Leveraging Happy Customers
Shem Swerkes is Director for Digital Innovation at Treasury Wines Estates.
Shem Swerkes is a seasoned e-commerce leader with expertise in customer acquisition, retention, and successful Amazon product launches. At the summit, Shem will share how Treasury Wine Estates transforms loyal customers into brand advocates through strategic reward programs, emphasizing the value of authentic customer experiences.
See the key chapters from Shem's talk and dive in where you'd like.
How is rewarding the right customer the key to referral growth?
How Treasury Wine Estates Uses Extole
Transcript
So the primary way that we use Extole, and Extole has a lot of great features and services to use but the primary way that Treasury Wine Estates uses Extole is the refer a friend feature. We call it, that’s exactly what we call it. I think that’s what Extole calls it as well. And it’s great because it allows our customers who are in love with our wine already, or anybody that shows up on our website to get some sort of reward and most times it’s a discount off of our products by referring someone. They both win. So it’s a win-win for both the customer as well as their friend to get these great wines that we offer.
The Value of Unearthing and Rewarding Brand Ambassadors
Transcript
So treasury Wine Estates. We have this amazing portfolio of wine brands. We are the number one luxury winery in the world. Yeah, what that means is that we have brands like Stags Leap, BV, Frank Family. We have all these beautiful, amazing storied wine brands and each of them have a direct to consumer component. They have their websites and we sell direct to consumer on these websites and it becomes a bit of a challenge because they all each need their own unique marketing strategies. They all have different customer bases that vary from each other. And one thing that kind of remains true is that when people refer when they talk about the wines that they love, they kind of do it in their own language. And so Extole is really a great tool because it lets us plug in something that can. Still, even though the program itself, the underlining roots of it are the same across all the brands, it really it’s really the customers that kind of make it unique.
The Importance of Leveraging Happy Customers
Transcript
Clearly a challenge when you’re developing unique marketing strategies for each brand because they’re just such unique voices. And when you look at all the different channels that you can go through digitally, we’re developing ad campaigns, for example, where we have to speak to different audiences and that has to be unique. And then we also have to look at how we’re targeting them but then you kind of realize that each of these audiences that’s unique to the brand, as you’re looking through kind of the voice of the brand, the voice of the audience, you see some of the reviews that go up on various different websites. We don’t have reviews on our website but our products are distributed globally in different retail locations. And then there’s all these review type wine websites where customers are sharing with how they feel about wine. And so you start to see the way customers talk about this and how they talk about it in these reviews. And they you know, they’re talking to their friends because any time you have a great experience or a bad experience, even you’re talking to your friends. So we want to create those good experiences. And then it was how can we start to connect the dots and get opportunity for if they’re if they’re talking about it, we want to reward them for that. And we want the people that they’re talking about to be rewarded and be able to come into the fold and enjoy the wines.
The Value of Rewarding Loyal Customers
Transcript
Customer choice, if that was the only issue, that would be great but it’s a huge deal, right? There’s more wineries now than there ever has been. There’s more options. And it’s in all price points. There’s all levels of quality out there. The amount of wine that comes out of Napa, and that’s where a lot of our luxury wine brands are. We have the most vineyards in Napa out of any winery. And there’s just so much choice. Now, you couple that on with the fact that it’s not just consumers choosing which wine they’re going to drink but in the wine space, as a consumer, you may be a super fan of a brand, for example, like Stags Leap. You may really love that wine. That’s your favorite wine. It’s your go-to but it’s not something that you’re going to only drink that wine. Consumers are really loving to explore. They’re loving to try other brands. So it really puts pressure on us to stay in front of customers, in front of consumers, and have them constantly come back. Because even if our wine is your favorite wine, you’re still going to drink other wines. It’s just the way that people consume wine. They love to explore and try different things. So using Extole, I mean, it really helps us reward our most valued customers and get them to talk about the wines, get them to share because they’re getting a reward to get some sort of offer or get some sort of promotion or get their favorite wines at a better price than maybe they normally would. As well as they’re sharing that opportunity with their friends. And there’s no better way to get products in front of somebody than getting a recommendation from someone you trust. That is the best chance that we have for someone to convert and become a new customer is if their friends telling them how amazing this wine is. In general, marketers typically have a tendency to lean on what appeals to them. So I like this. So maybe. That’s what the customer would like. Or when I typically shop, I shop this way. If you think about this old saying about how the customer is king, and you think what it means to be a king, that means the king has subjects and the subjects serve the king. And in the example of the customer as king, then that would make us the subjects. We’re here to serve the king, so to speak. So if you think of how you’re serving your customer, you really have to listen to your customer and the only way you can listen to your customer is to have some sort of connection with them and I think this is there’s many ways that you do that like a lot of ways that you got to dive into that but one of the ways is you know looking for ways to provide them value and if they’re already talking about your products then how do you tap into that and get them to talk about your products more and that’s by providing them some sort of value some sort of reward and certainly that Extole platform gives us a way to do that. So, yeah, it certainly helps out.
