“I’ve Got a Little List”

 

 List Building. Good Idea or Bad Idea?

Here’s a list to help you decide:

• Do you want to increase your business? If so, building a list is a good idea.
• Are you looking to go out of business and retire next week? If so, building a list is a bad idea.

Does this help?

Ok, so let’s assume you want to build a list. (If you already have a list, we’ll help you make it a bigger one. Size does matter. )

Is it difficult to build a list? Let’s put it this way. Do you need assistance when going to pee? No? Then you already can do this easily.

How to get people to join your list:

1. Ask them.
2. See #1 above

Laugh not. We once asked a winery if they had an email list. “No,” they responded. “The place where our wines are tasted doesn’t provide that capability.” “Next time you go over there,” we suggested, “stop at Staples first and buy a pencil and a yellow pad.” (We do amuse ourselves sometimes.)

So when customers come into your tasting room, ask them if they’d like to receive special offers, notices of sales, advance word of new releases, etc.  And then you enter their email on your POS system or iPad, or the yellow pad you bought at Staples.

You can, of course, ask for more than their email. You can also contact people via this brand new invention, the telephone. Telephone wine sales are big. There are several companies that specialize in calling your customers to sell them your wine. One winery, which pays employees $1 for each email they get from customers, will pay that same employee $5 for each phone number. One wine telesales company reports selling about $7 to $14 million in wine each year for all their client wineries.

Since you have a website (you do, don’t you?), do you have a place where people can sign up to receive your newsletter? (You do produce one, right?) Is your sign-up form on the home page? Is it also on every page? Good. (Well, good only if you answered yes to these questions.)

You shouldn’t ask too many questions when asking users to sign up. Email address is a must. Asking for first/last name is good. This is so you can address the emails with “Dear Bob” (if that’s their name) instead of “Dear Unknown”.

Some wineries also ask for the users’ zip code. But ask yourself why you really need it. Do you separate newsletter users this way? There are other questions you can ask, such as wine preferences, but don’t do that here. You don’t want people to say they don’t have time now, but will do it later, because they won’t do it later.

Here is an example of a winery that starts out well, but then falls off. The signup shown here is on the home page, but not on the other pages. And then, once the customer signs up, the winery is missing out on an opportunity to really connect with that customer.

Saying “thanks” is really not good enough. Tell them what they’ll now get. Being on yet another mailing list is boring. Tell them why yours is special. Maybe offer a one-time promo code for a discounted wine as a thanks for getting their newsletter. And what really does “subscribe success” mean? Yeah, we know, but that is silly. It sounds like computer-speak.

Here are some other great ways to collect emails:

• At events, such as wine store tastings, restaurant wine dinners, and festivals
• Offer tasting room employees a set amount, perhaps 50 cents or $1 per email
• Promote your newsletter on Facebook or other social media app
• Create a contest and promote it through social media and/or on your website

The purpose of building a list is, of course, to promote your wines or whatever you want to promote. You can offer some wines only at a discount, perhaps to move slow-selling products. Or perhaps all your wines to increase cash flow. You can offer special holiday sales, e.g., Christmas gifts, 4^th of July barbecues, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, or anything really. You perhaps can offer special deals on case sales, free or reduced price shipping, or anything you want.

Some creative wineries offer bigger discounts the more people buy, e.g., “save 10% on 3 bottles, 20% on 6 bottles, 30% on 12 or more.” Or any combination of discounts on wine, shipping or even free merchandise (free T shirt with any purchase). Free wine is generally frowned upon, but your state regulations will determine that.

Not only can this generate sales, it also reminds your customers of your brand and could get them to think of you when shopping at the local stores too. A customer who buys at Safeway or their local wine store is your customer just as much as one who visits your tasting room or orders wine to be shipped. You won’t make as much profit on that sale, but it still is a sale.

By the way, it’s a good idea when asking for emails, to assure people that you don’t sell or rent your email list to anyone. People don’t like spam, and you don’t want to spam potential and actual customers. And provide an easy way for people to remove themselves from your list. If they ask to be removed, do it promptly.

Now that your list is built, you can actually create multiple lists from this one. Perhaps people only want to receive emails about your Cabernet or your Chardonnay. You can target these customers so they receive fewer emails, but more important ones. There’s nothing wrong with sending an email asking these questions.

Among the things you can ask are:

• Favorite varieties
• New Releases
• Special Events
• Library wines
• How often they want to receive email

Now you’re on your way to not only having a good list, but you are also starting to understand what is called target marketing.

