Napa Valley - The Canary in the Coal Mine

From a recent article from Visiting Napa Valley – Travel Economic Impact and Visitor Profile (2017) we’ve learned that 92 percent of respondents said that they were “very likely” (53.2 percent) or “likely” (38.8 percent) to return to the Napa Valley. This region has a substantial amount of repeat visitation, with the average visitor pre-Covid making about 3 trips to the Napa Valley over a twelve-month period. If Napa is the Canary in the Coal Mine or the Litmus Test, at the very least, we can hope that each wine region has a strong return of guests. So while this trend of slow traffic is current, we can hope for continued visitors – just not the influx we’re used to.

But with traffic so low, what else can we do?

1. Formalize Outreach Efforts
   1. Determine who key influencers were historically, invite to tasting room, encourage them to tag/share their experience. 
      • Build relationships with the gatekeeps – either historically or new ones – and cultivate them. Reward them (as soon as possible) for sending people that buy our wine.
      • Get “institutional memory” on paper. Run referral source reports to validate, just to see if referral source was ever captured.
      • Think about upgrades instead of “2 for 1”, which tend to bring guests who are value seekers and not as likely to convert. It’s a value-add such as a charcuterie plate or upgraded experience, etc. 
      • Other value-adds like Amuse Bouche, extra pours, upgraded wines instead of comps
   2. Collect referral sources in our POS/reservation systems starting today. 
   3. Once we have collected enough referring data to make an outreach strategy, start with referring partners that send guests that likely to covert to purchase/club/have higher than median AOV 
      • Cross reference to see if we have collected mailing list data
      • Look for club members
      • Run reports and sort by descending purchases/lifetime value

WISE has seen a decrease in data collection across the country since we switched to reservations. Be sure to verify the data and invite EVERYONE at the table to stay in touch!

2. Grow Database with Strategic Partnerships

1. Consider businesses that you are already doing business with – how can you leverage their market reach? 

• Restaurants with our wines featured
• Local business we use for pairing our wines (chocolates, cheese, etc.)
• Hotels, B&Bs, Resorts

2. What is our brand about? Can we tap into an industry similar to ours that is complementary? 

• Is there a sport that connects with our brand? Who do we know in Tennis, Golf, Biking, etc.? that would be a good connection?
• Dogs, cats, horses, etc. – what is our brand known for?

Check out this article from Forbes – 13 Strategies to Bring More Foot Traffic to Physical Locations in 2022!

3. Continued Education –while a lot of these suggestions are what we naturally do for winery experiences, there are some nuggets here as well, like:  

• Reduce friction between digital and in-store experiences (everything speaks as Disney says)
• Geofence your locations and follow up with recent visitors.
• Ensure virtual and physical experiences are aligned and seamless
• Plan an email drip campaign to retarget and incentivize customers

Keep a close eye on your metrics!

As with anything, there is no ‘one size fits all’ – we’ll have to try, measure, test, adjust and try again, but at least we have somewhere to start.