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Introduction

Selling wine direct provides wineries with a great opportunity to engage and build loyalty from their end customers and to improve overall profit margins by cutting out the middleman.

This article covers direct marketing techniques and considerations to help:

Setting measurable objectives

It’s a good idea to start by setting some high level measurable targets that can be achieved within a set period of time such as:

To set some realistic targets (if reports are available), it may be useful to extract the new customer numbers and sales figures from the year prior and increase them by an acceptable growth figure such as 5%-10%.

It’s also useful to drill down further into the database to extract other key performance indicators such as number of orders, average cases per order and average order value by new, active and inactive customer segments.

If available, these figures are useful as they provide more detail as to what response rates and KPIs (key performance indicators) per customer segment are required to achieve the overall objectives. If you don’t have this information, an experienced direct marketing professional is likely to have a good instinct as to what kind of return you are likely to achieve from various types of communications that could assist you to set initial objectives.

Building on what you already know

The next steps are to review what you already know about your customers, along with the communication programs and processes already in place to help identify what’s working and where improvements could be made. It might be relevant to run through the following sets of questions to identify what actions are priorities for your business.

Acquiring new customers

Online activity

Retaining existing customers

Reactivating inactive customers

It’s advisable to track all activity by some form of unique campaign code and record all customer activity on their records. It’s also recommended that all activity is analysed and shared with the relevant team so that you can use the insights gained to continuously improve the relevancy and overall effectiveness of your customer program/s.

Offer and creative ideas

There are many different communication and offer ideas that you could use to build and deepen relationships with both prospective and purchasing customers. The more personal and relevant you can make your communications, the better the results are likely to be. Here’s some broad creative and offer ideas to get you started:

The power of testing

Testing is one of the most important and exciting techniques that you can utilise in your direct programs and is almost guaranteed to give you the edge over your competitors. Testing is a scientific methodology that enables you to try different offers, creative and messages across select audience segments so that you can identify what combinations most cost-efficiently deliver the greatest sales.

Testing is a continuous process as the insights gained enable you to constantly refine and improve your communication program over time. The more relevant your program is to your customers, the more likely they’ll continue to do business with you.

Lasting impressions

It’s important that you have a really solid data platform to help you to better manage your individual customer relationships.  If you don’t have one already, it’s well worth the investment.

Once you have the systems in place, it’s up to you to engage and impress your customers with your ability to understand and anticipate their needs and to make them feel special. Personalisation and customisation might look expensive but it doesn’t have to be. In fact with some good data and mailing processes in place it’s a very cost-effective way to personalise the experience for the individual customer.

Here’s a few examples…

John visited your cellar door, signed-up but didn’t purchase on the day. Following his visit you could send a letter that says:

‘Dear John,

It was great to see you at the cellar door recently.  I’m writing to welcome you to the program. Your first Member Newsletter will be mailed to you mid-October and in the meantime, if you have any wine requirements don’t hesitate to contact our friendly team on 1800 000 000 or visit the special Members Area of our website where you’ll find some great bargains….

Jane visited the cellar door and purchased on the day. Following her visit you could send a letter that says:

‘Dear Jane,

Welcome to the program and thanks for your first purchase – I trust you’ll enjoy your wine if you haven’t already! Your first Member Newsletter will be mailed to you mid-October and in the meantime, if you have any wine requirements don’t hesitate to contact our friendly team on 1800 000 000 or visit the special Members Area of our website where you’ll find some great bargains….

Susan visited the website during the month and signed-up to the program but didn’t purchase.

‘Dear Susan,

Thanks for your recent visit to our website and welcome to the program. Your first Member Newsletter will be mailed to you mid-October and in the meantime, if you have any wine requirements don’t hesitate to contact our friendly team on 1800 000 000 or visit the special Members Area of our website where you’ll find some great bargains….

Sending timely and relevant communications really is the key to engaging your customers, generating positive word-of-mouth amongst their friends and colleagues, and helping to keep your wines and winery on their radar for longer, which all contribute to the ultimate goal of increasing direct sales and ultimately net profit.

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