts to become winemakers for a day by offering blending workshops. Guide them through the process of creating their own custom blend, complete with personalized labels.
Vineyard adventures: Organize vineyard tours with unique experiences like grape stomping, picnics among the vines, a scavenger hunt or even hot air balloon rides with panoramic vineyard views.
Wine and fashion fusion: Team up with local fashion designers or boutiques to host wine and fashion shows. Pair your wines with curated collections, creating an immersive experience celebrating wine and style.
Let your creativity soar and differentiate your winery in a crowded marketplace. Forge unexpected collaborations and think differently about how you present your vineyard. They can provide a unique selling point and a compelling reason for customers to choose your winery over another. Infuse your ideas with your unique brand identity and measure the effectiveness.
Leverage Technology and Winery Management Software
Think of your website as an extension of your on-premise sales and wine club. Embrace e-commerce capabilities to facilitate online wine sales and streamline the wine club membership process. Integrating an online store with winery software gives wineries a range of benefits for their online sales, wine clubs and direct-to-home shipping.
5 ways to develop a user-friendly online store that leverages winery software integrations include:
- Streamlined Operations: By integrating with a platform such as Shopify, Commerce7 or ShipCompliant, winery management software provides centralized inventory management, order processing and customer data synchronization. Wineries can efficiently manage their online store, wine club memberships and shipping processes from a single system, eliminating the need for manual or duplicate data entry.
- Seamless Online Sales with Shopify: Shopify integration provides wineries a robust and user-friendly e-commerce platform to showcase their wines, manage product listings and process online orders. The integration ensures that inventory levels are automatically updated across systems, avoiding overselling or inventory discrepancies. Customers can enjoy a smooth online shopping experience, including browsing, selection and secure payment processing.
- Efficient Wine Club Management with Commerce7: Commerce7 integration enhances wine club management by automating recurring shipments, member communications and billing processes. Wineries can set up customizable wine club tiers, benefits and membership options. This integration simplifies the management of wine club memberships, tracks member preferences and automates billing cycles. It ensures accurate member data and a seamless wine club experience for customers.
- Compliance with Shipping Regulations with ShipCompliant:
ShipCompliant integration assists wineries in ensuring compliance with complex shipping regulations for direct-to-home shipments. The software automates age verification, tax calculations and reporting requirements based on the shipping destination. This integration streamlines the shipping process and reduces the risk of compliance errors. - Data Management and Reporting: Access comprehensive sales data, customer insights and financial reports to make informed business decisions, tailor marketing efforts and identify areas for growth and improvement.
Integrating an online store with a winery ERP that integrates with Shopify, Commerce7 or ShipCompliant optimizes winery operations, boosts customer satisfaction and contributes to the overall success of the winery’s online sales, wine clubs and direct-to-home shipping.
Adapt, Innovate and Grow with Crafted ERP
Today’s wineries must adapt and innovate to drive growth in wine clubs and tasting room sales. With increased online sales, new members on-boarded from wine club growth efforts and on-premise sales, your winery will need to streamline operations and nurture the customer experience more than ever. Crafted ERP meets the specific requirements of wineries, both large and small. With our winery software, you can streamline processes, manage inventory, track sales and shipments and analyze key performance indicators. Additionally, Crafted ERP integrates with Shopify, Commerce7 and ShipCompliant, bringing everything under one winery management system.
By enhancing your wine club benefits and creating unforgettable on-site experiences while leveraging Crafted ERP with Shopify, Commerce7 and ShipCompliant integrations, you can conquer obstacles, maintain profitability and flourish in the ever-evolving market.
Start exploring your options and take your winery to the next level! Contact us to learn more about the benefits of implementing a scalable, flexible and automated end-to-end winery management solution.