Think of target marketing this way: If you buy books at Amazon.com, and every book you buy is about the Civil War, would you really want to receive an email from them announcing a sale on Harlequin Romance novels?

Didn’t think so. Targeted marketing is just that. Marketing targeted to the people who like what you are selling. And not what the customer has no interest in. If they only like Cabernet, and they keep getting white wine sales offers, they may ask to be removed from your mailing list.

But this does take more work, and if your list isn’t large yet (it will be soon, though), you don’t need to separate them in this way.

It is a good idea, though, to always have a separate email list for your wine club members. Wine club members like being treated as someone special. They are special. You may want to offer bigger deals for members, or perhaps wines available only to them. You can send just members an email or you can put the offer in a general email. If you send out one email to everyone, offer 20% off to everyone, and say club members will get 30% off. To do this you have to be sure your website is set up to recognize this by the email address, or by asking club members to log-in at the site first.

By the way, when you do send out emails, A/B test them first if you can, especially if you have a large list. A/B testing is merely a way of finding out which version of an email will better increase sales. For example, is it better to offer 20% off a wine or to offer free or reduced price shipping? Or a combination of both? For more information about A/B testing, see our previous blog post http://overabarrel.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/a-b-testing/

Another thing to keep in mind that email marketing used in conjunction with social media and blog posts can be very powerful. But that’s a topic for another day.

Let us know what you think about this post (or any of our posts). Comments are always welcome.

Cheers!

 

A-B Testing

Testing Your Winery Emails Before They Are Sent

You’ve just sent your 10,000 customers an email with a terrific offer on your 2010 Chardonnay. (You do need to make room for the incoming 2012 and you still have lots of the 2011 left.)

And you wait for the orders to start rolling in. And you wait. And wait. And those pallets of 2010 Chard are still sitting.

What went wrong? The wine is good. The price is excellent. The offer sounded appealing to you (and to your staff). But it didn’t move.

Now what? Ah, perhaps the email never went out. That must be it. So you check your list for your seeded email. (What does this mean? It means you deliberately added emails for yourself, your family, your friends on this list so you can know or ask if the email was received. Maybe your email service reported it as being sent, but it got locked up in the computer.) Uh oh, they all got the email. So probably everyone got the email.

Could it have been the wording? Yes. Could it have been the placement? Yes. Was the “buy” button inconveniently placed? Yes. Was the typeface too small or too big? Yes. Could the offer have been better? Yes. Could shipping costs be too high? Yes.

Yes to all. But how do you know what the response will be before you send out the promotional email? You don’t. Hence, A/B testing.

What is A/B testing? That’s creating two versions of the email, but not sending both of them to everyone. You take a small subset of your list and send some of them Test A and some of them Test B. (You can create multiple versions of the tests, but we won’t call this A/B/C/D testing.)

This sounds simple enough. It’s not though. It takes time and thought. But it’s necessary. You can do a limited test or you can do a more complex test. But you do need to test, to see which version produced the most sales, and then send that version to the rest of your list.

Let’s start with simple, especially if this is the first time you’ll be doing A/B testing.

The point of an A/B test is to see which version of your email will produce better results. Now there are so many areas to look at, so this is really a never-ending task. We’ll mention some of the things you should look at, but for now, let’s start with some wine pricing choices.

You are going to put some wine on sale. Do you:

1. Offer the wine at 20% off?
2. Offer free shipping with a case purchase?

Let’s say your wine sells for $300 per case.  20% off will save the customer $60. Free shipping on a case will save the customer anywhere between say, $30 to California to $60 going to New York.

Should you send out two emails? Can you determine where someone lives with info from your database?

Supposing you sent 100 people the percentage off the case, and another 100 people the free shipping option. Based on the sales in the next few days, you can then decide which offer to send to the rest of your mailing list.

If you only chose to send out one offer to everyone, and few people choose to buy, would you know why?

There are many other choices too. You could say 20% off or you could say Save $60! Which is better? Some retailers know when to offer a percentage as a savings and when to offer a dollar amount. If you don’t, perhaps you can simply use your email to find out. What you need to do is make your offer enticing. A/B testing is a good way to know the route you should follow.

There are many things you can do via A/B testing. But if you make many changes between Test A and Test B, you won’t necessarily know which version triggered the change. So it’s best to start with one for each email you are planning on sending and simply compare the responses. You can take the choice made that produced the best results, keep that in your next email, and then change something else for the next one.

