Driving Personalization in Wine Retail w/ Addie Wallace, Wine.com

As the largest wine e-commerce site globally, Wine.com has been a leader in leveraging technology to sell wine. Addie Wallace, Director of Brand Marketing, gives us insight into how wine.com leverages the marketing funnel to drive awareness and conversion, has built a differentiated offering online, and is pushing the boundaries of customization with their new personalized wine club Picked. There’s a lot to learn about the future of retail in this episode of XChateau! Detailed Show Notes: Addie’s backgroundShe started her career in financeIn business school, led the Wine & Cuisine Society and created a wine recommendation appCompleted her WSET Level 3Pitched Wine.com an idea to have a personalized wine club, which she launchedManages brand, customer insights, and subscription businesses for Wine.comWine.com’s historyIt started as evineyard.com in 1998Acquired wine.com URL and brand in 2001 when original wine.com went bankruptKey milestonesThe most extensive assortment of wine in the world, over 17,000 wines vs. ~2-3,000 in a typical wine storeLive chat functionality w/ sommeliers (started 6-7 years ago, one of the first to use the functionality) - replaces people in aisles helping you in a wine storeBuilding out physical presence - serves 42 states and DC, can reach 80% of customers in 2 daysWorking on personalization$355M in revenue in Fiscal Year 2021E-commerce trendsBelieves e-comm growth will continue, but not at the same pace in the pandemicPandemic showed people they could shop for wine online (built awareness)2016 study - showed e-comm only ~3% of alcohol shoppingWine.com core differentiatorsVariety / selection - leads to continual discoveryLive chat - people are not commissioned, only there to help you find the best winesConvenience - including StewardShip for free deliveryPersonalization - with Picked, the personalized wine club, and building more personalization into the websiteMarketing channelsUses different channels for different parts of the marketing funnelTop - get people to know the brandMiddle - get people familiar with how the brand is differentiatedBottom - use promotions to get people to convertWine.com does a lot of digital advertising - social media, affiliate marketing, search, Google shoppingEach channel is effective for different customer needsE.g., - Google Shopping - good for when customers are looking for something specificPodcasts - for educating people that they can buy wine online and get them to shop at wine.comSearch/Google Shopping - has the largest # of eyeballsHigh ROI - direct mail, the non-digital marketing Wine.com doesDiscounting / coupons - help with getting customers to convert, promotions need to be structured to attract the right audienceSocial media - has been challenging, changing regulatory landscape, privacy restrictions, and constantly changing algorithm, as well as lots of competitors using it makes it hard to be winning at it and need to evolve continuallySome marketing channels are hard to measure results - e.g., - print media (can use QR codes or promo codes to help track)New channels - spending more time on podcasts, new social platforms (e.g.,-  Snap, TikTok) don’t currently allow alcohol adsStewardShip ProgramIt started as a free shipping program, for an annual fee (currently $59/year)It gets consumers to shop more frequentlyBecoming more comprehensive, like Amazon Prime, more perks to feed the wine lifestylee.g., -  free tickets to events, both in-person and virtual (gave away 100 free tickets to James Suckling tasting events, 1:1 virtual tasting with the Gaja family)Special promotions and early access to some wines~60% of revenue is from membersDrives high retention rate for membersThe annual fee pays for itself if you buy 2 cases/year~$40/case, ~$30/6 bottles to ship normallyPicked - personalized wine clubLaunched in 2020Tell them wine preferences, get matched with a personal sommelierSelect 6 wines every 1-3 monthsNo two customers get the same thingLeverage tech to make sommelier selections more manageable and more diverse, but lots of human judgementThe sommelier writes a personal note for the winesOne sommelier could theoretically support thousands of Picked customersClub differentiationPersonal elementSelection - a lot of new discoveriesOnly sell “real” wines, no private labelsLevel of control/customization - price points, frequency, feedback, amount of red vs. whiteSome overlap w/ StewardShip but primarily targets different segmentsStewardShip - more self serve customersPicked - people who want more help in selectingOther wine.com personalization initiativesMaking the largest wine store curated just for youElevate recommendations and put them in contextUse prior purchase data, ratings, and if a wine was added to the shopping cartUser ratingsStewardShip members rate more frequentlySend emails to encourage ratingsWine.com App - users more likely to ratePicked members provide ratings to help personal sommsLeveraging technology to elevate the wine retail experienceRecommendation engines, email programsWine.com App - the store and wine encyclopedia in your pocketVirtual tastingsWine.com is likely never to go brick & mortarWould limit the selection availableWould limit personalization of experience Get access to library episodes Hosted on Acast. 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