Happy to. Honestly, though, a website shouldn’t take that long… You’re better off getting it mostly right and live than trying to be perfect. Why? Because you can’t start being indexed and linked to if you’re not live
How’d this become a discussion about how badly I need a website?
Is your site up? Hmm?? And what’s your mailing list look like? ![[drinkers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/8/82916bed5ad74ac8470bc04089d9758b0c80c9fa.gif "drinkers"){kind=small}
Ed - I’ve thought about this a lot and Ian’s reply too. I know it’s something Ian and I have talked a lot about. I think the first thing anyone should ask themselves is do they really want a mailing list? How does that fit into their overall marketing plan and do they have the personality to maintain it. If they don’t do they have the resources to bring to bear to build it inorganically including a celebrity winemaker and access to the big 4 critics (Tanzer, Suckling, WS, WA because no one else is going to generate more than 5-6 sign ups for them).
If you have a tasting room or a facility that can host visitors I think you shouldn’t bother at all with a mailing list. Build a wine club, focus on events at the winery. Use the wine club’s popularity to build local trade sales. Here locally Leal and Martin Ranch have had success with that approach. Probably not names familiar to most people but both are doing well with that approach. When I talk with Dan and Therese Martin they really have no interest in doing what I do with a mailing list. For them it’s too much work to figure out and maintain and they would rather focus on their club and the events they do at the winery. That fits their personalities too.
Jim Varner gave me great advice. He said there are two parts of the wine world. There are huge companies that have huge marketing machines, and that includes the score driven small production wineries. They are about a marketing campaign, a label, a ‘mystic’. The rest, and it’s a part getting smaller and smaller he said, is about small personal wineries. That’s individuals and their stories behind their wine. He said there are people who will seek out those small wineries and you as a small winemaker have to connect with those people and tell them your story.
How you connect has got to be about your personality. For the Varner’s they knew lots of people in the trade who respected them and liked them and they were able to focus on those relationships and let those trade people build a following for them in small stores.
I encourage Ian, bug him actually like a pest, that he needs to get out and travel and meet people. He has a great story and he’s really great in small groups of 8-10 talking about his wine. He’s funny, engaging and passionate but it takes him relaxing a bit to bring all that out. The 45 second pitch at a trade show I never see working for Ian, but sitting down and answering questions and giving details in a personal way is his strong point. When he does that not only does he get sign ups but he gets customers who buy and buy from him. I never see him shooting a shotgun from a Ferrari but that will work for you too if it’s your personality.
So the answer to the question on what’s the best way is it depends on who is asking the question. What works for me, isn’t going to work for someone else and what worked for someone else might not work for me.
Oofpha!
I’d say talk to Brian Loring.
He:
Participated on many boards for a long time
Made nice to great wines
Traveled and met people, brought wines, was honest about them…and actually was semi interesting as a person. 
![[berserker.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/8/8600bbd4810d342b8fbd4ffb62b4f0026275fd37.gif "berserker"){kind=small}
Talked honestly about other wine makers
Continued to do all of the above.
paul -
I fully agree with the idea that one should run a business in ways that reflect who you are and how you want to live.
I’d disagree pretty strongly with this though “There are huge companies that have huge marketing machines, and that includes the score driven small production wineries. They are about a marketing campaign, a label, a ‘mystic’. The rest, and it’s a part getting smaller and smaller he said, is about small personal wineries. That’s individuals and their stories behind their wine. He said there are people who will seek out those small wineries and you as a small winemaker have to connect with those people and tell them your story.” It’s not so much that he’s wrong, but that he casts marketing and storytelling in opposition.
