Transcription

Ramin: [00:00:00] Hello everybody and welcome back to the E-Commerce Revolution podcast. It has been a while. I think we took off most of January to figure out what we're gonna talk about this year, and we've got a great lineup for you. This is episode 29 29. This is awesome. We're really excited about this. Listen.

It's a long journey than the world of podcasting, right? Long journey. And today we've got two podcasts actually, and both on the topic of wine. We are now live on LinkedIn. We're live on Facebook, we're live on YouTube and Twitter, and we'll also make all of our content available in the replay format. On all of those networks, as well as on our website, SKU agency, sku agency.com/podcast, as well as wherever you listen to your audio podcast.

Thanks for tuning in everybody. My name is Ramin. I'm the host of the show. I'm also one of the managing partners here at SKU Agency, so let's get this thing started. This is

all right. So. Two, top [00:01:00] two webinar two, I'm gonna say webinars here. Two podcasts today on the topic of wine. But sadly, I do not have a glass of wine in front of me, cuz it is rather early in the morning. We'll leave it at to later on in the day. And just as important, we are talking about metrics today.

Sometimes people look at metrics and they don't get as excited. Quite frankly, I get very excited because metrics help you measure your business and ultimately set you on the stage for growth. So we didn't have to look too far to find an expert in this area, a bonafide extrovert. Mind you on the topic of metrics and reporting, our guest is the founder of Wine Pulse, the leading.

Hoarding solution for wineries. Many of you in the industry probably know him and know him very well. He's at every show and very active within the community. So, without any further ado, please welcome Remi Sabian to the e-Commerce Revolut Podcast. Remi, thank you very much for being here today. I really appreciate [00:02:00] it.

Good

Remy Sabiani: morning, Ramin. Thank you for, for the opportunity to to be.

Ramin: Yes, I'm happy that I met you and I only met you back in December and you have, you have shown me a lot about the wine industry. You've told me who the people are that we should be talking to and educating me on the process. And then more, most importantly, on how wine pulse works and how the software can ultimately benefit, which is, I think this is again, a very, very important topic.

So before we get started, just tell everybody where you're calling in, connecting from. Well,

Remy Sabiani: I live in rural Paso Robles, California. Paso is a, is one country in California. It's still a fairly small town, and I live very, very remotely in the middle of nowhere. As a joke, I tell my neighbors are the coyotes.

Ramin: I love it. I love it. And Pastor, I've been to Pastor Robles many times and it is gorgeous on the way to Santa Barbara, which is obviously also just as beautiful, but a wonderful part of California. And you sound like you have a very relaxed setting where you can think. Build, [00:03:00] grow.

Remy Sabiani: The, the setting is relaxed.

The, the daily routine is a bit more

Ramin: stressful. I get it. I guess so where, so wherever we are, our stresses continue to go with us, is really what you're saying at the end of the day. Right. Well, yeah. Well, I, I thank you for coming on and you know, this, this topic is, as I said, you know, in the beginning I important to me, you know, I.

We spend a lot of time in the work that we do on email and SMS marketing, you know, honed in on the metrics. The metrics matter so much. So, you know, and I find it very interesting that, you know, just in general, in the business world, people sometimes, you know, don't pay as much attention as they should to the metrics.

So I think today I would love to make sure everybody has you know you know, mentality going into this and that they regularly check the metrics for their wineries using wine pulse. So before we dive into everything into the main topics tell us just a little bit about the business journey that brought you to where you are today and to get you to start and, you know, build wine, pulse.

How did it all start? Well,

Remy Sabiani: it started with I [00:04:00] was a consultant for, for many years working on the implementation of e r P financial systems. First for very large companies, then for, for 10, 15 years. Then working more like with midsize companies in my area and and then for some contracts and contracts.

I realized that there was obviously a lot of wineries where I leave and that there was not really. A reporting solution for these wineries. And then I thought about it, it was like, well, they're kind of like at the same business model. Mm-hmm. They have tasting room, they have club, they have e-commerce.

They must be tracking the same kind of metrics and. They are tracking the same kind of metrics. Mm-hmm. But there was nothing that will automate that for the wineries. And and then for some connection in the industry, I was introduced to some wineries and I said, well, here is, I have an idea of a business.

But in order to build the business, I need data. Right. If you let me access your data, I will build the [00:05:00] platform. And then once it's ready, you will have access to it for free for one. Wow.

Ramin: Brilliant. And that's how

Remy Sabiani: it started. Wow. And that's how it started. And and it was in 2019, early 2019, and now I have over 185 wineries using one post.

Wow.

Ramin: That's that's a great story. Yeah. Did you, during the pandemic, did you see a surge in people, you know, signing up for wine pulse because of what was happening, I guess on the e-commerce side of things when it came to to wine sales? Did you have a surge in your business as well, or was it just

Remy Sabiani: a nice, I think the group has been steady.

Right? There was popularly a surge during Covid and but what happened right. I mean, during the reopening there was a lot of turnaround at wineries. They were hiring people were switching jobs, you know, and that was my number one source. People who have worked at winery using one purse and then going to work for another winery and suggesting to use one purse.

Ramin: That's [00:06:00] great. Yeah, you had a built-in lead system essentially right there. And

Remy Sabiani: and I can tell you that the turnaround it has slowed quite a bit. Oh, okay.

