Category: Marketing

By Susan DeMatei

Spoiler alert: nothing I talk about in these predictions is groundbreaking, or new technology or techniques for marketing. These are tactics that the digital eCommerce world has been using and perfecting for quite some time. We hear about these strategies at conferences, and experience them with other brands we interact with…but we don’t take those practices to work with us when we market our wine. We are a slow industry to adopt new trends. Why is that?

Margins are Low

Margins are low across the board for wine – albeit better in Direct To Consumer (DTC) channels versus wholesale – but the hospitality cost that is carried on the DTC side balances the scales. Management, at any company, is going to focus resources and innovation in the areas with the greatest impact to the bottom line. Although the last ten years have seen a tremendous focus and growth in DTC marketing, it is still not matching the infrastructure and technology behind wholesale tracking, reporting and sales.

Those With the Means Don’t Have a Motive for Change

Companies with large case production report only 5-20% of their total revenue coming from the DTC channel. This percentage increases as the case production decreases, leaving only the smaller production wineries reporting more than 50% of their total revenue coming from DTC sales. Couple this lopsided payout with the fact that most technological adoptions and paradigm shifts happen from the top – or big guys – down, DTC channels often do not receive the marketing budget and technological innovations as wholesale. The result? We have an industry where the large corporate wine conglomerates have the cash and clout to change the way we market, but there are few innovators.

Our Innovators are the Outliers

Our industry innovators are typically small wineries run by a geek winemaker or owner who was a computer engineer, or used to work in the corporate sector with technology and tools at their disposal. Out of frustration, these people have cobbled together different systems with jerry-rigged features and fields to get what they want for their winery. Since it’s the occasional oddball that is doing this, they may be interesting, and asked to speak at the occasional conference, but they don’t gain much traction in creating widespread change.

Our Focus is Diverted

Wine is an agricultural business and of the wineries in North America, the majority is very-small to small production. This has a couple of implications. First, winery decision makers don’t spend their days behind a desk. They are typically not glued to their website or social media platforms and are more versed in pH chemistry than megabytes. This also means means they are distracted and wear many hats. Winery owners typically are part farmer, part chemist, part handyman, part botanist, part guest services, part salesperson, and part janitor. Sadly, marketing and its execution take a back seat in attention. It is one thing to be able to hand-sell your wine at a pouring, but quite another to think through online marketing channels, social media advertising and Google Analytics funnels.

Our Vendors Hold Us Back

Should you choose to sell online (compliantly) and offer a wine club, there are a handful of technology platforms to choose from. These systems are handy all-in-one solutions that offer website hosting, eCommerce, compliance, fulfillment, wine club, CRM, emails, POS, and reporting. What could be better, right? In actuality, wineries get locked into these vendors with all their eggs in one basket. Vendors typically hold features and development close to their vest, not wanting to open up and share or integrate for fear of losing market share. Wineries witness a daily battle between the vendors for marketshare, and it’s the wineries that lose.

This is in stark contrast to other markets where open APIs encourage integration, allowing customers to choose and pay for add-ons, apps, and features that work best for their business. Can you imagine if Apple didn’t encourage the App Store, or WordPress didn’t have plugins? Integration and cooperation is the widespread standard in other industries, but sadly, our platforms haven’t adopted this practice. This is not in their customers’ best interests, but in their own.

Despite these hurdles, change is coming. We have finally reached critical mass in mainstream interest, generating a number of topics that will be the talk of conferences this spring.

Subscription-Model Clubs with More Flexibility are Coming

We are a subscription economy. Amazon to Zappos has encouraged repeat business by making it easy to choose what we want, and reorder often. Our wine club model is based on technology from 15 years ago which doesn’t allow members this flexibility, yet many wineries still cling to it. Can you imaging signing up for Blue Apron, or Stitch Fix, or Netflix if you had no input or control over what they sent and charged you for? You’d never do it, yet incredibly we persist in this model. This is the most obvious winery sales channel that clashes with the modern world, and for that reason it is quickly eroding. If you haven’t moved to a more flexible model by the end of 2019 – you’re not only going to lose sales, but you’re doing your customers a disservice.

  Smarter email marketing will finally emerge.

90% of wineries are now emailing frequently. (If you’re still concerned you might “bother” your customers, I urge you to rethink the value of your communications.) Wineries are also acknowledging the influence of the mobile phone on email design and changing the way they write and link emails to be succinct and visual. We’ve been talking about segmentation for a decade, and it is now standard practice for our clients to create different emails for club versus non-club, geo target a list, or target emails to buyers of a certain product. All of these things were slow to happen but moves in the right direction.

