If your winery’s December felt like a sugar high followed by a January hangover, congratulations—you’re in the club. The holiday season brings out the best and worst of wine marketing. We see a flurry of emails, social posts, pop-up bundles, and panicked “last chance for shipping!” reminders that make even Santa unsubscribe. But behind all that glitter and noise sits something actually useful: data. And data, unlike mistletoe or tinsel, ages beautifully—if you know how to use it. Day 1: The Ghost of Open Rates Past Let’s start with the easy one. You sent fifteen emails between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, and shocker—open rates dropped after the first week. This isn’t your subscribers turning into Grinches; it’s list fatigue. Consumers are bombarded with messages from every brand they’ve ever accidentally clicked “subscribe” on. The fix: cut your frequency, not your revenue. Segment your list by engage

Meta Ads, Miracle Results If your holiday Meta ads felt like lighting money on fire in a festive candle, that’s not because social is dead. It’s because your targeting and flighting were built for wishful thinking, not gifting intent. The fix isn’t magic. It’s method. You can absolutely turn Meta into a gift-selling machine between Thanksgiving and New Year—if you understand what actually drives intent and how to spend wisely when every other brand on earth is screaming for attention. What follows is a ruthless, winery-specific playbook for the six-week window between Thanksgiving and New Year that prioritizes intent, protects margin, and leans on real benchmarks instead of folklore. First, reality: volume is there, but it clusters Holiday ecommerce keeps breaking records, with online spend hitting roughly $241.4B from Nov 1 to Dec 31 and mobile responsible for the majority of transactions. (Adobe Newsroom) Translation: your customers are buying on their

AI Wine Marketing Agents Help Small Brands Innovate The AI revolution has finally come for DTC wine marketers! We’re not talking about creepy 6-fingered hands or generic copy generated at the speed of AI. Today’s AI wine marketing agents combine speed and fluency with expert training to help small teams outperform with better ideas and faster implementation, thanks to the assistance of AI. WHY WORK WITH AN AI MARKETING AGENT? It’s no secret that the majority of direct-to-consumer (DTC) wineries are small brands, lucky to have even a part-time marketing team. Despite working miracles on non-existent budgets, the most challenging part of being a solo DTC wine marketer is often working alone without the benefit of professional colleagues you can brainstorm with. That’s why we built Miri: DTC Wine Marketing Advisor HOW CAN MIRI HELP? Miri’s extensive training includes 20 years of proprietary DTC wine marketing data, focusing on best practices in tast

It’s hard, in any business, to choose strategies that promote long term growth and longevity while struggling to keep the lights on and make payroll every month. Under thinly veiled panic, we have a tendency to push our sales teams to treat our buyers as means to an end when cash is tight. Overvaluing vanity metrics like off-premise accounts sold, we scrounge for quick, small wins and placements that result in high churn and ultimately lead us right back to square one.    While we may accept – somewhere in the distant, tightly compartmentalized, “rational part” of our brain – that not all accounts are equal and that the vast majority of volume is driven by the top ten or twenty percent of our customers, we go on behaving this way nonetheless, because action feels better than a sales cycle rivaling the Great Wall of China lengthwise.   The good news for wineries & distilleries willing to be more strategic with their sales resources is

Afternoon Brief, April 30th

Was California’s Wine Revolution Just a Mirage?: A growing chorus of talented winemakers say that the economics of making wine in the state have turned the promise of the “New California” into a cautionary tale...

223: New Decision Support System for Irrigation Efficiency If irrigation efficiency is a goal of yours, a new predictive model may make scheduling easier in the future. José Manuel Mirás Avalos, Tenured Scientist at Misión Biológica de Galicia in the Spanish Nation Research Council (CSIC) (MBG-CSIC) in Santiago de Compostela (Spain) is working on a Decision Support System (DSS) prototype for irrigation and fertilization of winegrapes. This computer model accounts for multiple variables including weather, soil moisture, evapotranspiration, soil type, plant spacing, bud break, variety, and wine quality goals to help farmers make more informed irrigation decisions throughout the growing season. LISTEN IN Resources:         191: CropManage: Improving the Precision of Water and Fertilizer Inputs 195: Hydrological Mapping: A Vital Component of Effective Water Conservation Plans 213: High Resolution Data from Space Helps Farmers Plan for Clima

Afternoon Brief, April 5th

New Information Pipped to Emerge in Château Miraval Case: An ongoing legal case between former spouses Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie concerning the Château Miraval estate could take a very different turn if a new request from Jolie is approved...

Afternoon Brief, December 15th

WSTA Debunks Pesticide Report: Recent results from a UK government testing programme have suggested a dramatic increase in the proportion of wine that contains multiple pesticide residues – up from 14% in 2016 to 50% in 2022...