Ramin: All right. Interesting. Yes. They, they're not

Remy Sabiani: hiring as

Ramin: much right now. Not not hiring. Okay. All right. Well we'll stay where they're, well, we're gonna, we're gonna get into maybe why they're not hiring as much.

You know, some of this comes into the, the reporting side of things and what's happening actually in the, in that side. One of the, you know, on your intake notes, one of the mottos that really jumped out at me, I, I love this, that you said, you know, you can't improve what you on, you know, you can't improve what you're not measuring.

You know, you have to measure right. All the time. Do you find that wineries and just, you know, The, the folks from the DTC side of the business that are, you know, should be in wine pulse probably regularly. Do you find that there is any kind of hesitation just looking at the analytics that it becomes like, I ha just another thing to do?

Or are, can you see the engagement? Is it very active? Are people very active in wine pulse, looking at the data regularly?

Remy Sabiani: So it depends on the winery. Some wineries are very active. They use a [00:07:00] lot of reports. They, they run report constantly. But when I say constantly, that will be daily or right. Things like that.

And I can measure that and I can track it. What I, but what all our clients also what's happening with all our clients is that every morning they receive an email with their DTC performance. Right. And they know automatically every morning, What was their sales yesterday? How's they doing month to date?

How's they doing year to date? What is the sales associate performance? Which products they have been selling automatically every morning, and for some wines they help you with that. Yeah. And, but of course all, all of them, I would say then go in one person and dig further. Right. But my guess is that some, some people may say, Hey, I need to dig into my data, and they're gonna take an hour and two hours.

And run plenty of reports. Some of our people are gonna be like no. I need to, to, to see my best customers at risk every day. Because I wanna take actions around that. Yeah. And so it, it depends, it depends on the winery, depends on the size, it [00:08:00] depends on the role of the people. Sure.

Ramin: Yeah. You know, I, I, you know, I feel like it's, Looking from the outside looking in, you know, I feel that, you know, if I saw areas of my business that needed help I would be digging into the data regularly.

But I understand that there are psychological barriers to also looking at data. Sometimes people get a little, but I love the fact that you get an email in the morning. Yeah, I love that. You know, that's a great way you pull somebody into the mix. And how often do wineries reach out to you? I assume during the onboarding process for those who are, who are new to, you know, listening to this for the first time, finding out potentially about wine pulse for the first time, what is your process?

Do you train them on what they should be looking for and looking at regularly? So as a

Remy Sabiani: process is I mean the typical process, you give a demo, you follow up.  They sign. And then you start the deployment. We download the historical orders for the last five years now. And and then we ask a set of questions.

I won't go into all the details, but Right. You ask a set of questions around mapping, around counting tasters, identifying bottles, pool, cause they wanna [00:09:00] track bottles sold versus bottles pool. Sample bottles that they used. Serve your wine. Sure. And and then they answer a set of questions, and then they're live.

Some wine takes two days. Some wine is I just did a follow up. It takes four weeks. Okay.

Ramin: Every, every, everything is, everybody is different. Everybody is different. Everybody's,

Remy Sabiani: yes. And and then once they have access to the report, we schedule a training and most of the time the training is recorded and then they can watch it.

And and I, and I spend a lot of time also answering questions. You know, people reach out, they have questions. I do da data justification quite a bit. Oh,

Ramin: okay.

Remy Sabiani: Yeah. People reach out and say, Hey, I don't understand. Why do I see this numbers? How do you calculate this metric? Mm-hmm. And I will say 80, 90% of the.

You explain and they're like, oh, I didn't know that. So you justify the data and sometimes it happens. You're like, ah, there was something to tweak here. There was something to fix. Interesting. Yeah. But I call it data justification. [00:10:00] It's very important to the business because if you send reports and provide metrics to wineries mm-hmm.

They need to trust the system. So they need to know that the metrics are.

Ramin: Yeah. Well, it's interesting. Big problem. It's funny that, I mean, I love, you know, we've you know, spoken to a couple of other software companies like, like yourself and the ones you know out there, that customer service in this side, especially in this industry, I feel this one-on-one service level is really important.

And it's unusual because if you look in some other, in. Software companies are basically, you can't reach them, right? You have to go through, you know, you get, you send an email, maybe get an email back, then that's it. Fair.

Remy Sabiani: Yeah. Good luck to reach out to Google Support if you ever need. You're right. No, it's amazing company.

You're right, it's it takes time, but it's very important. It's extremely, I. Yeah, it's a, it's a top priority to return all emails, all questions and promptly.

Ramin: Yeah, I love that. I mean, that's a motto we live by. You know, there [00:11:00] is no email, you know, even late, late in the evening, you know, in a day because sometimes, You know, things are urgent.

Sometimes things matter. Sometimes decisions have to be made early in the morning, and maybe they're just getting around to it, right? And they're just getting around to looking at this information, and you try to get it to them as quickly as possible. That's great. I I love that. You know, I, I sat down, you, you put out this you put out your urine review, which is such a great thing because you have, you have data from all of these wineries and you know, at the end of the day there are a number of different wine reports that come out.

From, you know, the Sovos puts out one, you know Silicon Valley Bank puts out one, but yours is literally coming from, you know, the source, the wineries himself, literally looking at the data in there. So I sat down and I took a look at it. I, I saw it in January, looked at it, and then looked at it again. I did sit down with a glass of wine, I will admit.

