The potential that a wine club can have in boosting your ROI is hard to ignore. With direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales accounting for a massive 60% of winery revenue, the growth potential is massive. For wineries that make less than 2,500 cases each year, this figure increases to 74%.
Wine clubs are perhaps one of the most lucrative revenue sources for businesses that understand how to engage their clients and keep them coming back.
Executing this may feel like a Herculean task, especially when you’re competing with the purchasing power of hotels, credit card companies, and even magazines that sponsor their wine clubs.
So what can a small winery have to offer to trump the global reach and significant variety that these goliaths have to offer to their clients? You need to be able to convey your story to your clients in a way that’s convenient and consistent.
This is where winery software solutions can help you. Small wineries don’t have a lot of staff to carry out comprehensive and regular marketing practices to grow their wine clubs. With automation, however, you can start building relationships of trust and loyalty.
You have a unique opportunity to create a lasting impression on your customers using simple automation tools to take your wine club to the next level and see a surge in membership.
Spread the word about your wine club
One of the best ways to get new members for your wine club is to spread the word.
The first step is to start creating landing pages that feature forms and promote your club on social media platforms, mapping the form from your webpage with the marketing solution.
By doing this, you can get the information of potential customers and set up automatic email or SMS campaigns to start communicating with a new lead immediately. The worst mistake you can make is obtaining new leads interested in your product and letting them forget you.
Sending emails or text messages is a great way to let such leads know what they can expect to gain from your wine club, how the club operates, and additional information that they need to know. You can also use this as an opportunity to introduce your key employees to them as well and start creating a personal bond from day one.
When you have a clear set of communications that are slated to reach each lead at different intervals you can gradually inform your new members about promotions, perks, and more, making them more likely to stick with you instead of dropping off after the first few months.
Follow the complete customer journey
Winery software solutions like marketing automation allow you to create campaigns for any stage of a member’s journey.
Email nurture and lead capture campaigns are simply the beginning since you can create any campaign you want to re-engage new members and incentivise your inactive members.
With a software solution, you will have a clear indication of where in the customer journey your clients are and find out what’s causing them to become inactive. Knowing which part of the journey they’re on can help you win back their business.
You can even utilise reward campaigns to thank your brand advocates and motivate them to continue being brand ambassadors for your winery.
You don’t have to manually keep track of where your customers are in the customer journey and have backup plans that are automatically executed for every type of customer response, making it a much more convenient experience for your customers and giving you the time you need to focus on more strategic tasks.
Create brand ambassadors for your wine club
Getting your customers to speak about your product can offer your winery more credibility since people are more likely to make purchasing decisions based on reviews or referrals from people like them.
Instead of calling up your existing customers or sending out emails manually, with a winery software solution, you can automate this process to give you the results you need much faster.
Sending an automatically generated feedback form every time a customer makes a purchase can help you get the information you need instantly; you can use these forms as testimonials for your winery.
Display these on your website and social media platforms and use them in lead-generation campaigns to motivate potential leads to try your product.
Automating these processes means that you don’t have to spend time or hire more staff to liaise with customers and get their feedback. A simple automated process can help you to get the information you need with minimal effort.
Winery software solutions are the future of booming wine club memberships
It’s clear that marketing automation and software solutions are the answer to the wine club membership problems of big or small wineries.
This makes automation a practical solution for your winery and helps you educate and entice new members and nurture them along the customer journey in a way that’s convenient and consistent for both your customers and your winery.