Here are some thoughts of what are the best items to test (and best in your case may be different from someone else’s best):

1. What is the best way to phrase a subject line: Test A: 2010 Chardonnay on Sale! Or Test B: Save 20% on our 2010 Chardonnay.

2. Personalize the greeting or not: Test A: Dear Bob. Or Test B:  As a customer of Winery B…. (The danger of personalization is that if your database contains errors, you might wind up with “Dear (firstname):  or “Dear Jones Alice” when the name is Alice Jones.)

3. Call to action button: Test A: Buy Now! Or Test B: Save Big! Click Here!

4. Text sizes, placement, number of columns, large pictures, small pictures, no pictures, mention reviews or medals or comments from happy customers, or not mentioning them, the list goes on.

There are really so many choices to test, but you can’t do them all. But as you do each one, check your analytics for the results. Do more people buy from Test A or Test B? Are the results similar, but more people clicked on Test A than Test B, but you didn’t convert them?

Run your tests at the same time. Don’t send Test A on Monday, and Test B on Tuesday, though it might make sense to A/B test your emails on Monday the first time, and Tuesday the second time. (Or whatever days and time of day you choose.)

There’s a never-ending series of tests you can do. But you should test. After all, you do want to sell your wine. And increased sales pays for the time you took to do these tests.

By the way, does everyone (does anyone) ensure that their emails can be easily read on a mobile device? And better yet, link to a mobile version of your site? What about if you texted some and emailed others? But those are separate blog posts. More and more people are using mobile instead of PCs. But we’ll deal with them (and you) in upcoming posts.

 

Promotional Email Mistakes to Avoid (Oh, Too Bad You Already Made Them)

Everyone is saying that sending out promotional (especially targeted) emails is a good way to increase sales. (Including us, we’re no fools.)

However, in order for your email to actually let you rake in the money, it has to be correct. Amazing, but true!

And so many promotional emails are done without thought, without care, without results.

• We have proof. Were they your emails? Probably. We have screen shots for all of the following errors. But since the actual winery names appear in them, we did not include them on this post. They will appear on our next post, unless you ask us not to (and send us free wine). Ok, we don’t mean that. We won’t ever reveal the sordid details to the world at large. (But if you do send us free wine, we won’t return it.)

So what exactly are we saying?

 Things like: “Buy a Case Today and Save 30% on our 2010 Chardonnay” and when the user clicks on the buy button guess what?

• The savings is only 20%.

• You request a promo code and then tell the user “promo code not valid.”

• The 2010 Chardonnay is full price. You meant to put the 2009 on sale.

You are also offering free ground shipping, but you set it up so that the system is also giving free overnight shipping. (Now there’s a way to go bust fast, especially if your opposite coast customers take advantage of it.)

You say in your email “save big on these selected items” but the items are unavailable, or you meant different items, or your landing page shows different prices. (What’s a landing page? you ask. Oh, dear, we have to talk.)

And here are few more interesting errors that you (or your competitors) made:

• Order six or more bottles. Then the sale price disappears if more than that minimum quantity is ordered.

• This offer good today only. And you send the email the day before and the offer doesn’t work. You think the user will return tomorrow? Think again. (And do you really think that everyone reads their email “today”?)

In fact, just the other day we received an email that read: “Offer good for only 12 hours today, expires at midnight” and the email arrived at 6 pm. The offer wasn’t good then. Did they mean tomorrow? It wasn’t good the next day either (not that a normal person will always check again. We did, but then we’re not…. )

We can go on. Ok, we will.

• Here’s one of my all-time favorites: A multi-brand operator sends out identical promotions for each brand. They create the email for the first brand, copy it for the next, change the text, but then forget (oops) to change the link in the buy button so only the first email is correct. All the other emails go to that first winery’s site.

Another favorite: Buy button links to “page not found.”

And another: You intend this email only for wine club members but you send it to everyone. So there’s no discount for most people who get it. Will they say nice things about you? Do you like four-letter words?

What about telling me you are offering discounts on all my favorite wines and then only offering discounts on just those wines you felt like discounting? My favorites aren’t discounted at all. Not very nice.

There are also minor errors made that probably won’t cost you sales, but fix them anyway. Learn how to spell “receive”, learn the difference between to, too and two, and don’t tell users “If your a wine club member, you get an additional 10% discount.” (Hint: the word is “you’re.”)