I think marketing, really effective marketing, is precisely telling people your story - but not everyone can drop by the winery to listen to your story. Right now, in 2012, a small personal winery has unprecedented means to tell their story to anyone who’s interested, not just the people in the area. A mailing list is one way to do that.* So is a blog or a Facebook page. Now, some people might not care or need this. They might be able to sell out everything they make just with winery activities. That’s awesome. But that also excludes people who aren’t local. it basically says to someone in another state who loves your wine that they’re second class citizens. You’ll talk to them if they fly or drive hundreds or thousands of miles. The people who can drop by in February get to see you and chat with you and see what happens during downtime… but those of us in other states are left out of this because a winery won’t blog and email.
Again, if that’s the way someone wants things, that’s fine. But the casting of marketing as some kind of faux veneer that relies on critics and celebrity winemakers is false to me. Authentic marketing is all about engaging with fans, making them aware of what you’re doing and listening to what they want.
*Keep in mind that I’m seeing a mailing list not just as an ordering channel, but as a way to communicate with and engage with your fans.
Rick,
I can’t see Jim Varner ever blogging or twittering and I’m not going to argue with his success. He did what worked for him and his personality. It was his advice. I think maybe you missed his message. It was simply that as a small winery you can’t stand toe to toe with the resources of a big company and beat them at their game. You have to seize on what makes you unique and different. It wasn’t a rant against marketing, I sure didn’t take it that way, it was advice not to try and do the same thing as the big companies do.
It should also be intuitive that if you know my business you know that I’m not saying the only way to build a mailing list is with a celebrity winemaker and critical reviews. I’m no celebrity and I don’t send wine to critics. I’ve got a mailing list I think most wineries would kill for. Critics and a celebrity winemaker are the easy, although expensive, way to build a list. If you can’t or won’t do that, then you have to build it in a way that works for you. You can’t just copy what someone else has done it probably won’t work for you. What worked for me, probably is not going to work for someone else, or it’s going to be something that’s too hard or painful to do for them and they’ll never see it through.
Fully agreed Paul. It just seemed to me that Jim was equating marketing to big companies, flash and the like - perhaps I mistook his point. I’m also a bit sensitive to that because I see smaller businesses all the time that don’t get that they now have tools that let them engage their fans and customers in ways that evena few years ago weren’t possible. Far too many of them feel it’s out of their reach, that they need to be hugely technical, etc. so when I read something that seems to say “You can do the BigCo thing or you can just focus on your in-person experience” I push back because it’s not true and because it puts others off trying things.
Like I said, if someone doesn’t want to try, fine. If it’s just not who they are, OK. But to ignore the opportunities in online market for a smaller business is foolish. Look at them, evaluate what fits, try some things. It’s not like you need to be online 24x7 or do nothing.
Maybe it’s so obvious it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway:
Step one: have a good product to sell.
Get that good product in as many people’s hands as possible (i.e.: WB’ers, pros, bloggers, etc. …), and let it shake out.
Brian,
Well, the second part is the harder part, esp when you’re smaller and can’t just send out samples willy-nilly. The simple fact is that no one blogger etc will result in many sales. Even critics like Tanzer don’t usually move the sales needle, sadly. So, while I agree with you that a good product is needed, I wouldn’t agree that merely giving out samples will help much.
Doing things like Berserkerday offerings can help a lot since they generate revenue and get product in front of people who tend to talk about wine but the honest truth is that short of major critic notice or major media kudos, there’s no magic bullet. However, you will do better if you actively plan things and don’t just let it shake out but think about what you want and how to make it happen. Want a mailing list? Give people the opportunity to sign up at every customer contact from tastings to website visits. Encourage it, make it easy to see the signup form or sheet and you’ll do better than if you bury the signup form on the Contact page of your site and don’t give people the chance at tastings.
Totally agree about the economics. Surely, though, a winemaker who’s active on this board could (somewhat) accurately predict which posters will like their wines, and will post positive reviews of them; I think it’s advantageous for the winemaker to get their wines in those peoples’ hands, if economics allow it — even if we’re just talking six people, or so.
