Why You Should Sell Wine Online

For the past few years, the wine industry has evolved in many ways, especially related to how sales are done. Wine online sales are trending up, while restaurant and tasting room sales are trending down. Selling DTC (Direct to Consumer) through an online store not only allows you to scale your business more, but also opens up many other advantages and opportunities.

So, why should you sell wine online?

1. Traditional sales channels are becoming less reliable

Restaurants and wine tasting room sales have decreased throughout the past years, while the number of consumers shopping online continues to grow.

Consumers love the convenience of getting their bottles of wine delivered at home. They like how an online shopping experience gives them more options, control, and information. Consumers who have visited a tasting room on vacation, also love continuing the relationship with the brand while back home.

When a consumer shops online, they get to purchase on their own schedule, they can read and write reviews on your wines, get other useful information (think food pairing ideas), and continue to stay up to date with your brand.

2. Ecommerce is growing fast, and represents a huge opportunity

Ecommerce has been growing exponentially, and it will just continue to do so

Global ecommerce website retail sales are expected to hit a total of approximately 4.9 trillion dollars by 2021. Still, so many wineries are not taking advantage of selling wine online. Not only are they missing out on sales, but they are also missing out in providing their customers with alternative, often more convenient, shopping experiences.

With many wineries still not selling online, there’s a big opportunity to set yourself apart by providing an easy, interactive online shopping experience for your consumers.

3. Have more control over your business and maximize your profits

This business is not just about wine production. It’s also about how you market and tell your brand’s story.

When you sell wine through your online store, you’re in control of marketing and sharing your brand’s story to your customers. Chances are, your resale partners are not doing your brand justice when it comes to sharing your values, and what makes you unique.

Your website, CRM, email marketing and online ads are just a few of the tools at your disposal in the wine digital marketing world. They can complement each other very well and allow you to create efficient integrated marketing campaigns that do your brand justice, and truly share your story.

You can also keep all the data gathered by these tools and use it in your favor. You can identify, and know exactly what to adjust to hit better numbers, goals and to maximize your reach and profits. Make decisions based on real data and have fun seeing your numbers go up!

4. Create long-term relationships with your clients

As mentioned above, CRM is one of the most important and useful tools you can use to sell wine online.

A CRM allows you to keep track of notes and detailed information on your customer's personal preferences, browsing behavior and shopping history. This information allows you to get insights into what you can offer customers to enhance their shopping experience.

Increase your customer retention. Creating loyalty programs or wine clubs, sending out personalized offers based on what you already know a specific consumer likes, or offering consumers an extra single bottle with a special discount on your online store’s shopping cart page. The possibilities are endless. Your customers are most likely wine enthusiasts, turn them into brand advocates– if they aren’t already.

Remember: keeping existing customers is much easier than acquiring new ones, so take advantage of that.

Wrapping up

Wrapping up, these are just a few reasons why you should start to sell wine online. The advantages are endless, and nowadays it’s becoming less of an option, and more of a must.

And first and foremost: take action. You will find out that it can get very profitable and fun. Enjoy a bottle of wine while creating a checklist of what you need to achieve in order to put this in practice.

If you are a winery or a wine retailer interested in how you can increase your brand presence and profitability and you’ve decided you want to sell wine online, get in touch with us and we’ll be happy to help you get started with your ecommerce and other DTC sales channels.

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