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The Wine Club Retention Crisis
Why Wine Clubs Aren’t Working, And What’s Replacing Them For many wineries, the biggest challenge today isn’t attracting new customers; it’s keeping the ones they already have. Wine clubs once represented the most stable revenue engine for wineries. Members signed up, shipments went out quarterly, and predictable revenue flowed in. It was the foundation of direct-to-consumer success. But that foundation is cracking. Recent industry data reveals a troubling trend: nearly 40% of wine club members cancel within the first year. In a market where customer acquisition costs are climbing, and competition for attention has never been fiercer, losing members at this rate isn’t just a retention problem; it’s a profitability crisis. The math is unforgiving. If acquiring a new club member costs hundreds of dollars in marketing, tasting room labor, and incentives, losing them before they’ve generated meaningful lifetime value means wineries are bleeding money with every signup. And yet, some winer
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Wine Club Scorecard

For Winery Owners, GMs & Wine Club Managers


Your Wine Club Deserves Better Than a Best Guess


Talk to enough wine club managers and a pattern starts to emerge. The club is running. Shipments are going out. Members are renewing, mostly. And yet there is this persistent, low-grade frustration that things could be doing so much more, and nobody can quite agree on what better actually looks like or where to start.


That is not a people problem. It is not even really a strategy problem. It is what happens when you are managing something genuinely complex without a clear baseline to work from.


Wine clubs are one of the most valuable revenue channels a winery can have. Done well, they create reliable recurring income, deepen customer loyalty, and turn occasional buyers into genuine advocates. But they are also difficult to manage well. You are balancing member experience, logistics, pricing, retention, acquisition, and brand storytelling all at once. And most teams are doing it without any real benchmark for how they are performing relative to what is possible.


You fix what is loudest, not necessarily what matters most.

So decisions get made on feel. Churn ticks up and the instinct is to throw a discount at it. Acquisition slows and suddenly everyone is debating whether to restructure the club tiers. Revenue per shipment plateaus and nobody is quite sure if that is a pricing issue, a product issue, or just the market.


What the best clubs do differently

The wineries that run their clubs well tend to have one thing in common: they have taken the time to actually understand where they stand. Not in a vague, gut-check kind of way, but specifically. They know their retention rate and what is driving it. They know which member segments are most valuable and why. They know where their acquisition funnel leaks and what a realistic cost per new member should look like. That clarity changes how they make decisions.

Most clubs do not have that clarity. Not because the people running them are not capable, but because nobody ever gave them a framework to build it from. That is the gap the Wine Club Scorecard was designed to fill.


What you actually get

The Wine Club Scorecard is a free assessment built specifically for winery owners, GMs, and wine club managers who want an honest read on how their club is performing. It covers the areas that actually drive club health: member retention, acquisition strategy, engagement, revenue per shipment, and overall club structure.


You answer a series of questions about how your club operates today, and what comes back is a genuine report with benchmarks, clear data on where you stand, and specific steps you can take to improve. Whether your club has 200 members or 2,000, the output is the same: real information you can act on.


The whole thing takes about five minutes. And the conversations it tends to start, with your team, with ownership, with whoever makes decisions about where to invest, are usually long overdue.


If you have had that nagging sense that your club is running but not quite performing, this is a good place to start. Not because it will hand you a magic fix, but because you cannot fix what you have not clearly identified. A lot of wine clubs are leaving real money and real member relationships on the table, not out of negligence, but simply because no one has stepped back to look at the full picture.


Now is a good time to look.

Free report. Benchmarked data. Clear next steps. Takes five minutes.

Take the Free Scorecard wineclubscorecard.com



© 2026 WineClubScorecard.com  ·  Built for the wine industry.

