Wineries get new tech to help them go digital

Seven Apart was on track to top off the typical tale for a Napa Valley boutique vintner: Build winery, open tasting room. But then the pandemic hit, and construction on the hospitality center, originally set to open late last year, stopped.

“We had wine being released, but no place to host consumers,” said Yannick Girardo, general manager. “We were trying to figure out ways to entertain and to put wine in front of clients.”

The hospitality building could have been finished by the end of last year, but with Napa County not being in a reopening tier that allowed indoor tasting until March of this year, it seemed better to wait, Girardo said. But the brand’s first release of 2,000 cases wouldn’t wait.

So like other California vintners that found their tasting rooms closed by pandemic public health orders, Seven Apart took marketing for the release digital. And lessons the boutique vintner learned are part of the crash course in e-commerce that Wine Country producers have taken to survive the past 16 months.

So at the beginning of May last year, Seven Apart took the advice of wine marketing agency Highway 29 Creative and went heavy into advertising on search engines and on social platforms Facebook and Instagram, targeting user characteristics such as wine lover, world traveler and key wine consumer density states such as California, Texas, New York, Florida and New York.

“At first we were just trying to build awareness,” Girardo said. “Only a small percentage of people visiting the site are converting or purchasing.”

Then the vintner started sending out monthly “journals,” or blog updates on progress toward construction and the development of grapes in the vineyard ahead of the first release in September. The main wine, Expedition cabernet sauvignon ($135 a bottle), and another smaller vineyard-designate label ($225 a bottle) sold out without a glass being poured. Girardo sent each buyer a hand-written thank-you card.

Virtual tasting innovation

For the second release, Seven Apart turned to virtual tastings, but took the advice of Highway 29 Creative to conduct them differently. Instead of just having consulting winemaker Andy Erickson talk about the wines he made, they brought in a wine critic for the first session to ask questions about the wine. The second session, held last month, included a master sommelier as moderator.

Similarly, vintner Phil Long said Longevity Wines’ survival was dependent on shifting quickly to virtual tastings.

The Livermore winery turned to Windsor-based e-commerce software provider VinoShipper to help make the virtual tastings happen. But then another surge in online orders came for people of color in the beverage business starting last summer.

Long, also president of the Association of African American Vintners, said that "with the focus on the BLM movement, a list of 60 black owned brands went viral on social media. We experienced more online orders in the first two weeks of June 2020 than we experienced in the entire year of 2019.”

No going back

While tastings by video conference took off while tasting rooms were closed and winery sales staff couldn’t travel to pour wines for trade buyers, they have morphed into being more thoughtfully used as the pandemic has continued and likely will be part of the marketing toolbox going forward.

“E-commerce is out of the box,” said Paul Mabray, wine digital technology innovator and CEO of Napa-based Pix Wines. “Everything digital is moving forward in a significant way.

Travel and expense budgets may change post-pandemic, as marketing professionals look to use technology to stretch dollars further in critical markets where trips to work alongside wholesaler teams is necessary, Mabray said.

Wine by text

Among the marketing tech solutions that are being rolled out for wine businesses, those that help wineries cost-effectively reach consumers by text message are ripe for new entries, according to Mabray. In recent research, as many as three-quarters of consumers indicated that they wanted to communicate with companies by text for customer service, with up to two-thirds saying they preferred that method.

One new player is Highway 29 Creative, which developed its own SMS tool called Vimbibe.

“At the end of the day, it is getting harder and harder to engage with customers,” said founder Simon Solis-Cohen. “Email boxes are overflowing, and there are so many ads on Facebook and Instagram.”

While wineries could port over their email communications to text, the format lends itself better to short, casual and one-to-one messages, he said. One use is to briefly acknowledge a visit to a tasting room. Another may be to send a notice of a sale that ends in just hours.

“It’s super easy to read a text and not take action,” Solis-Cohen said.

The system currently works just with vintners that use Commerce7’s e-commerce platform for texts sent to consumers in the United States and Australia. Pricing starts at $99 a month or $499 a month (suitable for companies with five or more brands), with 30-day free trials available.

Highway 29 Creative also is launching a DTC data analytics service this summer. Four main conversion rates focused on in the tracking are reservations for the winery, wine sales, club sign-ups and email sign-ups.

Helping consumers select wine

To help consumers with the perplexing range of choices in the store wine aisle, restaurant wine list or winery website, Mabray late last year formed Pix Wines. It is developing a digital tool that consumers can use in those environments to help decide what to buy.

“Those are the only times when a consumer needs to have a wine app,” Mabray said.

The web-based version of Pix is set to launch in 12 weeks with 250,000 products and 3,000 partner wineries, restaurants and delivery services, he said. The Pix team includes Felicity Carter, former editor in chief of Meininger’s Wine Business International, as executive editor for consumer and trade content development.

Mabray’s e-commerce analytics firm Emetry is now a division called Pix Analytics.

Jeff Quackenbush covers wine, construction and real estate. Before the Business Journal, he wrote for Bay City News Service in San Francisco. He has a degree from Walla Walla University. Reach him at jquackenbush@busjrnl.com or 707-521-4256.

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Corrections, July 13, 2021: The name of the firm is Highway 29 Creative, with a space between “Highway” and “29.“ Vimbibe offers unlimited texts; limits were put on demonstration accounts.