Join the C7 team and Digital Marketing Strategist Sue Wollan Fan on April 17 at 10am PT/1pm ET for a behind-the-scenes look at how Coursey Graves Estate Winery sharpened its digital marketing strategy and used Commerce7 tools to drive more visits, increase club signups, and grow overall revenue. Register Now

Advantages of early AI search visibility for wineries and how-to system for achieving results. AI is quickly becoming the first place consumers turn when deciding what wine to buy, which winery to visit, and what experiences are worth their time. For wineries, this shift represents more than a new marketing channel. It is a fundamental change in how discovery, consideration, and purchase decisions are made. The key insight: AI search visibility compounds over time. Wineries that invest early in being visible, understandable, and trusted within AI-driven search environments gain a measurable advantage that grows. Each mention, citation, and recommendation strengthens future visibility, creating a flywheel effect that late adopters will struggle to match. This is not about quick wins or isolated tactics. It is about building a durable presence across the digital ecosystem that AI systems rely on to generate answers. As these systems learn from consistent signals, brands that show up earl

Why Wineries Need Influencer Marketing Now Here's a number that should reshape how you think about marketing: 69% of consumers trust influencer recommendations more than information coming directly from a brand That's not a slight edge. That's a fundamental shift in how people decide what to buy. For wineries, this matters more than it does for most industries. Wine is a considered purchase wrapped in uncertainty. Your potential customer is standing in a tasting room or scrolling through an online store, wondering: Will I like this? Is it worth the price? Am I making the right choice? Influencer content answers those questions in ways traditional marketing cannot. When a trusted voice says "I tried this Pinot and it's incredible with grilled salmon," that carries weight. It's a peer recommendation disguised as content. Instagram and TikTok now drive wine discovery among younger audiences, and 87% of Gen Z consumers say they're willing to buy products

A few years ago at the DTC Wine Symposium, a panelist joked about the modern winery website formula: the guy, the dog, the truck, and the vineyard. Beautiful backdrop, strong lifestyle photography, a thoughtful founder story. Polished, absolutely. Strategically distinct, rarely. The critique wasn’t about branding. It was about structure. Most winery websites aren’t broken, but they aren’t built as decision environments either. Calls to action are unclear, revenue pathways are buried, shipping surprises appear late, and wine club often lives in isolation instead of throughout the buying journey. After auditing winery sites across regions and production sizes, the pattern is consistent: performance is constrained by friction, not effort. Most wineries don’t have a traffic problem. They have a conversion architecture problem. Before increasing ad spend or launching another promotion, run a winery website audit — on your phone. Start at the homepage and move t

In this free, one-hour webinar, you’ll hear from industry experts and top-performing peers who are using data to grow their outbound sales. We will share growth tools for building high-performing, hyper-segmented lists without spending hours creating segments or exporting and importing spreadsheets. You’ll learn to use predictive analytics tools to anticipate when customers are likely to purchase again, and send them relevant offers they are interested in. And we will share key integrations that both speed the outreach process and drive greater campaign ROI. You do not need to be an Enolytics client to sign up for this webinar, and any DTC winery leader or operator can benefit from the tools and tactics presented. If you’re ready to sell more wine through your outbound sales channel, sign up below. We can’t wait to see you there. Thursday, March 19, 11:00am - 12:00pm (PDT) RSVP  

We call it a Tasting Room, when it’s really a Sales Room. Why is that? After the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, wineries re-opened in an environment where the government was highly suspicious of any and all alcohol sales. On-premise consumption was restricted and considered the purview of saloons, which were vilified during the years of Prohibition. So, to comply with laws and distinguish themselves as places of refined moderation, wineries leaned into “tasting,” not drinking. The Tasting Room became the winery’s sales room. Over the decades, tasting rooms have become places of hospitality, education, and increasingly, dinner (or lunch). Along the way, the primary role of the tasting room—to form a connection with the consumer for the purpose of selling wine—got lost. Now, I recognize that I’m being hyperbolic here. In the contracting market we’re living in, too many wineries are focusing only on the hospitality aspect. They need to lean

As wineries across the country face softening tasting room conversion rates and increasing pressure on direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales, a new episode of Expert Talks: Wine Industry Insights highlights practical strategies from one of the industry’s leading DTC educators. InnoVint recently sat down with Liz Mercer, Partner and Winery Coach at WISE Academy, to examine what the top 10% of tasting rooms are doing differently to consistently convert guests into wine club members and drive higher-margin sales. Drawing on more than 25 years of wine industry experience, Mercer outlines the operational disciplines, team training strategies, and guest experience enhancements that set apart high-performing tasting rooms from the rest. Rather than relying on aggressive sales tactics, the discussion focuses on intentional hospitality, empowered front-of-house (FOH) teams, and structured yet authentic club conversations. The episode offers actionable guidance for wineries looking to: Grow their

Most wineries don’t have a promotion volume problem. They have a promotion design problem. When you look closely at wineries delivering strong margins alongside steady consumer sales growth, patterns start to appear. Not because those promotions are trendy or copied from competitors, but because they are intentionally designed to drive revenue while protecting long-term customer behavior and brand value. Modern promotion strategy is not about running more campaigns. It is about structuring incentives that influence how, when, and why customers buy. Across the strongest performing wineries, promotions are increasingly treated as part of the revenue model rather than just part of the marketing calendar. They shape demand, influence order composition, and support long-term customer value. Why Promotion Strategy Is Really Revenue Strategy Promotions are no longer just marketing tactics. They are one of the most controllable levers inside a winery’s DTC P&L. For most wineri

Coffee with Rob: Macro Trends & How  Top-Performing Wineries Are Responding This session is all about stepping back and looking at the bigger picture. Rob will dig into the macro trends impacting the wine industry, drawing from the 2026 SVB State of the U.S. Wine Industry Report along with additional slides from his presentation deck that help put the data into context. Rather than focusing on day-to-day tactics, the conversation will center on what’s happening at a market level and what the data shows about how top-performing wineries are navigating today’s environment. We’ll start with Rob’s take on the data, followed by a moderated Q&A with questions submitted in advance by the eCELLAR community. DATE: Tuesday, February 24th, 2026 , 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM WHO: Rob McMillan, EVP & Principal Brand Strategist, Wine Silicon Valley Bank, a Division of First Citizens Bank LOCATION: Virtual Event RSVP ABOUT THE SPEAKER Rob McMillan, EVP & Pr

The 2026 State of the U.S. Wine Industry Report, published by Silicon Valley Bank and authored by Rob McMillan, provides a comprehensive, data-driven assessment of current conditions in the U.S. wine market. Built on more than 25 years of industry research, the report combines results from SVB’s annual winery survey, its Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) survey, demographic and cohort consumption modeling, and a wide range of third-party wholesale, retail, and population datasets. The conclusion is clear: while the industry continues to face structural headwinds, wineries are not experiencing these conditions equally. A widening performance gap has emerged between those adapting to changing demand and those struggling to do so. 2025 Performance: A Difficult Year for Many By nearly every measure, 2025 was a challenging year for the U.S. wine industry. Roughly half of the surveyed wineries rated the year negatively, citing slowing demand, rising costs, margin pressure, and inventory ch