I had a glass of wine and I read it. I read it, you know, to make sure I understood everything was going in there. And some, there's a few things that stood out and if you don't mind, I'd like to bring them up cause I'd love you for you to elaborate on. So online sales, you know, you put in their [00:12:00] online sales are slowing with, in all regions they're trending downwards.

Okay? E-commerce sales, I think you put in the minus 17% compared to 2021. What, what's happening there? What, what's, what is happening? Is this a a normalization of what happened in, in, you know, during the pandemic? Or are we looking at something. We are

Remy Sabiani: looking at just like a, you know, 2021 was still Covid time.

Yeah. And people were buying online, a lot of people. Didn't want to go in testing rooms and so they would buy online and we're just, I think seeing a normalization of things. Okay. And and you know, two years ago some people were saying that Virtual tastings was the thing of the future.

Nobody is doing virtual testing.

Ramin: No. People like to be, they like to see other people. They like to see it. They like the, you know, swirl.

Remy Sabiani: Yeah. Covid didn't change us. We're human and we like social interaction.

Ramin: Right, right. Okay. So then, then what about on the, on the other side? On club. Club signups. Club signups are down.

It's a small number, you know, down three 3%. [00:13:00]

Remy Sabiani: Yeah. Everything will say, yeah. Slightly down for 2022 compared to 2021. Well, one of the reason is that 2022, by by by q4, there was things that started to slow down a little bit.  For some water areas, not everybody. And and so you have less traffic, so less tasters.

And then it becomes more difficult. To to have as many signup as before, you know? So you can train your staff to do a better job at converting tasters into new club signup, but if you have less traffic, you know, the one of the impact is a lower conver, not a lower conversion rate, but a, a lower total number of sign up.

Okay. All

Ramin: right. This, this number got my attention, you know, more than any of the attrition that's happening. Yes. Yes. Yeah, that's, yeah. That, that's a concerning number to me.

Remy Sabiani: Yeah. Yes. So la so Brigh depends. So, okay. Atri, there was de there is, there was definitely a higher attrition. [00:14:00] In 2022 compared to 2021.

So first, let's define what is attrition. Okay? So attrition is basically measuring between two dates. How many members canceled, how many members you had at the beginning of this period, how many member canceled between the two days. So in 2022 in that case, okay? That measures your attrition, okay?

And it's normal. Some people are gonna leave the club, but what we saw is that there was a higher attrition in 2022 versus 20. And it could be because, you know, because of Covid, people were staying in the clubs, so they were short to receive their shipments because they didn't wanna go to the testing room.

Mm-hmm. Blah, blah, blah. There is also, you know, Potentially a slow down, you know with the economy and people are like, eh, maybe I shouldn't be part of all these clubs. Right? And they can serve some of them. And but it really depends. I've gotta say that we did a, a study, also a deeper study of this metrics for Wise Academy and we found out I found out that attrition.

Higher. So the, the [00:15:00] smaller wineries we're losing more members basically as a ratio versus a bigger wineries as a ratio one. And and I'm sure it's one of the reasons because the bigger wineries, they're good at, you know, this customer interaction, you know, they have the resources maybe to have automated campaigns to do this reach out at specific moment of the journey of the customer and the club member.

Mm-hmm. That the smaller wineries can. Right. And it does pay off. Yeah, it

Ramin: does pay off well. Well, it's interesting. I mean, we, right before we came on, we were talking about you, you had a chance to do a demo of cl of Klaviyo and, and Yes, just email marketing, you know, automated email marketing coming into play that can help decrease those numbers.

Right. That is, you know, something you talk about that, that communication, that interaction, we find that so many wineries, you know, are not doing it consistently. Right. They're not commuting. Con communicating consistently. So, you know, it's the top of mind. So when, when a, when a customer is looking at, oh, wow, I didn't realize I was part of 10 winery, [00:16:00] you know, 10 clubs all of a sudden and they're doing a reevaluation, they may potentially drop the one that's not being, you know, they're not, that's not paying attention to them.

They're not getting, you know, that communication potentially that could be a good, good source in there. So you know, this is definitely an area that, you know, we look at and we, you know, it is important to help and we know how important club is. I mean, you said with half, you know, half of DTC sales are coming from club.

That you have to work on that to getting that attrition number down and keeping people focused. So, you know, back to looking at your metrics regularly and you see information like this, you can. Changes. You're me, you're gonna make changes based on what you're measuring, right?

Remy Sabiani: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the thing we do is customer analysis.

So winery is have access to report with some customer information, and we have a report that is, that shows you your club members at risk. Yeah. So basically, and the way it works is we, we calculate, okay, what is the average tenure? People have stayed in a club in the past before. [00:17:00] Okay. Okay, so on. For given winery, on Club X, Y, Z, it's gonna be 32 months.

Okay? Okay. On average, people stayed 32 months before canceling. Okay. So now among my active members who is around this tell who is around 32 months, 28 months, whatever it is for your club. And so we use the list of club members. We're not saying they're gonna cancel, we're saying, well, look, in the past people have canceled around that time.

Right? Yeah. So maybe it's time to reach out. Maybe it's time to do something special. Mm-hmm. And I ne I mean, we're just providing the metrics and the information,

Ramin: Yeah. And, and accepts the winery to act. Yeah, and we love that cuz then we look at that metric and we're going to make sure that there's, there's automated emails going out ahead of that potential drop off period.

