How to Use Your Own Data to Calm Your Nerves about the Wine Slump

Anxiety.

If I had to sum up so much of the chatter right now in our industry, that’s the word I’d use.

There’s substance to the assertions around the slump we’re all facing, no doubt about it. But today I’d like to shift attention forward to next steps and how wine businesses can respond strategically and thoughtfully to our current challenges.

Let me show you two ways to calm your nerves. That is, let me show you two strategies that we’re already using to help wineries calm their nerves within the chaos around us.

Important to Note:

Before we even start, let me underscore the principle of seeing data for wine as a moving picture rather than a snapshot from a moment in time. This is important, because it helps to put our current slump situation into context. When we track historical trends over the last five to ten years, for example, or position recent performance in rolling twelve-month analyses, it’s a reminder of the long-term nature and reality of wine business.

We are now in the thick of the next, anxiety-soaked phase of evolution.

Here are two ways to navigate it, calmly.

Know, Granularly, the Full Spectrum of Your Customers

Certainly, wine club memberships are crucial to a winery’s bottom line. And then there are all of the customers over time who have engaged in addition to that list, that have already bought from you and are part of the database you already own.

That historical database can be analyzed to identify those customer demographics too, which can then be used to reverse negative purchasing trends or enhance a positive one. We can identify customers at risk, and customers who haven’t bought from you in a while, in order to create targeted mailings or telemarketing campaigns.

The idea here is to take proactive steps, and regain a sense of control.

Know, Precisely, the Consequences of Raising the Price of Your Wine

“Should I raise the price of my wine?” That’s a sensitive question in even the best of circumstances. Should you raise the price of your wine in a challenging market? That’s even tougher.

It was tougher, I should say, before more of us in the industry had access to pricing algorithms that help to answer the question precisely.

Rather than guessing how your customers will respond to a price increase, we can help you to use your own historical data to mathematically calculate the consequences of the increase you’re considering. Which means you’ll know projected figures like actual revenues, volumes and profit margins that will increase or decrease.

Whether you raise the price of your wine is up to you, but at least now you’ll have mathematically modeled figures to inform your decision ahead of time.

How do these three strategies sound to you? Which is most relevant to your situation? Please be in touch. I’d love to hear.

Thank you, as always, for reading –

Cathy