For many wineries, tasting rooms are a physical representation of their brand and a primary tool used to leave a lasting impression on their customers-– second to their wines, of course. Apart from the importance of leaving guests with a positive memory of your brand, tasting rooms are also one of the greatest sales conversion points for the majority of DTC brands.
According to the 2022 DTC Consumer Impact Report, the largest portion of DTC revenue is attributable to wine club sales, at 45%. And, with an average of 79% of wine club members having joined following tasting room visits as reported by the 2021 DTC Wine Survey Report, it is particularly important to cater to tasting rooms guests in the hopes of them becoming lifelong wine club members.
In the past decades, older generations have been the forefront of representation in tasting rooms and wine clubs. Today, these experiences are gaining popularity among younger generations, and with these shifting age demographics comes a shift among wine consumers’ preferences and even behaviors.
A recent article by Jeff Quackenbush of the North Bay Business Journal states:
"Miller was citing results from the group’s fall 2021 U.S. Wine Consumer Segmentation Survey of 1,772 domestic consumers. It found that 15% of California boomer respondents at the time planned to visit a winery in the next year or two (2022–2023), while 27% of Gen Xers, 34% of millennials and 46% of age-21-plus Gen Zers at such plans.”
The article discusses the details behind these shifting demographics of wine consumers coupled with the relationship between tasting rooms and potential wine club members.
In order to be successful, wineries need to prepare for more diverse tasting room visitors. Here’s how:
Make the Discovery Process Seamless and User-Friendly
Younger consumers have been seen to be 28% less brand loyal than the baby boomer generation. And, instead of focusing on the brand when purchasing wine, they tend to focus more on whether or not they like the taste and quality of the wine.
When these younger visitors enter your tasting room, prioritizing their palates is the key to building a connection on that first vital visit. With increasing amounts of diverse, young individuals entering the tasting room, a streamlined approach to recommendations could help your visitors find wines they love faster.
Not only that, in order to follow up with first-time visitors for future tasting room events or even wine club offers, you’ll need a way to capture their contact information. Now, imagine being able to capture that contact information alongside individual palate preferences. You can with Tastry Uncorked.
Tasting rooms can use Tastry Uncorked to make recommendations that are personalized to each new, diverse visitor walking through your door. By putting a QR code that leads to the Uncorked quiz in sight for guests to scan, they answer a few simple questions about their taste preferences that analyze which wine best fits their taste based on the chemical composition of each of your wines.
Gauging your customer’s palate through Uncorked fast tracks the process of discovering the right wine for them. Being able to offer a customer a wine they are likely to enjoy builds a solid foundation for customer relationships in the tasting room built on the foundation of trusting your recommendations. These customer relationships are the basis of wine club member acquisition, and if a new customer doesn’t enjoy the wine and the experience, they are not going to join the wine club.
Communicate Personalized Offers to Build Trust and Loyalty
Once you’re able to easily collect and track your new visitors’ information, you can use it to keep them connected with your brand, even outside of the tasting room. With younger wine consumers, they expect personalized experiences inside and outside of the tasting room.
Email or text campaigns can be created to utilize the palate information you receive from Tastry Uncorked to reach out to your customers through text or email in a way that is personalized for each customer. There are endless possibilities of what these campaigns can be, because they can be made to fit your company’s image and your company’s promotions.
For example, if you host release parties for a new vintage of a specific wine, in your invitation email you can let customers that match well with the wine based off of the Tastry quiz that they are likely to enjoy the new wine to have a more personalized promotion of your product. Take a look at some other ways that you can use your Uncorked data in marketing campaigns here.
Optimize Your Inventory to Cater to More Diverse Palates
Discovering the palates of your customers through Tastry Uncorked opens up a whole new way to optimize your inventory to cater to a wide range of consumers. You can identify category gaps in your inventory, by Tastry uncovering what wines you don’t have that consumers are craving.
Tastry’s data can also show you which wines will do well in your tasting room and which wines will not appeal to the majority of tasting room visitors. With the diverse palates of new wine consumers that are coming through the door, you may find that your inventory is lacking for people with different palates that you aren’t used to.
New, young, diverse, individuals entering the wine market could be a great opportunity to the growth of your business and the wine industry as a whole. However, if wineries don’t cater to their preferences, they may lose them.