Let's get it out, let's talk to them. And then if they do drop off, let's, let's get 'em to come back. Maybe pause, you know, there's all these kind of things we can do, you know, to make sure, you know, it's taking a playbook out of what all the subscription companies do, right. When you call, when you call and you wanna cancel your subscription, they're gonna try [00:18:00] everything possible to keep you in the mix.

That's fair. That's fair. Good. Yeah. Thi this one really, I, I love this one. Texas. Okay. And we've talked about Texas. Okay. And you know that we're calling, we're, we're, we're calling in from, from Austin that Texas has the highest overall D T C sales increase at 9% across all channels. What's happening in Texas?

What's going on here?

Remy Sabiani: So I have a joke. I made up the joke. Okay. Okay. In Napa there is a famous Highways Highway 29. Oh yeah. Okay. Uhhuh. Yeah. Where all the fancy, big wineries are on Highway 29. Yes. And in Texas, most of the wineries are around Fredericksburg. Yes. And they're around Highway two 90. So my joke is like, Hey, I think Highway two 90 is a new Highway 29.

Ramin: Oh, look at that. Look at that. I, I think we need to go trademark something quickly immediately. Yeah, there we go. And

Remy Sabiani: I love it. It's it's very interesting. I was in Fredericksburg last June. And invited by William Chris Winery. Oh, yeah. Nice folks. And beautiful place. Beautiful. Yeah.

And yeah, I've visited many of my [00:19:00] clients and over there and yeah, it's interesting what they're doing because what they're doing in Texas is they're, they have, I'm oversimplifying, but they have disconnected the location where they grew the, the vines. Yeah. And where the tasting room. Most of the ones sold in Fredericksburg, you know, tasting rooms, all of that is not necessarily coming from Fredericksburg.

Right, right. So it's very interesting that, yeah. So there is this disconnect and so it's a little bit of a different business model.

Ramin: Maybe it's breaking, it's breaking the norm, right? Breaking out of the norm of the way, this is how we use this is how it's always been done. So we have to do it this way.

Right?

Remy Sabiani: Yeah, I guess. And there, I mean the wineries are beautiful. Some of them are massive, beautiful. And it's very pleasant. So, and you know, California and Texas, the two biggest states, you know, in the us So there's no reason that, yeah, Texas is

Ramin: not gonna get big on. Now, Oregon. Oregon, Washington is still bigger than Texas, right?

Yes. In terms of bot, in terms of sales? Yes. [00:20:00] Yes, yes. Yeah. Okay.

Remy Sabiani: All right. But the, the growth is is in Texas. I mean, I know even some people in PA who are opening wineries in pa, in,

Ramin: in Forsburg. Wow. Beautiful. Beautiful. Well, good. Yes. We like that. We like that. Yeah. Very nice and super nice folks over there.

Exactly. Exactly. Well, that, that, that, that's great. I mean, so, you know, at the end of the day, I think, you know, to the, to these numbers, and I love again that you put out this report and I look forward to it every year because, you know, that gives us a good snapshot. But, you know, people should be in there looking at the data regularly in what's happening.

So,

Remy Sabiani: oh, our clients can look at. They can obviously see their performance information. Yeah. But they can look at the peers information as of last night, midnight. Right, right. Okay. Well, very nice. Every, everybody, all the metrics are recalculated every night for all our clients.

Ramin: What, what advice, what advice do you give them when they call you with these, you know, Remi, are these numbers correct?

I see some troubling signs here. Do you give them advice or do you guide them to, you know, you know, you should be [00:21:00] doing more marketing, more, you know, this more that. No,

Remy Sabiani: I have a very strict rule that I'm not in the business of telling wineries what to do. First because I don't know what I would be talking about.

Right. And and second, because my, the coughing I'm focusing on is providing metrics reports that are accurate and delivered in timely manner. Okay. I don't do consulting. I don't do marketing. They are experts in this field. I'm not one of Right. So it's very strict.

Ramin: Fair enough. You stay, you stay in your lane, as they say.

No. Fair enough. Yeah. All right, so, so let's talk, I mean, the, the topic of this, of this podcast is, you know, metrics that every winery should monitor to help grow their DTC sales. Let's talk about maybe five, five of them that you feel that you. If you were gonna tell somebody, all right, this is what should be on your dashboard.

Let's talk. Can you, can, can you tell us which ones those are?

Remy Sabiani: So the five, so there are a lot of metrics. Yeah. But if there were five, one, first you need to to know what are your sales. [00:22:00] Year to date, months to date, and how you're tracking versus the same year to date, same months to date last year. You need to have an idea of where you stand on the business.

You need to have a pretty good view of okay, how of traffic. So that would be tasters. Same thing. How many tasters do we have yesterday, months to date? Year to date? Do we have an issue with people walking in the tasting room? Another metric that is very important to look at is your overall number of active members.

Is it going up? Is it going down? Yeah. How many members were have in my club? How is it training? Since the beginning of the month. Since the beginning of the year? Mm-hmm. If something is happening, you want to, you know, you, you want, you wanna find out. Right? And and then you dig a little bit further. So let's say if you are DTC manager or artistic manager, they are over metrics focusing on testing on that are extremely important.

Okay. Obviously sales and test. Or information you, you, you should know. Like at any time it should be easy for you to know what are my tasting [00:23:00] themselves yesterday, month, today, here today. What about tasters? Mm-hmm. But then there are free overall metrics that are very important for tasting room. So wine is wine average of the value.