The next step we will witness is wineries actively using marketing automation. We see it every day when we get an abandoned cart email, or Amazon suggests items, or Facebook puts that item we were looking at on another site into our Facebook stream. Mailchimp and other affordable platforms exist to empower novice marketers to put together thoughtful campaigns with the right message to the right target at the right time. This type of thoughtful segmentation  is critical to future eCommerce conversions and we should see better responses across the board in 2019 as a result.

Integrated Campaigns and Social Media Ads will Appear

After decades of seminars and blog posts about how to and what to post, wineries are finally getting the hang of social media content. They are also seeing the value of connecting with their customers, being authentic, and sharing themselves online. We’ve gotten over the “pay for it” hurdle – realizing that these channels are a business and it makes sense to pay for increased viewership – and have gotten the hang of targeting. We can comfortably check this box off our learning list.

The next step is scheduling ad campaigns on a regular basis. We’ll see wineries plan for, and put aside social media advertising budgets. And, hopefully, we’ll begin to see more integration across platforms. For instance, the marketing email that was just sent out is also made into a Facebook ad with the segmented list uploaded as a target. This type of multiple exposure can greatly improve responses to campaigns and we’ll see more of it in practice in 2019.

Integrations will Drive Change

In 2019 we’ll start to see big wine technology vendors crack under pressure to integrate. For years they’ve been holding back the tidal wave of feature requests from disappointed customers. Technology costs are now affordable and the need has never been more focused and apparent. We will see an onslaught of new players enter the market, not to provide “all in one” solutions, but to build onto the existing platforms and help them meet these new customer needs. The vendors that embrace this will win, and the ones that don’t, clinging to their closed feature set and market share, will lose.

Outsourcing will Become the Norm Versus the Exception

There is a perfect storm brewing when you combine everything above – low margins, less reliance on the old guard technology, the need for fresh thinking – that tells wineries they must innovate to compete. However, finding technology savvy staff in often rural environments can be challenging – especially after the fires of recent years have driven housing costs out of the reasonable range for most people. The salary that wineries can afford is hopelessly out of whack with what employees need to live in “wine country”. Additionally, the competitive market is allowing employees to choose higher paying jobs with better benefits. The result is that many of these entry to mid-level DTC jobs (the Wine Club Coordinator, the DTC Manager, the Tasting Room Assistant Manager) remain unfilled, posted for a quarter to half-a-year before a new hire is made. This has resulted in an openness to outsource these DTC jobs to a consultant or agency. An outsourced agency typically has staff with specialized skills, are flexible and reliable, and cost less than an employee – and they don’t quit or take sick days. This allows the wineries to focus on what they do best – making wine. This is proving vital to small to medium sized wineries that are really feeling the economic crunch, yet still have to get work done.

So while none of the above is new, it’s new to the wine industry. 2019 will be an interesting year. We should see the establishment shaken up with new players, smarter marketing, and better responses to campaigns. This shift will certainly help the wineries, but ultimately is their customers that are the real winners.

  Susan DeMatei is the President of WineGlass Marketing, a full-service direct marketing firm working within the wine industry in Napa, California. www.wineglassmarketing.com

By Alyssa Ochs

In the wine industry, a label is much more than a sticker on the bottle identifying the brand. Rather, a label is an opportunity to tell consumers about your winery, the intricacies of a particular type of wine, and to highlight its character and quality. That is why it’s so important to put as much time and thought into what’s on the outside of the bottle as what’s inside.

The Importance & Basics of Wine Labels

The importance of effective label printing is to differentiate your product from other wines and help it stand out in the competitive market. Labels provide valuable information to consumers about the winery’s location, tasting notes and alcohol content. In the U.S., labels must also adhere to and be compliant with Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau standards.

To best serve consumers, wineries must consider temperature change, moisture and humidity when choosing label materials. Increasingly, wineries are choosing labels that are eco-friendly and sustainably sourced using biodegradable polylactic acid film, tree-free label stock made from bamboo or sugar cane, or FSC-certified paper.

Sara Nelson, president of Sara Nelson Design, told The Grapevine Magazine some designers stick strictly to art, while others, with more training and broader experience, can help wineries figure out how to visually express their brands.

“Depending on the research you read, from 50 percent to 75 percent of wine buying decisions are made based on the label. Your logo and label have a job to do: sell wine,” said Nelson. “To that end, whether you prefer flowers or animals on labels or whether you like blue is just one small consideration. A designer with experience in the wine industry should also be very familiar with TTB rules, regulations and policies. They should also be helping you to make sounds decisions that help both maximize revenue and minimize cost. That means attention to your competitive situation – anticipated price point; production; how you plan to bottle and label; and where and how it will be sold.”

