First let me say Thank You, very much, for your responses to last week’s post about one image in particular that captures some things that we need to know right now about selling wine DTC in California.

Last week’s graphic itself is eye-catching, from the vertical red line to the blue horizontal lines falling off a cliff. The image helps to pinpoint a pivot of momentum that is relatable for every wine business owner, going through what we are all going through this year.

The graphic is visually compelling, which adds to smoother conversation about data in our industry. They’re incremental steps forward, and I see it helping.

This week I’d like to pull back the curtain a bit, and look at data in our industry from an entirely different point of view than last week’s post. (The image at the top of this post kind of captures it.) Hopefully it too will help, partly for those of us who think quantitatively and partly to flesh out a more complete picture.

It has to do with über-level buzzwords in the data space – machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) – and I’d like to ground it in reference to three questions that every wine business wants to know about their customers:

1. How recently did my customers buy something?

2. How often do my customers buy?

3. How much does the customer spend?

In the ML space, finding answers to these questions involves something called the RFM Model: “R” stands for Recency, “F” stands for Frequency and “M” stands for Monetary Value, or how much the customer spends.

Enolytics’ Chief Technology Officer, Ron Scott, and I wrote about this topic recently in an article called “Segmentation and RFM Analysis in the World of Wine and Spirits.” You can find it here, on a website about ML and predictive analytics, and I encourage you to check it out. (There’s no paywall but you may need to create a login.)

You do not need to do the RFM analysis yourself. Goodness knows, I don’t!

But we would like you to know that this is the kind of work that is happening, and that needs to happen, behind the scenes of data + wine in order for you to understand the most pressing questions you have about your business.

I’d love to hear what you think about it. I’d love to set up a conversation, with Ron or someone else on our team, about how their work can help.

Please be in touch and thank you, as always, for reading –

Cathy