So wineries, most of them, they're in the business of selling bottles of wine. That's why they invite you to taste of wine or say of your glass of wine. They're in the business of selling bottles of wine, and it sounds obvious, but so you should know as a winery, okay, add the tasting room. What is my wine?

Average auto value? Okay. When people buy wine from me, on average, how much wine do they buy? And you want this? Obviously to go up. Okay. That's one thing, so, mm-hmm. The second metric is the wine order conversion rate. So you are in the business of selling bottles of wine, right? That means converting people from tasting your wine.

Into buying your wine. That's the wine order conversion rate. That's another metric that you want to monitor. Okay. [00:24:00] And good number would be 45, 50% conversion rate. Okay. All right. Wow. Then there is another metric is tasting room, club conversion rate. Okay. So obviously the ultimate thing is people signing up for the club.

Okay? Right. So that measures a conversion of people that were not the, of tasters, that were not club members. Mm-hmm. Into new club signup. Okay. So, and that a good metric would be, 10, 12%. Someone who is coding in your area doing an amazing job at converting people. Wow. Mm-hmm. Some, some are in over regions or places, not so much.

Mm-hmm. So really, because there is one thing that is hard, I mean, it's, it's, you can't really control the number of testers coming in. I mean, you can because you are doing promotion and stuff like that. But sure there are a lot of external. Right. That people are now gonna say, well, economy is what it is.

Not gonna go to the tasting room. But once they are the tasting room, it's up to the staff to do a [00:25:00] good job at selling wine. At con, at, at selling wine, at maintaining a good average value and at converting people into new club sign. That is a job of the management and the staff in the tasting room.

Right. You know, someone, an associated tasting rooms, they can control the number of tasting. Right. Right. They, they should control, they should be aware of the average other value, the conversion.

Ramin: Okay. All right. That's very interesting. You know, I mean, the, the tasting room is, you know, that's the experience, right?

You come in for the experience and you get to taste and sip and, and learn and be educated. So, yes. You know, it's funny, I, I've been into tasting rooms where. They don't pay much attention to you. They don't, you know, they just pour the wine and, and they move on. And then other tasting rooms where they're very actively involved in educating you on what you're experiencing.

And then, yes, being salespeople, you know, they are, they're educators, but they're also marketers in the tasting room, and they need to, you know, if you're not gonna buy, then maybe it's at least get you on the email list for a special offer and then be able to let some technology take [00:26:00] over at the end of the day if they can't do it right.

Remy Sabiani: And you're gonna remember how you felt that day. The tasting world. Yeah. Yeah. And how you connected with with the people, with maybe the surrounding, with the wine itself. And you're gonna remember that.

Ramin: Yeah. And, and I, I think in your, in your report, you did note that tasting room was, was on down, right?

It was sales. Yeah. They were down. And again, is that, is that, what's, what's happening there? I mean, is that a, well, it's

Remy Sabiani: Q4 2022, things were slowing down the summer of 2022. Very difficult camps also. Compared to 2021. Right. Because summer 2021, it's a reopening. People wanna be out. Yeah. You know, it's, Tough comps when, when you think about it.

Yeah. Versus 2021. All these, there have been so many ZOS since 2020. Yeah. It was 2020 and Covid. Yeah, that was

Ramin: 2020. We don't even, we don't even remember. I don't, I'm like, wait, wait. What year are we in? Oh, it's 2023. Right.

Remy Sabiani: Okay. So there were so many Wix os No, this potentially is, the economy's [00:27:00] going down and it does have an impact.

Ramin: Yeah, no, that's very interesting. Yeah, tell me do you, do you integrate with other software as well? Does Wine Pulse integrate with other software to see other data out there?

Remy Sabiani: So we, we, we integrate with the two biggest POS systems in one

Ramin: industry. Yeah. With that, but like outside of the, sorry, outside of the pos any others?

You know, are you integrating, I know you have a, you have a integration with Digimatic from to see some Klaviyo data, right? Yes.

Remy Sabiani: Fair. We integrate with Digimatic in order to provide for wineries that use commerce Seven and Digimatic, which integrates. MailChimp Klavyio. Yeah, we, we have some reports to provide email analytics reports to wineries.

And also through the matic to be sure that, so one thing that one person is doing is tagging customers, especially in Commerce7 who are my best customers? Who are my customers at risk? Who are my loyal customers, who are my doorman customers? Mm-hmm. And then, so we tag the customers in Commerce7, and then through Digimatic, these tags [00:28:00] flow into mechi.

Okay.

Ramin: So that's, that's creating those segments, creating important segments to look at which, you know, we, we really, I mean, we love segments cuz because you're putting the right people in the right, you know, category and then giving them the right information, right? At the end of the day. And in, in your case, what Wine Pulse is able to do is to see what's happening in that category, in that segment.

Are they, you know, are they react? Properly to promotions are they, you know, what is happening in their business overall, but by segment. By segment. Which is a nice granular look right. Yeah. I

Remy Sabiani: mean, one thing that I, I think what that I believe the, the, the more data advanced one look at is a segment, for example, like the best customers at risk.

Okay. So basically it's a, it's a way to look at your customer purchase history and say, okay, I'm gonna know for all my customers. When was the last time they ordered wine? How many times they ordered wine, let's say the last two years. And how much wine did they buy in the last two years? What you wanna find out is the people that are kind [00:29:00] of like, they're still among your top buyers of wine for the last two years.