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Why Influencers Are Suddenly Working for Wine (And What Most Wineries Miss)
Wine Ignored Influencers. Now It Needs Them. The wine industry once mocked influencers. Now, even Forbes is saying we may need them. As wine faces declining consumption and changing buyer behavior, the voices once dismissed as “unserious” are starting to look a lot more powerful. Read the Forbes article → What’s interesting is, we’ve been talking about this shift for a while. Last year, we hosted a webinar with MiniSocial on how wineries can use micro-influencers and user-generated content (UGC) to drive engagement and sales. Here’s what still holds true: UGC outperforms brand content—everywhere Content created by real customers feels more natural—and consistently drives higher engagement across social, ads, and email. Micro-influencers build trust faster Smaller audiences, but far more engaged—and far more believable than traditional ads. Your customers are your best marketers UGC shows how people actually experience your wine&md
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Facebook/Meta: Turning Fans into Wine Club Members
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
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From Club to Click: Rethinking Wine Memberships
Wine clubs have long been the backbone of direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales. But with shifting consumer expectations and the rise of subscription culture, from streaming services to meal kits, wineries are rethinking the traditional club. Subscription models promise flexibility for customers, stability for wineries, and in many cases, less operational strain. We asked four leading technology providers (Awtomic, Commerce7, OrderPort, and VinSuite) to share their insights on how wineries can successfully add or adapt subscriptions. We also gathered a few winery examples to show how creative models are being used today. This list is in no way exhaustive, there are many winery DTC software/SaaS providers with options, and the landscape is continuously evolving. For a deeper dive, check out this article by WineBusiness Monthly with all the providers, trends, and a very helpful comparison chart. What Are Wine Subscriptions? At their core, wine subscriptions are a modern twist on the tradi
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Club Members Not Seeing Your Emails? Try this app instead...
myWineClubApp™ Delivers Club Notifications Instantly Custom Wine Club Apps starting @ $69/mo Pricing starts at $69/mo 🔥🔥🔥 If your wine club members complain they don't receive your emails, this message is for you. 🤗 You are not alone... Roughly 50% of your emails are devoured by spam filters. Too many critical wine club messages aren't reaching your best customers...disappointing them and you. What's a wine merchant supposed to do? Here's a solution: myWineClubApp™ -- the world's first wine club web app delivering 100% filter-free messages directly to your best customers' phones. No email spam filters. No SMS compliance hassles. Just relevant club news delivered directly to your customers' home screens using an affordable mobile web app customized for your brand. Trusted by leading brands from Starbucks to Nike, mobile apps provide a direct communication channel to your best customers.  And now, even the smallest wine brands can offer
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vinSUITE’s State of the Industry: 3 Moves Growing Wine Clubs in 2025
Wine Club Symposium — Session 1 State of the Industry: Why Wine Clubs?  Watch the full recording of vinSUITE’s opening keynote to see how leading wineries are growing clubs in a softer market—by reducing sign-up friction, making commitment flexible, and keeping members engaged between shipments. The panel shares field examples from tasting rooms and clubs, then maps them to simple operational changes you can test this quarter. You’ll leave with practical ways to shorten the join flow, add flexible commitment (pause/skip/swap or prepaid), and build habit-keeping touches between shipments—plus the metrics that show it’s working. What you’ll learn Reduce tasting-room friction: capture contact earlier and streamline the join flow. Flexible commitment: pause/skip/swap and prepaid balances convert “almost” members and save cancels—without discounting. Between-shipment engagement: one planned touch + a simple cancel-save step k
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Wine Club Communication Breakthrough - myWineClubAppâ„¢ from VinterActive
Wine Club Communication Breakthrough! Revolutionary Wine Club Messaging App Pricing starts at $69/mo 🔥🔥🔥If your wine club members complain they don't receive your emails, this message is for you. 🤗 You are not alone... Roughly 50% of your emails are devoured by spam filters. Too many critical wine club messages aren't reaching your best customers...disappointing them and you. What's a wine merchant supposed to do? Here's a solution: myWineClubApp™ -- the world's first wine club web app delivering 100% filter-free messages directly to your best customers' phones. No email spam filters. No SMS compliance hassles. Just relevant club news delivered directly to your customers' home screens using an affordable mobile web app customized for your brand. Trusted by leading brands from Starbucks to Nike, mobile apps deliver a direct communication channel to your best customers.  And now, even the smallest wine brands can offer their customers the convenie
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Unlock Wine Club Growth: 2025 Symposium Agenda Reveals Retention & AI Strategies
vinSUITE has announced the full agenda and speaker lineup for the 3rd Annual Wine Club Symposium, the leading virtual event for winery professionals focused on driving wine club growth, boosting member retention, and leveraging AI in direct-to-consumer (DTC) operations.  Taking place online on Tuesday, July 15, and Wednesday, July 16, 2025, the Symposium features six sessions, more than a dozen speakers, and data-backed content designed to give attendees clear, tactical steps for immediate application. The event is free to attend and begins each day at 9:00 AM PDT. Register at wineclubsymposium.com or directly via GoToWebinar. With wine clubs generating as much as 60% of DTC revenue for top-performing wineries, this year’s agenda focuses on increasing profitability through strategic customer targeting, member experience innovation, and operational efficiency. 2025 Wine Club Symposium Agenda Day 1 – Tuesday, July 15 9:00–9:50 AM PDT— State of the
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What We're Learning from the Wine Club Scorecard
    In our analysis of Wine Club Scorecard responses, some surprising trends have emerged. Many wineries are missing crucial strategies that could dramatically boost growth and member engagement. Here are some of the biggest opportunities revealed so far:   1. Tracking Member Churn: A Critical Oversight for Retention Surprisingly, 40% of wineries don’t track their membership churn—the rate at which members leave the club. Without churn data, understanding why members are leaving becomes difficult, making it challenging to take proactive steps to keep members engaged. Tracking churn allows wineries to spot trends, like when members are most likely to leave or what offerings might need improvement. For wineries new to tracking churn, the Wine Club Scorecard offers straightforward steps and retention strategies to reduce attrition and maintain a thriving membership.   2. Offering Flexible Membership Options: Personalization Matters While traditional wine
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