Year-to-Date Recap for Wine DTC: A Boots-on-the-Ground Look at What To Do Next

Normally we take a fairly analytical tone while writing our quarterly reports about the wine DTC landscape. Today, to highlight results from Q1 2023, we’re shifting gears and putting ourselves in the shoes (the boots, really) of the winery itself.

Yes, we need to interpret the data. And the analysis needs to be relatable for the everyday realities of winery DTC.
 
Here are five of the most salient findings from Q1 2023, underlined in the text below, put into context that any winery can relate to. As usual with our analysis, WineDirect is our partner and source of anonymized data.
 
My winery definitely has definitely seen a slow down of DTC sales lately. Obviously I’m aware that the economy is in a downturn, but what else do I need to know?
 
Generally speaking, wine DTC the last quarter reflects the country’s economic downturn: overall, Cases Sold in Q1 are down 10 percent, with March in particular down almost 15 percent. But it’s worth taking the time to explore how your specific winery is more vulnerable than others, and also where it’s more resilient. That’s what you need to know, channel by channel: which of your own levers to pull, and which other levers to push.
 
You could start with a detailed look at your Tasting Room numbers. Generally speaking, Tasting Room revenue started to slip in the middle of February this year. Maybe yours did too, or maybe it held its own. Either way, you might “pull the lever” of local marketing outreach now, in order to boost Tasting Room traffic as we head into the summer travel season.
 
The slow-down in Tasting Room traffic probably has something to do with the bad weather recently. Are you suggesting that I need to control the weather now too?
 
Hardly. But what you can control, as a countermeasure, is stabilizing sales that don’t involve customers actually visiting your Tasting Room, such as Wine Club and Website sales. For example, if you are concerned that, with your next Wine Club shipment, the number of unsubscribes is going to spike – and, in Q1 this year, the attrition rate of 8% was the highest it’s been in five years – you might proactively communicate or reward your Club members before the shipment invoice lands in their Inboxes so that they are motivated to stay enrolled and subscribed.
 
Tasting Room sales were down during COVID also, but Website sales picked up the slack during that time frame. Since then, my Website sales have dropped off. How I can get them back to COVID levels?
 
Generally speaking, Website sales keep dropping post-COVID, but performance is still ahead of pre-COVID levels. To get numbers back up, you could revisit the strategies that worked well during COVID and now add a fresh twist. You could offer virtual tastings, for example, to customers who previously visited your Tasting Room in groups of four or larger. “Re-create” the experience for them while also adding a bonus or two. If you have a strong email list, you could segment by geography or previous purchases and tailor a Website-only offering specifically for them.
 
These are ideas that I can do immediately, but I have a hunch that there are some longer-term projects I can initiate to reinforce our strategies moving forward. Any suggestions?
 
It will probably be uncomfortable, but you could do a gut-check on your data and how clean (or not) it is. To segment an email list, you need clean emails that are connected to the customer’s demographics or purchasing history. But if those pieces aren’t in place, your options are already limited. If your Tasting Room staff isn’t trained to collect customer data, you’re severely limiting your ability to sell to those customers in the future. If you don’t know which customers are at risk of leaving your Wine Club, you’re jeopardizing a channel that in Q1 2023 accounted for 55% of all DTC revenue.
 
Now is the time to invest in data. Data has never been so important, and it’s critical to know where you stand. Both Enolytics and WineDirect are equipped to help.

WineDirect and Enolyics are preparing a more detailed analysis of Q1 2023 along with a summary of the time period, and a "sneak peak" of the results from April.

Thank you, as always, for reading —

Cathy