Still among your most frequent buyers of wine for the last two years, but for some reason they're not ordered recently compared to others. Okay. So what I, what I describe is like they're in the process of forgetting about your. And the longer they're gonna wait before ordering from you, the higher the chance they won order again.

Yeah. Because they visited over testing rooms and they had a good time at this over place and you know, and Right. It's very competitive. So it's to reach out to these best customers at risk. They love your wine. They're your top buyers of wine. Yeah. Among your most freaking white. Yeah. But hey, compared to others, they're not, they're not purchased recently.

What's going?

Ramin: Right. Well, you know, I feel, you know, definitely, you know, the wine, the winery business has a lot of new its own nuances, right? Very particular, very, but there are so many areas where you can look to the world of e-commerce and, you know, you're pulling, you're looking at your, you're mentioning words like average order value.

You're looking at conversion. These are all things that are, you know, so, so important in the [00:30:00] world of general e-commerce, if you will. But to the winery, you know, they, they have multiple channels within their own business, so they have to look at, you know, how do I. How do I take that tasting room person, convert them into a wine club?

How do I, maybe that person who bought in the tasting room, how do I get them to repeat purchase if they're not gonna join the wine club? How do I, you know, and especially a lot of people traveling and coming to the winery and you know, and leaving and leaving and going back to their state where they came from.

And being able to access that product again, they had such a great experience. So I think all of these, you know, matter. And, and you know, really at the end of the day, looking at that data is gonna help you make those

Remy Sabiani: decisions. And you know what, I bet you that a tourist going to Napa or wherever and visiting 10 wineries in free days, and then they're going back home in Chicago, New York, or wherever.

I bet you don't even remember for sometimes the name of the winery. Yeah, you're right. What was the name of this winery the second day at 11:00 AM Yeah,

Ramin: no, you're right. [00:31:00] Absolutely right. But it'd be nice if something popped up in their inbox or in their SMS and Oh yeah, that place, that's where I need to be.

That's where I was

Remy Sabiani: sometimes because you know, especially when you are in a touristic. Sure.

Ramin: Going to a lot of places.

Remy Sabiani: Going to a lot of places. What was this one again?

Ramin: That's great. What, what's, what's the one thing that when you got into this, this business, and when you started to reach out and talk to wineries and learn, what, what was the one thing that surprised you that you, you were, was there anything that surprised you?

Like, oh my gosh, I had no idea about that. Or was it all, eh, this is normal business.

Remy Sabiani: I don't remember, but I would say that It's not a, it's not a surprise, of course. I'm very respectful of how difficult mm-hmm. And competitive industry the wineries are in. Yeah, it is. I mean, it's friendly.

It's You know, it's hospitality. It's a very competitive business. Yes. It's a very challenging business. I mean, the upfront cost [00:32:00] mm-hmm. To grow the wine, to build the winery. I mean, the labor cost, the material cost. Very respectful of how challenging this industry is. And it's full of very nice people.

Yeah. So it, it was not really a surprise, but I, I'm always I'm, I, I value the dollars coming from my client.

Ramin: Yeah. No, that, that, that's a wonderful, and you know, I, I look at it you know, the, I love the camaraderie. I love the heritage. You know, every winery, most, you know, they, they have a great story, right, of how this happened.

How, you know, the family came, they were immigrants. They came to this country and they. You know, found a plot of land, which is probably now very valuable in Napa. Yes. And you know, they found it back in, you know, in the forties or in the fifties and they pass it to generation to generation. And that story to me is so important to tell that story.

You know, that is so much of what we do in the marketing side of things is, you know, we are. Enlightening people on the [00:33:00] story behind it. I'm a, I, I'm, I'm a sucker for the backstory. Gimme the backstory on the product. The founder, you know, how did they come to this and why did they do it? So that is something that I appreciate in these conversations that we're having with wineries regularly, is, you know, tell me about the history.

And sometimes I know I'm speaking to the DTC person and they were not, they're not part of that heritage, but they, at least they're very knowledgeable on that heritage. There's another story for sure. Yeah. Right. They should be able to tell the story cuz you've got people like me who just sit at the counter and sip wine and just hear the story.

I wanna hear the story. How did it all, how did it all happen? That's wonderful. That's wonderful. All right, well listen, at the end of the day, I think, you know, where we, we sum up here is, you know, how important the metrics are. It. In any business, but, you know, you know, you made a point here about you know, wineries, you know how hard it is for a, you know, the, in the wine business, there's so many facets.

There are challenges, right? They're dealing with a product that is, you know, could die on the vine, right? It could not make it past and is very susceptible to, [00:34:00] you know, the elements. But ultimately when it gets produced, You know, and you get it, you know, bottled and it's ready for con for consumption.

You know, you have to look at your metrics and you have to figure out where your business is working, where the areas are not, and the areas are not. You have to put the, put the effort in to make it work. And I think, you know, wine pulse at the end of the day brings that element of, you know, that data driven approach to a fun in.

Really a fun industry.

Remy Sabiani: Yeah. And, and also it takes time for, I mean, the metrics that we calculate, that we provide for the reports and all of that, I mean, anyone can do it. You know, you spend, you can spend hours every day in Excel. Yeah. You know, and doing your thing. But hopefully what we're trying to do is to save winery time so they don't have to spend hours calculating the metrics.

