Your next customer will see your winery before they ever taste your wine. They'll see it on Instagram while planning a weekend trip. They'll see it on your website while deciding whether to book a reservation. They'll see it in an email while considering whether your wine club is worth joining. And in every one of those moments, they're making a decision based on what your visuals tell them about who you are. This isn't a trend. It's how people buy now. According to a 2023 study by Cloudinary and Harris Poll, 75% of online shoppers say product photos are the most influential factor in their purchase decisions. That number holds across categories, and it holds in wine. The difference is that wineries aren't just selling a product. They're selling an experience, a place, a feeling. Which means your visual content has to do more work than a product shot on a white background. It has to make someone want to be there. Most wineries know this on some level. Fe

Facebook/Meta: Turning Fans into Wine Club Members Expanding on insights from our Wine Club Scorecard, this post explores one of the most underused yet powerful tools for wine club growth: Facebook. While platforms like TikTok and Instagram often grab attention, Facebook remains one of the most effective drivers of wine club engagement and conversion when paired with Meta’s advanced targeting and advertising tools. With 72% of wine consumers aged 35–65 actively using Facebook, this is not just a social network—it’s an opportunity to build real relationships, deepen loyalty, and guide new members into your wine club. Yet most wineries still treat Facebook as a newsfeed instead of a growth engine. Sporadic posts, static bottle shots, and low engagement can’t compete with a thoughtful strategy that uses Facebook the way it was meant to be used: to connect, converse, and convert. Let’s explore how to turn Facebook into a true wine club acquisition chann

FIVE SURPRISING MARKETING STRATEGIES TO INCREASE SALES BY DAN PENDERGAST It is a natural reaction – when you need cash, the gut reaction is to turn to marketing and demand more. More emails, more social media posts, more ads, and more offers. But the volume of marketing does not have an equal or parallel relationship to results. If you send twice as many emails, you may get less than twice as many sales, and a 20% discount will likely deliver less than double the sales of a 10% discount. Furthermore, marketing isn’t turnkey and often takes months (or years) of consistency to witness results. So why execute marketing if you can’t count on it to provide sales? Marketing provides your product (wine) with a brand. A brand is a reason to buy your wine and charge a specific price for your wine above other wines. Without marketing, there’d be no brands; without brands, all wines are the same. Marketing can even create value beyond the product. Take Barefoot, for examp

Free membership site to foster community and nurture industry collaboration Winemakers and wine industry professionals can now save time, money and eliminate frustrations with the launch of The Punchdown, an online community designed to foster collaboration and professional growth within the wine industry. The free community website and mobile app have been customized by leading wine technology software developers to make life easier and work more productive, by empowering wine teams and other industry professionals to: Convene Socialize Network Share resources, and Collaborate “Like many, I was first drawn to the wine industry by how passionate, helpful, and supportive everyone is. Winemakers are always encouraging and helping each other. But during the pandemic and fires we realized how isolated we are. There was no great place online where the community could gather. The idea that ultimately led to The Punchdown is that we wanted to create an online community that would natura

Producers of many consumer products are comfortable selling online. Why not wine? Troly CEO Sebastien Tremblay shares perspective. The global wine market is now facing the nightmare scenario many commentators have been warning about for well over a decade. Smaller producers must stop relying on tasting room visitors to find and convert customers. This treat became existential for a significant number of wineries with COVID forcing an abrupt end to the ongoing reliance on restaurant sales. Low production volume prevents distribution First, it’s important to understand that economies of scale are outstandingly difficult to achieve in the world of wine. Neither land nor capital are easily available to producers ― most of them around the world are small businesses. As a result, low volumes produced mean higher production costs per bottle, which in turn means broad retail distribution is economically out of reach. This leaves the most obvious approach on the table: direct sa