How suppliers, distributors, and retailers can be successful in selling wine online. Selling wine by ecommerce is overtaking traditional retail sales. Retailers, vintners and vineyards alike can’t afford to miss out on market share. As it becomes increasingly popular to shop for wine, beers and alcohol online, all three tiers of our industry must take advantage of new digital marketing opportunities.
While many suppliers, wholesalers, and retailers view ecommerce as a “fourth tier” of the existing framework, we believe ecommerce should be integrated into the existing system to optimise the effectiveness of each of the three tiers. Consequently, we must empower vintners and vineyards alike to utilise the ecommerce space as an extension of our current reach.
How Suppliers Can Level Up Your Wine and Spirits Ecommerce Strategy
When initiating conversations with various suppliers about their digital strategies, we encourage them to start by articulating their online goals and priorities. Often a great place to begin is by ensuring their brands have good online representation and updated digital assets, in addition to learning about the B2B and B2C digital promotional opportunities now available for reaching both wholesale and consumer buyers.
Suppliers should leverage the local expertise of their distribution partners through market-specific e-activation. One effective way to do this is through digital activations with high-volume and influential accounts. Like traditional merchandising efforts, local market relationships are a critical element of online foundations and eventual success. When working with top retailers, suppliers can request they feature the brands they represent in an email blast, banner advertisement, or perhaps even by hosting a virtual tasting.
“One Prosecco rosé brand we represent grew their business 26 per cent over a four-week pilot period through a mix of banner ads and local market activation.”
We’ve seen how effective these merchandising activations can be: One Prosecco rosé brand we chatted to grew their business 26 % over a four-week pilot period through a mix of banner ads and local market activation.
Another avenue of success can come from supplier activation with B2C retail ecommerce providers. Though each company specialises in a unique aspect of direct ecommerce, these types of providers can typically break down the barriers small retailers often face when trying to achieve digital equity and high-quality representation without the time or cost investment a custom solution would require. With the flip of a switch, web development groups (B2C focus) can unlock market-specific digital activations across thousands of retailers.
Suppliers have also seen positive results with activations through third-party aggregated marketplaces which are overwhelmingly popular with consumers and have extensive reach. When conducting promotions through a consumer-facing marketplace, such as banners, targeted emails, or category takeovers, we recommend that our suppliers consider the potential impact on the account fulfilling the order. It is also important that the distance between the retailer and the ultimate consumer does not increase to the point of store anonymity.
Consumers value their relationships with their local retailers and as the path to purchase is consolidated, the opportunities for communication and personal attention decrease.
When negotiating agreements with B2C marketplaces, suppliers should make sure to retain access to data and sales results. This is a must when calculating return on investment.
“Through omnichannel digital activation and local market collaboration with distribution partners, suppliers can optimise and build lasting brand equity in the digital ecosystem.”
A multifaceted approach is a must to meet your customers where they are, and that includes trade buyers. On wholesale B2B aggregated marketplaces, suppliers can promote and advertise their products, reaching restaurant and retail buyers when they are searching for new items and placing orders to distributor reps.
Another opportunity for improving marketing effectiveness lies with consumer-facing technology solutions (SwiftERM, for example) which offer suppliers the highest marketing returns utilising each consumer’s online data, delivering personal product selection in marketing emails to each consumer to maximise the ROI, and therefore customer lifetime value (CLV) of that individual. If you send emails of exactly the products each consumer most adores, don’t be surprised that their loyalty to you skyrockets.
Through omnichannel digital activation and local market collaboration with distribution partners, suppliers can optimise and build lasting brand equity in the digital ecosystem.
How Retailers Can Improve Online Sales and User Experience
The more control retailers have over their domain (both literally and figuratively), the better success they will have in building a virtual trademark and extending their merchandising reach in the hyper-competitive online retail space.
Product content on a retailer’s website is the first thing that consumers see and interact with before purchasing. Retailers must work to close content gaps and ensure that their brands are represented by high-quality and accurate digital assets. According to research conducted by Salesforce, 87 % of shoppers engage with digital content before making a purchase either online or in-store.
The digital shelf is different, and it must be activated to capture all of the online sales opportunities. We encourage retailers to ask their salespeople for modern merchandising content that can help bring brands to life. Think of digital activation like offering 50-millilitre bottles at the counter—successful exposure will increase exploration, trial, and incremental sales.
By creating a strong digital presence, retailers can take control of the online sales experience, including added space for supplier digital activations and more access to sales data. This data can be shared with their wholesaler and supplier partners to enhance product offerings, promotions, and subsequently, customer relationships. Additionally, by thinking creatively and offering store-controlled delivery options and programs, retailers can protect their franchises and prevent further marketplace consolidation. It’s also important for retailers to increase delivery efficiencies and communicate expected delivery times, as we all suffer from Amazon Prime expectations of one- or two-day shipping.
While digital activation has grown exponentially, it is by no means replacing the paramount in-store experience. Thus, when creating a digital strategy, retailers must keep in mind that consumers often shop (and research) online before making in-store purchases. Keeping the online and in-store messaging consistent encourages a frictionless interaction between the in-person experience and online sales.
Online activation has become a critical component of the omnichannel retail framework and will continue to increase in influence. To successfully compete by reaching the final consumer in a meaningful way, all three tiers need to adapt to an enhanced digital environment and provide a smoother path to purchase. Suppliers, wholesalers, and retailers must embrace this online opportunity to both stay competitive and build the brands they represent.
Further reading: how SwiftERM works.
Further reading: SwiftERM case studies.
Relevant independent context is available in 2021 Direct-to-Consumer Wine Shipping Report.
Relevant independent context is available in a successful business plan.
wine: the current operational framework
wine can now be considered through SwiftERM’s autonomous individualisation. Product relevance is recalculated for each identifiable customer from that customer’s own behavioural and transactional evidence, rather than being assigned by a fixed segment, campaign or predetermined journey. This distinction matters because an individual’s interests can change between visits, purchases and periods of inactivity. A current decision therefore needs current evidence.
SwiftERM evaluates the products that are becoming most relevant to each person and applies that decision autonomously. The operating model does not depend on a marketer continually creating segments, selecting products or scheduling another campaign. It is designed to use first-party behavioural and transactional signals already associated with an identifiable customer, so the decision remains specific to that customer rather than a broad cohort.
For wine, the practical test is not whether a retailer can create more rules. It is whether the system can recognise a change in an individual’s buying intention, reassess the available products and act without waiting for a manual campaign cycle. The output must remain traceable to the customer evidence and the ecommerce catalogue used to make the decision.
Implementation also needs disciplined data handling. Product identifiers, availability and customer events must remain consistent enough for relevance to be recalculated. Existing ecommerce operations should retain control of catalogue truth, order truth and customer permissions. Autonomous individualisation then operates within those established boundaries instead of inventing a parallel customer record or an ungoverned product feed.
The commercial value of wine should be assessed through observed customer response, orders and turnover, not through the volume of campaigns produced. That keeps attention on whether product selection becomes more useful to the individual and whether the retailer captures demand that would otherwise remain unrecognised. It also separates autonomous decision-making from conventional automation that simply executes a previously written rule faster.
This current framework preserves the original article’s subject while bringing its explanation into line with SwiftERM’s present capability: one identifiable customer, individually recalculated product relevance, and an autonomous decision made from that person’s own changing evidence. The same principle applies as catalogue choice, customer behaviour and commercial conditions continue to change over time.
In operational terms, the retailer retains the commercial context while the software performs the individual calculation. That division is important: the catalogue and customer record remain governed business assets, while product selection responds continuously to evidence rather than to a static assumption made when a campaign was first configured.