How to Keep Customers Engaged With New Offers
Transcript
I think it kind of covers both. Because yeah, absolutely. When you think about your existing customer base, it’s always cheaper to keep a customer than to go out and find a new customer. And we’re always looking at kind of what that acquisition cost is to bring a new customer in. And if you have a customer who, I mean, our product is consumable. Wine is consumable. And if you like it, you’re going to want some more. And people who are wine connoisseurs, are constantly buying wine, whether they’re buying our wine or not. So we want to make sure that we’re in front of them and they’re buying ours. And if they’ve had a great experience with us, there’s no reason they should not continue to buy with us. I think the enter to win campaign that we did was a great way to, it still did reach new customers but it also engaged with our existing customers because now we’re not just offering a promotion and we do promotions from time to time. That’s one thing that I think is key to keep your customers engaged. We’ve done surveys with our customer base through the email list, and they come back and tell us what they want to see. And one of the biggest things they want is they want to know when we have offers for existing products. If you have this go-to wine that you always love, you want to know when you can get that at the best deal. You want to know when the best time is to buy. So that’s one thing that they’re looking for. They refer a friend program where you’re offering a small discount is super effective but it doesn’t necessarily hit all customers in your list. Like certain customers, that may have been something they’ve seen a few times before. And to keep it fresh, you have to change it up. And that Enter to Win campaign certainly did that for us in December, which O&D, our biggest time of the year, as it is for most people. And running that was essentially saying, hey, you enter your email address, you refer a friend, and you’re both entered to win. And we let them enter multiple times if they want. And the prize was a voucher. It was a voucher for $500 on the website. So certainly a good value of, you know, if you’re looking for wine specifically in that time period or merchandise, you know, the voucher wasn’t just specifically for wine but certainly now we’re getting a lot of people signing up and they really jumped at that opportunity because it had some strong, a strong value proposition. So I think a lot of ways that you can use this platform, a lot of ways that you can use your existing customer base to tap into them, to provide value to them so that they continue to want to come back.
How Extole Offers a Hands-On Partnership to Treasury Wine Estates
Transcript
We don’t do as much with Extole as I think I’d like to? We’re exploring a lot of options but it’s just, you know, because we’re so big and have so many brands. We probably move a little bit slower and then some smaller, more nimble companies. But you know, that said, we are pretty nimble but what I will talk about. So Julia is a partner with Extole, the level at which she shows up to our meetings prepared with not only performance and the things that we’re currently doing but working in strategies about what directions we could take, the partnership with Extole and what opportunities they are for our business. Because, you know, she studies our business very comprehensively so that she can understand when there is an opportunity like what other, what other features or what other programs are best to introduce and and start to bring more growth to our business, both going after new customers and retaining our current customers. So that’s one thing that I really do appreciate about Extole is the partner that we have in Julia and that she’s not just she’s not just setting us up and leaving us to it but actually being a true partner to identify opportunities for growth.
The Importance of Programs That Are Truly Sustainable
Transcript
So whenever you’re doing direct to consumer, you’re doing this ecommerce bit. And it’s easy to get caught up month to month. We’re creating this campaign and that campaign. And it’s absolutely necessary because you need to hit your revenue numbers, need to get your goals and stay on target month to month and year over year. Where you really find value, though, is not just some banging out of the park campaigns but introducing programs that are sustainable. So programs that can start to grow on their own that are going to get new customers as well as keep your current customers coming back. And those programs are typically things like what we do with the refer a friend. It’s one of the programs that we introduced that can run month after month. Yes, there’s tweaks, there’s optimizations, and it’s not something that you set and forget but it’s a broader program that drives incremental revenue, that drives incremental customer growth and retains customers. That you can continue to grow month after month, year after year without so much of that grind of a campaign. Those things are necessary but the program is where you’re going to really start to see your overall revenue grow.
When people refer, when they talk about products that they love – they do it in their own language and voice. This means that every touchpoint can be unique.
Shem Swerkes
