Final SVB Annual Survey Participation Update

 

Survey Results as of 10/17 at noon

The SVB Annual State of the Wine Industry Survey closes this coming Sunday evening, October 17th. 

The great news is there has been a strong response rate this year, and we will close with a statistically significant response size above 500 total responses. The AVAs in seven regions will receive their own comps to compare performance against the other regions. 

A special thanks to Paso Robles for their record participation this year. Napa will again cross the 100-participant mark, so once again, thank you, Napa!  

I'd still love additional responses from wineries in Oregon, Washington, Lodi/Clarksburg, New York, Santa Cruz/Monterey, and Texas. With another seven to ten responses, each of the last four named regions will have sufficient responses to have their own regional comps too.

Please promote this post on your favorite social media to get the word out for the last push!

Adding your data to this annual industry event will only take about 20 minutes. 

Here are the survey questions that you can use to prepare: Link. 

Here is the survey itself: Link.

Some early results from the SVB DTC survey

 

Today, we are about 50 responses short of what we need to produce the Annual Direct to Consumer Report, so please participate. To help us reach the finish line, we are leaving the survey open over the weekend and closing it on 3/24.

Here are the questions if you want to prepare [link], as well as the [link] to the survey.

Let me give you some examples of important and interesting information from the survey so far.

Several sources have reported that tasting room visitation was down last year. Some have speculated that it's due to high tasting room fees. The headline slide is a chart from the interim survey data that puts a different spin on that conclusion. 

Breaking the top chart into quartiles, the upper quartile seems expensive, especially considering people seldom taste alone. Life and wine tasting are a team sport—maybe someone can use that in a marketing pitch. Anyway, the lower two quartiles, representing half of the winery respondents so far, are about $23 or less.

Another fact you can pull from that same information set is the practice of using standard and reserve tasting fees. Surprisingly, 26.2% of responses thus far only use standard tasting fees. For those wineries that have both reserve and standard fees, the average reserve fee is 1.9 times larger than the reserve fee, with a maximum of 5 times the standard fee, down to 1.2 times the standard tasting fee.

Here is some more interesting information on tasting room reimbursement policies. From this chart below, you can see how you compare to other wineries on tasting fee reimbursement policies. If you participate in the survey and get the full anonymous data set, you can also sort this information out by region.

There is one other thing that might be of interest. Seven percent of the wineries do something besides the other choices offered. Aren't you curious about their policies? Only participants who complete the survey get this added data that you might use to generate ideas. 

Without giving away all of the "other" responses, here are some:

•    We comp tastings if you join the club or purchase 3 bottles.

•    We do flights, not tastings. No reimbursement.

•    Free tastings for people who rent venue (we do weddings)

•    10% off 12 bottles.

•    We will waive two tasting fees for a minimum $1,000 purchase.

•    Club Members get a limited number of free tastings; otherwise, we do not reimburse them.

•    Tasting fees waived for wine industry partners only

•    Club members only 4x per year

•    We don't charge our top buyers for their tasting fees

•    We only waive fees for people who have McMillan for a last name.

•    we don't offer tastings. We offer 5 oz glass for $3.75

•    Our state law doesn't allow "free" tastings, so we charge $1 per taste

•    We allow wine club members and up to three of their guests to taste for free. We do not reimburse tasting fees otherwise.

•    We waive tasting fees if the customer pays with cash.

Some of those ideas are certainly worth considering. Here are the questions if you want to prepare [link]

What are you doing to improve club signups away from the tasting room?

The Target is Moving Again

Some of the questions we've answered over the years through the SVB annual direct-to-consumer survey have been critical to the industry's success, such as whether standing or seated tastings are more effective, or going back over a decade ago, what the lifetime value of a direct-to-consumer customer is. 

The latter question was asked at a time when we were moving from an over-dependence on three-tier sales and evolving with the freedoms extended with the Granholm decision. Today, we find ourselves at a new point of evolution, so answers are critical to success.

With two consecutive years of lower tasting room visitation impacting club memberships, wouldn't you be interested in knowing what your neighbors are doing to improve club signups that don't come through the tasting room? That's one of the questions we are posing this year.

Please do your part and contribute to this annual industry partnership with me. Without your participation, I can't produce the information that can help the industry. 

The 2024 DtC survey is now open and will close on March 22nd.

In May, all respondents who complete the survey will receive high-level analysis, benchmarks, and the complete sanitized respondent data, anonymized of all personal and business identifying information. Nobody else gets this data, and it can't be purchased. At the end of May, we will release a videocast to the industry and, along with other industry experts, discuss the findings. 

This year, the survey should take you fifteen to twenty minutes to complete and even less if you are a little prepared. If you would like to see the questions in advance, you can download and print them here.

Are you ready to participate in the survey this year?

2023 SVB DTC Video Replay, and DTC Report

The 2023 Videocast is in the books, and what a performance from some of the smartest people in the business who do DTC all day, everyday. Thank you! 

• Susan DeMatei, President of Wine Glass Marketing, 
• Andrew Walleck, COO of Wine Access, 
• Jessica Kogan, Partner of Connect the Dots Collective.

What a remarkable collection of talent. 

Each panelist shared openly about their views, offering incredible insights and ideas to help the industry and your winery move into the next decade of the business. Some of the highlights:

Will there be a Silicon Valley Bank DTC Report this year? It's looking doubtful.

Without greater participation this last week, there will be no SVB Direct to Consumer Report produced this year.

It's always difficult to get survey participants. This year the effort had a higher degree of difficulty because the bank failed. I'm sure you heard that news. 

Three weeks later though, we were purchased by First Citizens Bank, and we are today operating as Silicon Valley Bank, a division of First Citizens Bank. 

During that dark period when we were being run by the FDIC, we literally had hundreds of people encouraging us to find a way to continue producing the gratis information we've done for more than 20 years. Because of that encouragement, with the ownership question behind, we decided to produce the Direct to Consumer survey and report, a month later than usual. It was the industry encouragement that was the deciding factor. 

Internet Sales are dramatically higher, but how do we know?

 

Selling Wine in a Pandemic

What an insane past few years! But doesn't it feel wonderful to be moving into spring and at the same time into the endemic phase of this crisis? With fewer mask mandates now, maybe we'll be able to smell the spring flowers! But before we linger too long on the warmer days ahead, we still have some work to do. So let me take you back to the start of this crisis in 2020 when the COVID case numbers began picking up. 

At that point in time, I wrote a piece called Selling Wine in a Pandemic which is one the most-read pieces I've posted. I wrote it on March 15th, 2020 - a date that is etched in my mind and probably yours if you live in California. 

If you don't recall, that was the date Governor Newsom first issued the shelter-in-place orders and closed tasting rooms, restaurants and bars. I finished writing that blog on March 15th in the morning, but by late afternoon, I had to go back and update it when news of the lock-downs came out.