To make a long story short (hey, we get paid by the word, don’t knock it):

When you create your email, check the links, the prices, the promo code (if used), check everything. Place a test order by following the directions in the email, or better yet have your long-suffering intern do it. (If your staff doesn’t understand them, no one will.) Be sure that nothing will confuse or irritate the person who actually wants to give you money.

So repeat after me: “I promise to get off my duff and check my promotional email before I send it out.”

There, don’t you feel better now?

 

Mezzacorona Teroldego Rotaliano Riserva 2008

Mezzacorona Teroldego Rotaliano Riserva 2008

Teroldego is a Northern Italian grape from Trentino-Alto Adige. It is grown in Campo Rotaliano, a flood plain formed by the Adige and Noce rivers. The color is an intense red. The aroma starts as ripe red cherry and shortly becomes redolent of darker fruit, blackberry, plums and dark cherry. Oaky? Not too much, just right. Medium to full body, but not as full as you might anticipate from the color. Tannins are not overpowering. Quite enjoyable and pleasant, and seems to pair well with many full-bodied and beefy foods.

But. But kicks in after about 20 minutes. And what started off promising, like a young violinist whom you expect to perform at Carnegie Hall before too long, drops out and disappears from the musical scene. The flavors, textures and aromas here drop out and disappears from the wine glass scene.

It’s not a bad wine, actually. It’s disappointing only in the sense that you expect it to get better as it breathes. And there is where it falls down, especially if it’s the only wine during a meal. But you truly can enjoy this. Perhaps having just a glass with a delicious roast, with a cheese assortment (aged cheeses especially). Or perhaps as a part of a flight of interesting and unusual red grape varieties. Maybe with other Italian grapes such as Aglianico, Nero d’Avola and Primitivo. Or just with other medium deep red wines.

Excellent acidity, by the way, which is what is present (fortunately) in many Italian wines. It really does promise to be great. Drink it quick, because the promise fades as the flavors do. It’s definitely worth trying in another vintage to see if this perhaps was just quirky of the 2008. And the Teroldego grape should be sampled from other producers as well.

An additional note: This was tasted by the Cedar City Wine Club. Our club members range from younger and just starting to enjoy wine, to older and experienced tasters and wine collectors.

It’s interesting that everyone who submitted a tasting note (it was optional, though about 20 members did), all picked up on the acidity and the intense fruit. While some liked it, and some did not, these are definite characteristics that will come across to everyone.

My notes are both from the wine club tasting, plus from another bottle on a separate night. In both cases, the sense of initial intensity was followed by a falling off of flavors.

I wanted to give this wine at least 90 points, but I’ll kick it down a bit to 85. It ranges from $20 to $30 dollars, depending on where you buy it. Definitely worth $20. But $30? We’ll see.

 

Improving Your Wine Club in 2013

Wine club membership totals at the end of 2012 are higher than they were end of 2011. (In aggregate, about 12%.) So that’s good. Unless you are one of the wineries (and there are several) whose numbers went down in 2012. If your club is one of the many that’s doing well, you can stop reading now, and go back to Facebook and sending fun posts to your friends.

If your club’s numbers are down, read on, Macduff! There are steps you can take to reverse this trend.

First, make better wine. Ok, you actually make good wine, so this flip response was just to get your attention. But there are things you can do.

• Do you treat your wine club members well? If all you do is send 2 bottles every 3 months at a discount with no follow up, you may very well be discontinued. Why not send a gift every now and then, even non wine-related, such as a jar of wine mustard, or a little trinket? Perhaps as Christmas approaches, a tree ornament related to your brand?

• Do you offer them specials? With special emails too? Not just a general sale email saying 20% off, wine club members additional 10%. But something just for wine club members, such as first dibs on new wines, specially priced closeouts or events such as barbecues or dinners at the winery just for club members. Wine club members are special; they are your best customers. They want more of your wine. Treat them well.

• If a member comes to visit your winery, do you have a special place for them to taste? It’s great that you offer free tastings to members (you do, don’t you?), but if they were tasting at a separate bar or even tasting room, you can offer them tastes of wines non-members can’t taste. If you taste members and non-members at the same bar, and a member is offered a taste of a wine club wine, what if a non-member asks for it? You can’t really refuse them as you will lose a customer and potential club member. No one wants to be told, “This wine’s not for you.” So keep them separate if you can.

