The VineSpring team has spent the last couple of weeks joining some key industry events—the DTC Symposium in Concord and the Unified Wine and Grape Symposium in Sacramento. Aku Desai, VineSpring’s Director of Sales, shares his experience and the trends he observed after attending this year’s events.

VineSpring Director of Sales, Aku Desai, and General Manager, Kent Nowlin, arrive in Sacramento for the Unified Wine and Grape Symposium.

It’s always great to be able to get out and meet face-to-face with customers and our friends in the industry. VineSpring’s overarching goal is to make our customers’ lives better by continually innovating and making our products better to address the changing needs of wineries and their customers.

What’s unique about the wine industry is that it’s still catching up to technologies that most of us take for granted. Our needs are simple and driven by a few key principles—connecting with our customers, making their lives better, and building loyalty through our positive interactions with them.

The symposium discussions really highlighted the importance of the customer journey and experience; customers remember their personal interactions with tasting and winery staff often more than the wine itself. Just as importantly, an impersonal or even “meh” experience can negatively influence their perception of the winery, even if the wine was great and the winery was beautiful.

Wineries focused on making great wines and creating a delightful customer experience to match, need technology to support their efforts and mission.

With these thoughts in mind, it is critical that CRM/eCommerce systems help wineries create an exceptional experience by being:

Aku and Pax the dog from Pax tasting room.

Simple: Easy to use for your customers and for the folks the tasting rooms
Connected: Integrating best of breed systems to connect and engage with customers
Automated: Facilitate an awesome customer journey through regular customer contact

VineSpring satellite headquarters during DTC Symposium and Unified.

We’ve created a YouTube channel where we regularly post feature overviews called “3-Minute Challenges.” For example, we share how to quickly set up automated abandoned cart emails to drive online sales by reaching out to the right customers at the right time. This automation allows wineries to focus on the in-person customer journey that we know is so critical to retaining customer loyalty and building lifetime value.

You can find it all here: VineSpring on YouTube and subscribe to our channel for continuing education and resources.

Just like we get a kick out of directly connecting with customers and industry members at events, customers want to feel a personal connection with your winery. To keep evolving with customers, use tools that elevate the experience without overloading your team.

Feel free to reach out to me personally at aku (at) vinespring.com.

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