Let’s Rewrite the Story of Wine + Data: Narratives Wanted!

Let’s rewrite the story.

That was my favorite takeaway from Enolytics’ session this week about wine + data at the very successful DTC Symposium in Concord, California.

The session was called "Lesson's from Napa's Most Established Brands: New Ways that Data Works for Wine DTC" and we were there to rewrite the story.

We are rewriting the story that wine people are not data people. We're rewriting the story that wine doesn’t “do” data, or that only some people and some brands get to benefit from advanced tools and technology to sell more wine and grow their bottom line.

We have a different story to tell, and it was our absolute pleasure this week to shine a spotlight on two rockstars who are rewriting the narrative: Taylor Almond, eCommerce Manager at Far Niente, and Lailand Flaherty, DTC Director at Caymus. Both are power users of Enolytics’ DTC software, and both illustrate every day how powerfully the technology can be put into play.

Here are a few plot lines from the new story that Taylor, Lailand, and more wine + data people are rewriting:

• Use basket analysis to see, in an interactive infographic, which wines are bought together. If a customer buys a particular Cabernet Sauvignon, for example, we know from the historical data that customers have a certain likelihood to also buy a particular Merlot or another style of Cabernet Sauvignon. That information helps to craft "customer favorite" wine flights in a Tasting Room, for example, and it helps sales teams to upsell in customized Wine Club orders.

• Use predictive analytics to anticipate when Club members are likely to drop out of the Club. This helps to proactively prevent Club members from leaving the Club in the first place, rather than simply managing churn after the fact.

• Use DTC data to illustrate (again, interactively) hotspots of consumer interest in particular markets around the country. This helps to guide national sales teams in the wholesale channel, to identify on-premise and off-premise accounts to pursue and which wines to place in those accounts.

These might sound like new plot lines when it comes to the story of wine + data. But they are very much reality, and very much "in play" right now.

We are rewriting the story, and we are looking for more narratives to tell.

How about yours? Do you have a wine + data story to tell?

Please let us know. We'd love to hear, and we'd love to help you rewrite your own story of success in this area.

Thank you, as always, for reading -
Cathy