Printer Options for Wineries

For wineries with in-house design teams or with the ambition to make their own, there are several printers in the marketplace capable of printing professional-looking labels. Options include both laser and inkjet printers, as well as flexographic label presses to transfer images onto labels for large runs of custom labels. Digital label presses are often ideal for small wineries, small batches and short-run labels. For all wineries, the primary considerations when choosing a printer are size, capacity and cost.

One option is the Kiaro! QL-120 inkjet label printer, which offers flexible printing options and speeds that can produce thousands of labels per hour. Meanwhile, some wineries choose to print and apply their labels with LX-Series Color Label Printers and AP-Series Label Applicators.

However, Nelson advises that the quality of DIY labels may not stand up to the expectations of the winery or the consumer. “It seldom makes sense for a winery in a competitive situation to design or print its own labels,” she said. “Very few consumer-grade printers can print with enough consistent precision or use materials necessary to compete with commercial print companies that specialize in beverage labels. Even if the hardware were available and affordable, consumables (ink or toner) can be atrociously expensive and not easy to source.”

 Kevin Crimmins, the director of strategy and business development for The Label Printers in Aurora, Illinois, told The Grapevine Magazine that the best technology for wineries is dependent upon what considerations and needs a winery brings to its printer.

“The dominant technology in label printing for a long time, whether for wine or really any bottled product, has been flexography,” Crimmins said. “Flexographic printing technology is well-suited to label printing due to its ability to efficiently imprint a high volume of identical images and complete the other steps necessary to produce finished labels with minimal handling and reliable consistency.”  However, Crimmins pointed out that digital printing technologies have also become widely used by wineries in recent years.

“Unlike flexography, digital technologies imprint images without reliance on plates,” he said. “This enables printers to create labels with variable images—every label can be different from all the others. Digital printing also delivers crisp, high-resolution images, and in some cases, it can enable a printer to more efficiently respond to requests for smaller quantity runs.”

David Noone of Noontime Labels in San Ysidro, California agreed that the best labels for a winery depend on the customer, product, and budget.  “We use digital presses exclusively, which provide a quality label that is very cost-effective,” Noone said. “Other printing techniques, like offset printing and flexography, do provide a bit higher quality but require much larger quantities to be affordable. Most of our customers find the differences nuanced and opt for the cost savings of digital.”

Savannah Bergin, the director of sales and marketing of Bergin Screen Printing & Etching in Napa, California, told us that her company thinks applied ceramic labels, also referred to as direct screen printing, are the most creative.

“Screen printing allows for the entire surface of the bottle to be used as the canvas,” Bergin said. “Use of a 360-degree design, shoulder and neck decoration is possible with screen printing. With other label application, that is not possible without either applying separate labels. Heat shrink sleeves would be the closest comparison, yet still not directly applied and fused to the glass.”

Material Options

When it comes to label materials, wineries can choose from paper stock, stick adhesive, and waterproof labels made with industrial materials. Wine bottle labels come glossy white, semi-gloss material, matte white, transparent or feature a cream texture parchment sticker. Another option is a transparent polypropylene label material for a “no label” look. Standard sizes include 5.5-inch by 4.5-inch labels with rounded corners and 3-inch by 5.5-inch oval labels.

Bergin told The Grapevine Magazine that paper, pressure sensitive labels, applied ceramic labels and heat shrink sleeves are commonly used by wineries today.

“Paper has been around for a very long time and is still widely used,” she said. “The alternatives have become labeling innovations in an effort to provide decoration solutions outside of paper. Everyone wants their label to stand out, and having multiple label printing options for everyone is what allows every brand to choose their own identity for packaging.”

Noontime Label’s Noone said that his customers only ask for pressure sensitive “peel and stick” labels.   “They can be printed on many different kinds of materials, from plain paper to textured estate papers, as well as vinyl and clear plastic,” he said. “They’re also available with different adhesives depending on the customer’s needs. Some of our customers recycle their bottles, so the high-tack removable adhesive is a pretty popular choice. Noone said that the “peel and stick” labels have the added benefit of being applied on an automated bottling line or by hand if needed.

“The most common materials our customers buy are the plain paper and the estate paper,” Noone said. “The plain paper is the most economical and can easily have a gloss laminate applied to make it waterproof, and the estate papers add texture for a higher-end look and feel.” Noontime Labels provides different label quantities, from 30 labels up to approximately 10,000 per label design.

Meanwhile, Crimmins of The Label Printers says for them no specific label type is more popular than others because wine branding has changed so drastically over the past 20 years. Wine labels were traditionally printed on paper-based label stock, often described as estate papers, that are suited to the high-end aesthetic for which wine brands strive.

