Let's talk about NEXT BerserkerDay!! (brainstorming - it's too big!!!)

BerserkerDay Archive (BerserkerDays 1-15) BerserkerDay VII (January 27, 2016)
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Obviously BerserkerDay has gotten too big for its britches. What started out as 30-40 total offers has ballooned into 100 offers and 40 auctions, and it’s simply too much for the current setup, so I’m brainstorming ideas, and would love input from all of you, fresh from the most recent BerserkerDay. I’m sure we have some event planners, e-commerce wizards, and general smart minds who I’d be happy to hear from - either in this thread or via PM if you don’t want to put it out here in the public. Here are some notes, really just a stream-of-consciousness thing:

Time limits – different time limits for each group, INCLUDING preview time limits, wine gear/food/other products runs the longest, possibly the next day entire day (as folks might need the ‘gear’ after buying the wine) ties in with next one…groups

Groups – Divide into groups, and launch the entire group at a time, with a time limit for each. When done, they disappear completely. Newbie wineries, Retailers, Wine gear, food and other related products, , BerserkerBusiness, Pinot, Cab, Whites, everything else

Bi-Annual – perhaps not needed if everything is segmented like the above, but then no limit would be required on participants

Limits - Cut it off at a certain number of possible offers, and a small committee decides on which to choose, giving participants opportunity to improve their offer if the don’t make the cut – either with or without bi-annual fests

Prizes - Free gifts in each group, and total – mystery gifts, aka ‘the 10th person to order gets X’ or ‘the first person with a confirmed order gets X’ or ‘the person with the most orders total’ or ‘the person who has an order with every group’, etc

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Just one quick thought… maybe new participants (wineries) couldm have their offers in a separate topic.

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Did you read my post, with ‘groups’, specifically? Is that similar to what you are suggesting?

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Todd… yes, I thought that it might be interesting to have a ‘rookie’ group.

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Pay to play, slotting fees & kickbacks would be one way to go… Or not!

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I’m not completely clear on what the problems are or how each of the suggestions solve those particular problems. I’m not even sure if they are meant to solve administrative or user issues. A quick recap might be helpful.

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I think that the newbies need the most visibility to get attention. Maybe that group stays open longer, or for the whole event. Then everything else gets slotted in around them. The regulars will be found by their fan clubs no matter what.

I have to say that having everything available to view during preview day really helped me research and finalize my decisions. So maybe the answer is separate groups, but all out at once, except the auctions later in the afternoon as usual. That gives everyone an equal chance to get buyers from early.on when the credit cards are still fresh.

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Scary thing is…that’s been suggested several times. Not doing it.

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Didn’t figure you were going that direction…

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I like the idea of how you did the preview day, but possibly have a tick list that everyone could print out.
Here’s a thought. If you organized the offers in groups of say 10 at a time you could release earlier for everyone. In each group you could have a nice mix; a couple (or more) newbies and highly active wineries etc in each group. That could keep the traffic flowing through different groups. To make it more fun you could challenge each group to come up with an innovative theme or team name “Viniferous Vikings”. I would donate a prize within a group…perhaps a raffle of some sort.

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Specific to auctions

  1. I like having them in their own forum - we didn’t know that it would work when we moved them mid flight but people were not fazed.
  2. Do we need 40 auction items? Don’t know. Maybe we solicit “potential” donations and then select the ones to offer randomly. I don’t want producers feeling it’s “pay to play”. I actually declined two generous producers donations that came in during BD because I didn’t want to add to the challenges we were dealing with in deciding to move to a dedicated forum for the auction.
  3. I think ending the auction on the night of BD works best. We extended this auction end date because the move to the dedicated forum not knowing if we’d lose lots of bidding. Didn’t want to give away valuable items for pennies on the dollar. Especially because they were donations. Obviously, that fear was unwarranted.
  4. nothing says we have to do the auctions on BD… it could be the next month or 4 months later, for example. It’s a fundraiser for WB and not specifically tied to BD.
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BerserkerDay should really be on Jan. 27th only. Any other day is a fund raiser day, which would be fine, but lets keep the energy of that day intact. The amount of offers will just keep rising so there needs to be a way to accommodate the increase. How about a WB team that handles the posting on the board and fields questions, etc. and a separate social media team that would launch social media specific offers that are not posted on WB. This splits the effort to manage and spreads the traffic to other outlets. Not sure of the logistics to make this work, but it would help the load that Todd, Brig and the others shoulder on this day. It also would drive Berserkers crazy not knowing where the next great offer is coming from. And everyone loves a crazy Berserker.
For the auctions, more is better. Just launch them on preview day for everyone to see and then have them close on BD at an hour that is better suited for our east coast friends. That gives us 2 days to bid up and reduces the effort on BD for the posting of the offers.