Yeah. And we'll provide this information and hopefully what is something. Easy to look at and integrate. Right. And so they can take action. And I, yeah. My hope is that they, they spend more time taking action using the data rather than calculating the data

Ramin: themselves. Yeah. [00:35:00] No, it's true. See any of the business, yeah, you lost me at Excel looking at reports in Excel.

That's gonna, well, no, you know, yeah. I mean that there's a graph, you know, having a nice graphical interface to look at also is a, is a big plus. And, and I know you've covered that, that point already. Well that's great. I mean, I really appreciate you coming on and would you be open to doing some quick rapid fire questions that we do at the end?

Sure. You know, we talk about such an, such a, you know, important topic and it is very important. But let's talk about some things are fun too, you know, like to kinda wrap it up with some fun things. So what gets you excited? You're an entrepreneur, so this is, I, this is perfectly suited for you. What gets you excited to wake up in the morning and tackle the day?

The day? Is there one thing comes to bus when comes to business? Yeah. Yeah.

Remy Sabiani: To be sure that all the data have been synchronized correctly during the night. That's, that's it. Wow. Okay. Synchron everything is automated, but you know, it's starts to be a lot of one reason, a lot of data. Yes.

Ramin: You have a responsibility.

Remy Sabiani: Yeah. Oh yeah. It's a small window, you know, it's between midnight and 5:00 [00:36:00] AM basically, so, you know, it's okay, but still.

Ramin: Well, when that, when that's happening, and as you get up, is there a drink of choice in the morning that keeps you coffee? Yeah. Yeah, coffee. Well, how do you take your. Black. Oh, that's it, man.

That's like, I think 95%. This is episode 29. 95%, maybe even a little more black coffee. That's it. Nobody puts anything in their coffee anymore. Nothing. Zero. Nothing. That's fascinating. All right, so you know, we're talking wineries here. Do you have a favorite wine? And maybe give me a, you know varietal, you don't have to gimme a brand because I know you have a lot of brands and you don't wanna, you know, you don't wanna single anybody out.

But what do you enjoy? What's your, what's your.

Remy Sabiani: I, I, I can give you the brand, my, my fa you know, I am from Corsica, you know? Yes. And there is a wine region in Corsica Patri, and I love drinking wine from Patri. Oh, really? Okay. And other customers they don't even know exist, but evil in in Patri, they make amazing red and white and

Ramin: Wow.

Okay. Michael, we have to, we, we do, we should put a link to that. We'll find that online and [00:37:00] maybe get, I, you know, I, I'm also very intrigued. You know, wine from you know, Europe. I think it's, I think, you know, I mean that's, you know, let's talk about the old, the old, old way, you know, that is, that is it.

And so many, so many amazing wineries all around the world, and by the way, I'm fascinated to know how many wineries every state in the United States has a winery. Correct. I mean, are we at that level Almost every state, but it's. I mean, I read Alaska. Alaska has a winery. Yeah.

Remy Sabiani: Well there have some in, in Canada, some British.

That's true.

Ramin: It's not too far. Fascinating. I love it. I love it. All right, so besides the job you're doing today running wine pulse, what else would you be doing if you weren't doing that?

Remy Sabiani: If I, if I was retired

Ramin: call, call it what you want, retired or, you know, maybe you were gonna start something else as well.

Well, I

Remy Sabiani: do, you know what I'm running another business, so I never Oh, you are? Oh, very, very separate. Yeah. My days are busy. I'm a, I'm an I importer of recycling water systems of gray water systems. Oh, wow. [00:38:00] I import them from Taiwan and I resell to over people in the US or I sell.

Ramin: Wow, that is a totally

Remy Sabiani: different business.

Completely different business. I've been doing it for 12 years. Oh my gosh. It's okay. Yeah. It's, it's a, i There is a strict line of separation between two businesses. Yes.

Ramin: Wow. Like we need another Manage my time. We need another podcast. It's, it's a separate, completely off the topic. Wow. That's it. Just outta curiosity, you go direct to consumer online, or you do it through other chip percent online.

Remy Sabiani: Wow. Hundred percent online.

Ramin: Wow. No store, nothing. It's funny, I do hear a lot about gray, gray water. I mean, that is that it's a big deal, right? I mean, it's people, you know, it's a thing.

Remy Sabiani: Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of talk about it.

Ramin: Yeah. Interesting. All right. Very nice. Okay. So what is your go-to SaaS or app that you love?

Maybe it's on your phone or on your computer, you just can't live without, besides wine Pulse. Okay. Something it's like, like you just can't live without. Like mine is Slack. I can't live without Slack. No, I'm not

Remy Sabiani: using Slack. I don't know something [00:39:00] between Twitter and QuickBooks. Okay.

Ramin: Oh, all right. Nice.

Okay. One what two different sides of your brain right there. Twitter, and then Exactly. Yeah.

Remy Sabiani: Well, you know what? Morning coffee after being sure that all the data have been synchronized Yeah. Is split between a few minutes in QuickBooks and. A few more, a few more minutes in

Ramin: Twitter. Yeah. We'll talk about data.

You're, you're, you're practicing what you preach, you're going into quick with, I assume, maybe running reports in QuickBooks, making sure everything is synced correctly. Yeah,

Remy Sabiani: yeah. It's more like that. Yeah. Yeah. And to know where the business are and and what's happening. Yeah. Beautiful. I think it's, it's, it's important to it's so important.