If someone quits your wine club, do you ask them why? Do you want to know? If all you do is say, “Ok, we will remove you from our membership list,” then this is indicative of why your membership is down. So you do need to ask why.

• Perhaps they are moving to a state you can’t ship to. Can’t do anything about that, can you? Well, you can ask if there is a nearby state where a friend or business is located that can receive shipments. Most likely not, but some might be very eager to pursue that as they really do like your wines.

• Maybe they have have suffered financial reversals and are cutting back generally. Do you have a smaller quantity of wines you can offer to ship? That will cut back on their expenses. Perhaps ship less frequently? Perhaps offer a different and less expensive selection of wines?

• Do they say their tastes have changed or perhaps they need to eliminate some wine clubs and choose others? Can you provide information about new and exciting wines that will be forthcoming in wine club shipments? Do you make wines that are available only to members?

• Have you thought about telling them you can put them on an “inactive” list, yet they will still be able to receive wine club newsletters via email (a good way to keep enticing them to reactivate their membership). Perhaps you can tell them for a limited time they can still receive club discounts on any wine they do choose to order while they are inactive.

• Keep in touch with them. Down the road offer them a special to become active again. But don’t forget about them. A friendly reminder that you still think of them and hope to see you again soon is rarely resented. And people do rejoin clubs once the issue that caused their cancellation is resolved.

When a shipment is ready to be sent, do you notify members of its impending arrival? Some members might be out of town and then UPS or FedEx will return it to the winery after several attempts.

• Do you provide tracking numbers for shipments so they can know the day the shipment will arrive or possibly make arrangements to pick it up at the depot?

• Do you keep track of who re-orders club wines? Do you care? If you don’t care, the members won’t care either. Depending on how much they buy, you can offer a special to them or perhaps send them a gift in their shipment. The gift doesn’t have to be alcohol.

Here’s a thought: Have a special Facebook group for wine club members, so you can take more time with them than with just the casual visitor. You can offer specials to them that others won’t see. And for your regular Facebook page, put up some videos of wine club events. That’ll make them jealous (and join).

Pinterest is an excellent place to show photographs of wine club events, showing images of food presented at these events. Are you on Pinterest? It doesn’t take long to upload these images. Even non-members will get to see them. And people do re-pin images so many more can see them. Some people put up images of your wine bottles themselves if they’ve liked the wine. You can re-pin those.

If you have a mobile site (and you should for so many reasons, including that people are using mobile more and more and the PC less and less), you can have a fast way of communicating with club members. If they’re in your area, invite them in for a visit to taste special wines, perhaps offer a food or cheese pairing. The key is always to make them feel special.

Here’s a query: A wine club member’s shipment gets returned (after 3 attempts to deliver). The member then calls you saying they were out of town, please re-ship. How do you handle this? Do you charge them again for shipping? Absorb the cost? Ask for another possibly business address? If you’d like to respond, we can publish the results (without attribution) together with our thoughts. Write to: larry@larrychandler.com or larry@cedarcitywineclub.com

If you would like further assistance with wine clubs, analytics, SEO, or social media, just ask. We want you to do well, do better, and continue making good wine. (We are a thirsty bunch.)

 

Adapt or Die. (Winery Website Developer Edition)

There is a small industry that caters to wineries seeking ecommerce. These companies, IBG, Vin65, eWinery Solutions, Submerce, and others, exist because they develop and build (possibly also design) websites just so wineries have a way to sell their products online. Wineries pay perhaps $5,000 (amounts do vary) for the build and then pay a monthly hosting fee (really a software rental fee) that comes to $300-$400, less if the hosting company takes a percentage of sales.

So will Facebook and other social media sites eliminate them? See the excellent blog post from goodgrape.com: http://bit.ly/btFX3h The relevant portion is the second part of this post. And see the comments for some thoughtful disagreements.

Facebook won’t replace winery websites at least for now. But the times they are a changing, and it will be interesting to see how and when it all happens.

Something similar happened once before to another industry. It was an industry I worked in for years, and one day, poof! It was gone. Here’s the story:

Once upon a time there was a big industry that employed lots of craftspeople (artists, really, in their own way) called the Typesetting Industry.

It employed a hundred billion people (well, quite a few anyway) in many cities, especially New York (the place I was most familiar with). The classified job listings in the Sunday NY Times specifically looking for typesetters was huge. (This was before Craig Newmark invested his list.) The ads just for typesetters took up many columns of tiny type (a job a typesetter had, by the way).  If you were even halfway good, you could work all the time plying your craft.