I think you bring-up a fantastic point re: making it easy to sign-up for the mailing list at tastings. I’d further suggest making signing-up for the mailing list a selling point at tastings (i.e.: “We’ll refund the cost of your tasting today (if any) if you sign-up for our mailing list. Additionally, you’ll receive the member’s discount on all wines that you purchase today.”) Have a list of all the wines and their prices: both regular pricing, and member’s pricing.
I’ve found that putting up a sign up list at tastings results in a conversion rate of less than 2%. (sign ups to eventual purchase of any kind). I don’t do it any more. When we do set up at events we give out mini-moo’s MiniCards | Small Business Cards | MOO US with the website info and blog info and encourage people to go to the website to sign up. If we had a tasting room I’d probably feel differently about it but I’ve just found it a poor use of resources to mail out to people who sign up at an event.
Interesting thing happened when we stopped taking sign ups at events. Our conversion rate stayed about the same but the average revenue per year per conversion went up about 400%. The people who did go through the extra step of signing up or contacting us after the event went from spending $100/y on average to $400/y on average. As someone trained in Economics this behavior is fascinating but I’ve not really tried to figure out why it is the way it is. In a different sales model, one with a wine club for instance vs mailing list, I’d think this data might flip flop.
That is interesting Paul. i’d theorize that it’s because they were more qualified leads - they were motivated enough to take an action after a tasting vs just jotting down their email casually.
Your story is why I think it’s important to get out and try things though - it’s not that everything one tries will succeed, it’s that if you don’t experiment, you don’t know what might succeed or fail. Tracking the results is important, but you need to actually try things in order to get results that you can track. Of course, one should leverage the experience of others - if I were a winery reading this I’d skip the open signups and try your card approach. In fact I’d refine it by putting a special URL on the card for people at tastings and perhaps an event specific one for large events like the annual Taste Washington thing and I’d do specific landing pages for the folks who hit those URLs.
brian - my concern with the ‘send a bottle out’ approach is that a given bottle can provide ~15 tastes to people at an event. In a simple ROI view, the question is which use will touch more people. Obviously, the approaches aren’t mutually exclusive, but I’d be inclined to only send bottles to folks with a demonstrated interest, who will likely write about the wine and who have an audience. One reason I like the monthly Berserkerday even Todd’s doing is that it gives wineries a chance to get wine in the hands of interested people and still recoup some of the cost. Even if they only get some of the buyers as new customers that’s a win.
After trying the mailing list sign ups at large tastings for several years, I completely agree with Paul that it’s largely a fruitless endeavor. It seems like the people who sign up at tastings are the first people to hit the “unsubscribe” link when they receive their first email, as if they’re wondering how in the world they ended up on the mailing list.
Ed,
You can mitigate that by sending an email to them as a group asking them to confirm interest. One of the mistakes I see people make (not just wineries) is to take a signup and then not email me for weeks or months. I pretty strongly feel that anyone with a mailing list who’s not sending something out monthly at least is severely underutilizing it.
Paul has a good point on the mail order vs direct, if you have direct access. We’re building repeat business and wine club members over the bar in our tasting tent. Its not glossy, but the chance to meet the winemakers in a ‘quaint’ rustic setting (our backyard) has some appeal. We take signups at the bar, but only 20% of the newsletters ever get opened on average, we do get people surfing our site on Tuesdays & Wednesdays looking for weekend activities.
Even simple themes like Mardi-Gras and St Patrick’s day seem to garner some level of traction, its a reason to make the trip.
again, though, sheldon… you’re restricting yourself to people who can and do visit. As I said above, that’s a great approach if it works for a business. It also means people like me will never end up a customer.
As for open rates - that’s something that can be tested and refined. You also want to look at open rate for a given email address over several newsletters. But yeah, it’s not going to be 100%
Honestly, (and this isn’t a comment on anyone who’s posted here), wineries are terrible at online marketing and most of them don’t seem to care. For some, it’s probably due to size. For others, personality. But it’s always struck me as odd that small companies don’t use one of the few marketing tools that gives the the same reach as much larger companies for very little money or effort.