Local expert on how wineries can uncover more about their customers

The untapped market for wineries is right where they’re not looking — outside their wine clubs.

The upside is MJ Dale, founder and CEO of Customer Vineyard, knows just how to uncover this market.

The speaker at the North Bay Business Journal’s Wine Industry Conference on Tuesday shared with 200-plus attendees strategies to track valuable customers with their data, public information and Power BI, business intelligence software.

“The biggest surprise is that the biggest opportunity is outside the wine club,” Dale said. “We focus on the wine club a lot, but there’s enormous potential outside of that. Wineries have customer relationships going back years, but they’re only paying attention to 10% of them. That is their treasure trove and that power can be unlocked.”

Now in its 24th year, the conference had a series of speakers who covered a range of topics, including diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) programs; artificial intelligence; and how to stand out in the wine industry.

Dale said she hopes the prime takeaway from her talk is that insights about real customers lead to better relationships with them and improve bottom line profitability.

“Our industry is a bit behind and doesn’t realize how much information is out there at the individual level and how it can be used respectfully and artfully to expand customer relationships.”

Through a series of slides, Dale illustrated how wineries can glean — legally — more information about their customers. This data includes ages, professions, income and even travel preferences.

One slide revealed that lawyers are active buyers of pricey Napa cabernet sauvignon. This finding, for example, suggests that Napa wineries producing high-end cab might want to initiate a connection with bar associations.

Geographically, wineries can pinpoint where their most valuable customers reside, allowing them to make smart choices for where to hold events.

Dale said a valuable tool she uses is Power BI. This program is available through Microsoft Office Suite software, which also offers Excel and PowerPoint.

“Power BI is a piece of it,” Dale said, “and it will help you look at data, but it won’t necessarily give you all the insights we built out (in our side presentation).”

Dale’s company specializes in streamlining data from a multitude of sources to help wineries develop ways to attract new customers, sell more to existing customers and retain high value customers.

Ending her talk on an upbeat note, Dale said whenever there’s change, there’s opportunity.

“So, our industry is at a crossroads of incredible opportunity,” she said. “I’m very optimistic. Wineries have relationships and loyal customers outside of their wine clubs and all customers matter. Wineries can learn how to unlock great profit.”

You can reach wine writer Peg Melnik at 707-521-5310 or peg.melnik@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @pegmelnik.