You should be obsessed with it, but you should know. Okay. Especially the bigger, the bigger trends and what's happening. There's, there's so much. Yeah, I mean, you know, you are run a business. I mean, it's a small business obviously, but yeah, there's still a lot of notes. You know, your days are busy, you're bombarded with emails request.

Sure. But always, and I like the early morning say, okay, what is a big picture here? Right.

Ramin: That's great. So if you could give yourself one talent that you currently don't have, what would it be?

Remy Sabiani: There's [00:40:00] plenty of them for sure. I don't know, a to maybe I should dream bigger. I love it. I admire people who have the, these big visions and yeah, I'm happy.

Why? I am.

Ramin: That's right. That's beautiful. Yeah. I dream bigger. Yeah, I go through phases. I dream big and then I realize, oh, that's a lot of work to dream big. Cause you have to actually, all right, let's just keep it, let's keep it focused here. And then I dream big, is that a little bit of ebb and flow, I guess, in the dreaming department.

But dreams are great. Dreams are wonderful. Yeah. I should dream bigger. Yeah, I like that. All right, so last question for you is what's your favorite online store and why? Doesn't have to be wine anywhere, anywhere you want. So it's

Remy Sabiani: actually gonna be wine. Oh, okay. And it's all and it'll, and, and that would be I'm not gonna, well, yeah, I can say I buy a lot of import wines from France and Italy and and I use car they're, it's a distributor in Berkeley.

Yeah.

Ramin: All right. Beautiful. Thank you.

Remy Sabiani: I'm not, I'm not a, I'm not big into like, buying stuff online. Right. Okay. I'm gonna be more my wife or, or soon my daughter. I think she's getting to an age where

Ramin: that's, yes. [00:41:00] We're, we're in that boat. We have to, we have the Amazon approved. He has to get approval before he is built into Amazon where they can't Press, but that's beautiful.

Yeah. Michael, just put it up in the background.

Remy Sabiani: Oh, yeah. And again, I have zero relationship with them, just nice, nice people. And yeah.

Ramin: No. So you could go online. You, you can buy through them. They ship direct. Oh, absolutely. Beautiful. Of course, of course. All right. I, I will look them up. Selection.

Amazing. Wow. Beautiful, beautiful. Really go off the building path. Wow. A lot of biodynamics, sustainable, organic absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Good time into

Remy Sabiani: these. Beautiful and the small Most ver, yeah, very small polluters

Ramin: sometimes. Okay. Love that. I love that. Well, Remi, thank you so much. I know, you know, well now that we know you're running two businesses and you had your coffee this morning,

Remy Sabiani: you know what, I'm, I'm giving an interview to a journalist at noon in relationship with the other business.

Yeah.

Ramin: I love it. Well, I appreciate you coming on and, and sharing your insights on, on, you know, the metrics, the important metrics. Looking back at that report that you put out from, for 2022, [00:42:00] helping wineries ultimately, Understand how to take action from their metrics. And I, this has been wonderful, wonderful.

And as I mentioned, as a side note, we have a second podcast coming up with a good friend of yours, Zach, over at Commerce7. And we're talking about the future of dtc. So it's a very nice transition. It's a day filled with conversations about wineries. How to help them, how to help them grow. So I, I completely appreciate you taking the time to do it.

If you could just take a moment for those who don't know where to find wine Pulse, if you could tell them and maybe how they can connect with you directly, that would be wonderful. They can

Remy Sabiani: just go to one pulse.com and they would find information. They can request a demo directly from on one post.com.

I respond very fast to any demo request and there might be like one.

Ramin: Yeah, and look up on the screen. We've got a QR code that you can just scan right off the screen and it'll take you directly to wine pulse.com where you can schedule a demo. And Ramin,

Remy Sabiani: thank you for the opportunity and for for the great questions.

And another [00:43:00] great thing coming from Texas.

Ramin: Love it. Love it. I love it. Well, thank you very much, Remi. Have a wonderful day and we will, we will share this to the world. Okay. All right, sounds good. Thank you. All right, thank you. All right, everybody. This brings us to the end of another podcast. This is number 29.

So thank you very much for tuning in. Tune in in about an hour or so and some change for our next podcast with about Commerce seven and how, what the future of DTC looks like for wineries. And don't forget to check out past episodes of our podcast, all available at sku agency sku agency.com/podcast, as well as all the on-demand videos are available on YouTube as well.

As always, if you need help with your email marketing for your winery, please definitely reach out to us. You can go to SKU. Dot com slash wine and book a 30 minute complimentary call. We'll take a look at what's happening in, in the world of email marketing and how we can ultimately help you, you know, fix those fix [00:44:00] attrition number, you know, get that up.

You know, make sure that you are you know, holding on to your wine club customers and ultimately growing your winery business. So thank you very much everybody. Have a wonderful rest of your day. See ya.

Conclusion

Monitoring website metrics is essential for wineries looking to optimize their DTC sales. By leveraging key metrics such as wine club and tasting room data, wineries can make informed decisions and drive revenue growth while expanding their customer base. To unlock the full potential of a website's metrics, using a reliable tool like WinePulse can provide invaluable insights and analytics to track and analyze the right metrics effectively. Don't miss out on the opportunity to propel your winery's DTC sales to new heights. Cheers to data-driven success!

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