BerserkerDay IS Jan. 27th. [berserker.gif]

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If another day is added some other time of the year it could be a shop small event with only newbies participating. Limited to 20-25 small wineries that have not participated in BD, could be fun with great exposure.

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I like the idea of groups - would keep it more manageable. Perhaps even create subforums, and maybe announce the various groups in advance (e.g., 11am is newbies, 12p is oldies, 1p is merchandise, etc.).

One of the biggest challenges I’ve found each year is missing offers, because they are ordered based on the last post. If no one posts, it can start to slip down and appear like I’ve already seen it. If the groups were, say 10-12 offers each (or maybe 15) all coming at the same time, it would be a lot easier to keep track of things.

But i’m not keen on the idea that the deals are done within a set period. What’s the point in that - other than the fun of setting a record for most people on line, the goal isn’t just to draw page clicks, which is what this seams to be. I think leave it to each vendor to decide on the time limit. One thing to consider on this, however, is perhaps to move all the offers that remain open past 1/27 to a new group so people will continue to see those.

Bi-annual would diminish the uniqueness

I wouldn’t limit offers, but you should reject any that aren’t special - this shouldn’t just be advertising.

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Maybe there are a couple “qualifying” sales throughout the year where maybe 5-10 wineries offer a simple deal…like 1-2 bottles for a decent price. Then, late in the year the community or panel of people that have posted tasting notes on several of the wines vote for who qualifies for Berserkerday, thus placing a workable limit on the days offers. This might enable both less insanity trying to wade through 100 offers, but also place some esteem on the rookies or those that are perhaps overlooked due to the better known darlings. The difficulty would be resetting the list every year to give all a fair opportunity to make the cut. I haven’t been around long enough to know the original 30-40 wineries participating, but there should probably be some consideration to giving newcomers a chance to not have to requalify every time (under this scenario). Sort of like IPOB…some wineries are Berserkers, some might not be…

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I’d second Brian Curtis’ question above - what exactly is not working?

  • is administration of this many offers to much work? If so, lining up a really solid team of volunteers to admin might help.

  • does the volume of sales to each offer dip too much with over 100 offers? that’s a more complex question - just allow the market to decide or find a way to limit the number. ( I personally really like the current format and the once a year-ness of the event. I’d rather like it if sellers were encouraged to extend an extra day if they have not sold out so folks can reconsider ones they may have missed (but keep the excitement of EMH going for only 3 hours!))

  • is the issue simply how folks can see all the offers? I really like the idea someone posted on another thread of just giving each offer a number so we can check the full list even if new posts have jumbled the order.

This year I was unfortunately on a plane most of the day - and dealing with a work crisis that meant I could not simply shop BD from the flight which had been my plan. My impression however was that folks were having fun, making money and generally pleased. So what did not go well?

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Assign a number to each offer. Publish a overall list with number - offer name. So people can check for it specifically.

Otherwise it works great. The market will respond to killer offers and lesser ones will slide to the bottom as it should.

Auction in separate forum and end on the day of.

As for offer groups- why bother? I’m not sure why not all offers are posted within the first 2-3 hours.

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I realize January 27th is a special day but to me January is absolutely the worst month of the year to buy wine due to Christmas and tuition bills, mailing lists I’m buying from and retailer inventory reduction sales that are taking place where I can buy international wines at prices I can’t ignore. I haven’t participated in Berserkerfest for the past two years for those reasons. If you moved it back even a month that would be a big help for a lot of people and also improve the shipping process and I’m sure the revenues would increase even more. Fwiw.

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I concur with the comments that not knowing what problem(s) you are trying to solve makes it hard to make/support a suggestion. I have not had any problem finding great wines to buy and the supply always exceeds my budget (even after I’ve overshot my budget!). While I can see that the growth is causing some issues, the one-day free-for-all captures the Berserker spirit. If you can’t deal, sorry, just do the best you can. It is no different than other sales, LB marathon, etc.; if you miss one, another great one will be along shortly.

If there are other goals, e.g., maximizing growth/revenue for wineries, etc., then I guess trade-offs will have to be made.

I would not like to see offers time-out and disappear. Maybe create a group where offers older than xx hours are moved?

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I like the one day free-for-all. I don’t like offers that time out because I can’t sit in front of my computer all day and do nothing buy sift through offers. I do it as time is available. Maybe I am the only one with that problem but I much prefer to be able to search and buy when I have time and if I miss some offers because of limitations, so be it.