“An equally compelling, but very different, aesthetic can be achieved by selecting one of the many plastic film-based label stocks available in today’s market,” Crimmins said. “For example, a metalized film might be chosen for its ability to give a label, or select elements within that label, a glistening or reflective effect.”

Crimmins went on to tell The Grapevine Magazine that, “It’s important to work with a professional printer who will take into consideration things like the surface onto which the labels will be applied, how they will be applied, and how the product is to be used. That way, they can help the winery make the right decisions about coatings that the material will need and which adhesive will allow the label to achieve a lasting bond with the bottle.”

Engraving Directly onto Wine Bottles

Wineries can also engrave labels and information directly onto the bottle. Engraving is typically more expensive, making it most commonly used for rare releases, special occasions, and milestone gifts. Engraved bottles offer a personalized touch that cannot be mistaken for anyone else’s product.

Laser technology, such as MAG PRO or MAG BOX, can be used for engraving, with custom and ready-to-order designs start at around $18 per bottle, plus a $75 setup fee. Bergin Screen Printing & Etching, for example, offers hand-etched and hand-painted bottle creations, providing an alternative to printing large paper wine labels for bottle sizes between 1.5 liters to 27 liters.

  Choosing the Right Printing and Labeling Strategy

After selecting a label design, assessing the number of labels needed, and determining the amount of labor that label-making will involve, wineries should be able to decide whether it’s best to print their labels or hire a printing company to handle the task for them.

Crimmins of The Label Printers emphasized that the label is what customers see before they taste, or even buy, a bottle of wine.  “Give some thought to how the aesthetic of your label will present your brand and will convey the feelings that you think your brand should evoke,” he said. “An experienced printer will have some ideas that could highlight your brand or support your aesthetic even more effectively than what you come up with on your own. Don’t be shy about asking a printer how they might enhance your label; you may really like their ideas.”

Crimmins understands the attraction of print-it-yourself devices because, after all, why pay a professional to make your labels if you can handle it on your own?    “Well, maybe I can put it this way,” he said, “I think it would be fun to plant some vines, collect the grapes, press them and go through all the steps to turn my juice into wine. Can I expect my homemade wine to be as good as the wine produced by vintners who’ve dedicated their careers to winemaking? Should I expect to make some missteps along the way in my winemaking venture? Maybe that approach is acceptable for a hobbyist. However, if wine is your business, the label really should reflect the same care, professionalism, and skill as you put into the wine itself.”

Nelson of Sara Nelson Design reiterated this point but also offered suggestions on how working with a designer can help wineries take advantage of both worlds.  “For a winery with a small budget, an experienced designer might take advantage of a printer’s collection of stock—cutting dies to save money, or they may design a label such that it can be printed on a digital press at your neighborhood print shop if you want to hand-apply them,” said Nelson. “With a healthier budget, a designer might include luscious finishes like deep embosses, holographic films and foils, laser cutting of intricate patterns, flocking, or more.”

However, Nelson said that high-end finishes are not always affordable or appropriate for winery labels.    “It may seem like a good idea to try to make a $7 bottle of wine look like $20 on the theory that it will look like a great value, but most that try it find that it doesn’t usually work out,” Nelson said. “There are times to use foil, precious metal inks, etched bottles, and such, but go carefully. Your designer should be able to help you think through the cost versus the ROI.”

Bergin of Bergin Screen Printing & Etching says that decisions of whether to hire a company to print labels, self-print labels, or invest in new label equipment depends on the size of the winery.    “When picking a label printing company, we recommend they physically visit their facility or showroom to get a feel for their portfolio of work, as well as the confidence they can produce quality results with precision,” Bergin said. “Choosing a label design and its application medium is a huge decision in the packaging phase for a brand.”

Accordingly, Noone of Noontime Labels advises wineries to take some time to think about what their needs are they can choose the appropriate printer.  “If you’ve been making wine for decades and have specific issues you’re trying to resolve or marketing goals to achieve, then finding the printer who can accomplish what you need at the price you want should be fairly straight forward,” Noone said. “However, if you’re fairly new to the business, you might not even know what you don’t know. If you think you might need a little ‘hand-holding’ and special attention, you need to make sure the printer you choose is willing to provide that.

“Many companies are very willing to educate their customers and actively find solutions for their needs, while some just expect the customer to give them what they need to provide the label that they want,” said Noone. “So, you should make sure your needs match the level of customer service that the printer is willing to provide. Establishing a long-term relationship is optimal, so you won’t have to worry as much if emergencies and problems arise.”