Wine.com Plans Big October E-mailing
Wine.com, recently energized by a new owner and $9 million in funding, hopes to boost sales by 60% to $16 million this year.
One critical factor in that push is a segmentation tool that allows the wine marketer to better target its e-mail. The firm will send up to 1 million personalized e-mails next month, based on variables like purchasing history, amount spent and wine choices.
But that is only one change being planned by Wine.com, which was acquired last fall by eVineyard Inc.
“We are redefining the company,” said John Hingley, hired in May as chief operations officer.
The new segmentation system was put to work earlier this year to sell more to the 100,000 active customers on the database, and to reactivate some of the 400,000-plus inactives and newsletter sign-ups, Hingley said. The file is made up of the customer lists from WineShopper.com and Virtual Vineyards, both of which were acquired by Wine.com prior to its purchase by eVineyard.
Variables in the file include purchasing history, price, region, seasonality, user-supplied interest information, wine choices and clickstream data.
The first e-mail test went out in June to roughly 100,000 people, 75% of whom received the control piece. The offer was customized for those who liked red wine or white wine. Then three wines were offered based on each recipient’s “sweet spot,” or the wines and prices they preferred.
The improved segmentation led to a 12% sales boost — $7,000 in revenue per 1,000 e-mails. In another test in July, the firm offered two wines from the “sweet spot,” including one that cost 10% to 20% more than the customer’s average purchase price. Another mailing offered varietals, or a wine made from one variety of grape.
“Our hope was that people with the right recommendation would try a wine a little bit outside of their price range,” Hingley said.
In October the rollout begins in earnest, and the firm will rent prospect lists to reach the company’s core target, females age 25 to 39 who live in metropolitan areas.
Also under way is an upgrade to the Wine.com online store, which offers more than 5,000 wines and hundreds of other products, as well as membership in five wine clubs. The site relaunched this month with a focus on what Hingley said is “one of Wine.com’s biggest opportunities,” gift givers, who generate close to half of all orders. More real estate — including improved product selections, gift packaging, an area describing shipping fees and an occasion and party planning section — will be oriented toward gift giving.
“We plan to leverage the holidays,” he said.
By month’s end, a special section aimed at corporate gift giving will debut. A variety of offers will be available to that market, including an 800 number for advice from a wine specialist. While corporate gift givers currently make up only a small percentage of the customer base, that may change with an e-mail, direct mail and outbound telemarketing prospecting push this fall.
While the Web site’s URL — just by virtue of its name — delivers more than 50% of the site’s traffic, Wine.com wants to rank higher on major search engines, where potential users type in keywords such as ‘wine’ and ‘gifts’ to research sites. A new search engine optimization program, begun with Google, accounted for better than 10% of all site visits in June (the most recent figures available), a five-fold increase over previous months, Hingley said.
San Francisco-based Wine.com, which was formally launched in May 2001 by eVineyard, ships wine products to buyers in some 27 states and Japan, and sells gifts and accessories in 23 more.
In addition to Hingley, the management team, brought on since March, includes chief executive Peter Ekman, vice president of merchandising Daniel LeFrancois and vice president of finance Russell Gale.