Then one day in 1984, the Mac, an Apple Laserwriter, and software called Pagemaker came knocking at the door. They hadn’t been invited to the party, but decided to attend anyway.

The typesetting industry laughed and laughed. “This is not how we set type, you puny little toy machine. We use big machines, with lots of code.”

Someone started up a magazine about this new fangled thing now called “Desktop Publishing.” And someone took their new Mac, their new Pagemaker, their new Laserwriter, and created a big ad for this magazine.

And it was the ugliest thing you ever saw. “Would You Believe We Created This Ad on a Mac?” the big headline of the ad said.

Everyone laughed. It was badly typeset. Wordspacing, linespacing, typography was awful. It was impossible to read. It needed to be laughed at.

But not for too long. Because hardware gets better, software gets better, and most of all, people get better. And over time, this new-fangled device started to take over the lower end of the market. Simple ads, resumes, flyers.

The quality and variety of the work done on a Mac increased exponentially until it even surpassed the existing model. And those in the type industry who didn’t get it, didn’t stay around much longer. And those who did, adapted, found a new business model, learned what was now needed in the marketplace.

So perhaps Facebook (and whatever else there is now and may be coming soon) is not an ideal solution to replace a winery website now. But it would be a mistake to ignore it.

It may be too complex for Facebook to replace ecommerce sites now. But that will get better (or something better will come along to replace it), people will learn how to use it better, and for some, it will be good enough for now.

One day wineries will wake up to the face that they may not need to spend $300-$400 per month on software rental and maintenance. And then the companies that develop winery websites will either figure out how to extend their reach, how to offer additional services or they too will go the way of the typesetting industry.

Adapt or die, as they say. Adaptation takes time, dying happens all at once.

 

Random Thoughts on Wine and Social Media

Special consulting rates are offered to clients who provide Peet’s coffee served with cupcakes from Kara’s. (added 4/6)

Being a social media expert is like being a mail-merge expert in Microsoft Word. It’s nice, but there is so much more than just that one thing. (added 4/6)

The 4 stages of iPad: 1. Who needs it? 2. I agree, but I prefer my laptop. 3. Wow, that’s cool. Someday. 4. Do you take American Express? (added 4/6)

If you go to a party, don’t expect a round of applause when you first enter. Same with social media. People don’t hang out on Twitter or Facebook simply to talk to you or buy your wine. Listen, engage, be friendly. Over time, who knows? (added 4/6)

The Red Queen said: Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that! –Alice Through the Looking Glass (added 4/6)

There’s no downside to engaging your customers in dialogue.

If you don’t have time to talk to your customers, why do you think they have time to buy your wine?

Engaging with people requires time and effort. No time? Can’t make the effort? Retire already and sit on a rocking chair and watch the sunset.

Social Media is not another form of advertising. Greeting a person at the store entrance and saying “Hello” is also not advertising.

Being friendly and communicating with others won’t guarantee wine sales just as being friendly won’t guarantee you find a mate in life. But it sure helps.

You’re not the dentist or the funeral director. People are eager to buy your product. Don’t be unfriendly and send them away.

If you can’t greet potential customers at the door, greet them on their computers or iPhones.

You don’t show up at a party and say first off, “Hi. Join my wine club.” So why say it on Facebook or Twitter?

No matter how friendly or nice you are, not everyone will like you or your wine. Accept this in life too. But still be friendly and nice.

Don’t neglect the old-fashioned way of communicating via targeted email. People who have signed up for your newsletter are begging you to talk to them.

So you sell out all your wine by allocation and have a waiting list a mile long? Ok, indulge yourself. Be the nastiest person on the face of the earth. But one day this attitude will bite you in the ass.

Which is more important at dinner, the wine or the food? Neither. It’s the people you’re with—your friends and family.

Don’t make it difficult to buy your wine online. Developers do what they’re told. Learn what to tell them.

Everyone who chats about wine whether in person, online, on a blog, on social media, is a potential salesperson for you. Hire them all, and it won’t cost you a dime.

You can outsource your social media conversations, but why? You can hire me or someone else to do it, but will we care about your brand or just about the paycheck?

There are a lot of well-informed and knowledgeable people who blog about wine marketing. Reading them is free. Ignoring them may be costly.

You can mention you’re having sale when conversing on social media. But if that’s all you do there, goodbye. You’re boring.

Updates to this can also be found at www.ewinerysolutions.com/randomthoughts