What Wineries Can Learn from DTC Brands: 5 Takeaways to Put Into Practice

We recently brought together Awtomic, Amplify, and RedChirp for a conversation about what wineries can learn from the best DTC brands.

We covered acquisition, experimentation, subscriptions, retention, incentives, SMS, and plenty in between.

If you missed it, or just want the most actionable ideas, here are five takeaways worth bringing back to your team.

1. Look Beyond the Tasting Room for Acquisition

The tasting room is an incredibly powerful acquisition channel. But it naturally limits your audience to people who are willing and able to visit.

DTC brands don't have that luxury. They've had to figure out how to find, convert, and retain customers who may never experience their products in person.

Why this matters:

• Amplify shared that for some wineries with established online businesses, more than 50% of DTC revenue can come from customers outside the tasting-room market.
• Digital acquisition gives you access to customers hundreds or thousands of miles away.
• It also creates new ways to reach potential customers through paid media, influencers, search, content, referrals, and other digital channels.
• The tasting room then becomes one of many acquisition channels within a much larger strategy.

“For some of the wineries that we work with that have a more established online presence, almost all of them have over 50% of their DTC revenue coming from customers outside of that tasting-room market. Wineries that are only targeting their tasting-room customers and customers in that area are essentially cutting their revenue opportunities in half.”

Nikki Kessler, Lifecycle Marketing & Retention, Amplify

What to do:

1. Calculate what you're currently spending to acquire customers through the tasting room.
2. Measure how many visitors purchase, join the club, and become repeat customers.
3. Establish a baseline for the LTV of those customers.
4. Test one or two acquisition channels outside your local market.
5. Compare the CAC, conversion, and eventual LTV against your tasting-room benchmark.

The takeaway:

Wineries shouldn’t be looking to replace acquisition via the tasting-room. They should be asking how many great customers they’re missing because visiting the tasting room is currently the primary way to get discovered.

“There are a lot of ways to acquire customers digitally who have never seen or tasted your wine in person. It feels scary because it feels like a much harder way to sell, but there are a ton of examples of brands doing this with other products. People will buy if they see the value.”

Emily Yuhas, Founder & CEO, Awtomic

2. Treat More of Your Marketing as an Experiment

One of the clearest differences Emily sees between Awtomic's DTC customers and wineries is the frequency with which DTC brands experiment.

The best DTC brands change messaging, test offers, adjust subscription options, update conversion paths, and try new acquisition channels. Then they analyze the data and adjust again.

Why this matters:

• Customer behavior can answer questions that internal assumptions can't.
• Small improvements to conversion, retention, or average orders per customer compound over time.
• A failed experiment still gives you information about what your customers don't want.
• You don't need to modernize your entire club or website at once. Testing gives you a way to make smaller changes and learn before expanding them.

“The biggest difference is that direct-to-consumer brands experiment a lot and move quickly. Their websites are constantly changing. Their offers are constantly changing. They have a really intense focus on marketing, messaging, driving traffic to their website, and conversion.”

Emily Yuhas, Founder & CEO, Awtomic

What to do:

Before you start testing, Emily recommended answering two questions:

1. In one sentence, what makes your winery uniquely valuable?
2. In one detailed sentence, who is your most loyal and valuable customer?

Then choose one thing to test against those answers:

• Website messaging
• Club positioning
• A new offer
• A landing page
• An acquisition channel
• A subscription option
• An incentive

Define what success looks like, run the test, measure what customers actually do, and use that result to determine the next experiment.

The takeaway:

You don't need to copy what DTC brands are doing. Copy their willingness to test, measure, and change.

“A lot of wineries think of their website almost as an internet placeholder or an artistic expression rather than a really powerful conversion tool, which it is and can be.”

Emily Yuhas, Founder & CEO, Awtomic

3. Give Members More Control Over Their Club

DTC subscriptions have spent years moving away from restrictive experiences toward flexibility.

It can feel counterintuitive to make actions like skipping the next shipment, customizing the order, or downgrading the volume easier. But giving someone the ability to skip doesn't necessarily cost you a shipment. Sometimes it prevents a cancellation, driving higher LTV.

Why this matters:

• “I have too much” is the #1 cancellation reason Awtomic sees across DTC ecommerce, and it's a familiar problem in wine too.
• A customer saying they have too much wine isn't necessarily saying they no longer want your wine.
• A skip, downgrade, frequency change, or smaller shipment can solve the actual problem without ending the membership.
• Customers already manage flexible subscriptions throughout the rest of their lives.
• In Awtomic's winery case-study conversations, wineries frequently discover that their customers were ready for more control before the winery was.

What to do:

Start with your cancellation reasons. If members say they have too much wine:

• Let them skip the next shipment.
• Offer fewer bottles.
• Reduce shipment frequency.

If they don't like everything in the shipment:

• Allow swaps.
• Introduce customization.

If price has become an issue:

• Offer a smaller membership tier.
• Allow them to downgrade instead of cancel.

You don't have to change your entire traditional club at once. Testing a more flexible option allows wineries to see what customers actually choose and use that data to make informed decisions.

The takeaway:

Make it easier to solve the reason someone wants to leave instead of making it harder for them to leave.

“Flexibility is extremely powerful because it lowers the barrier to conversion. It makes it less risky to try something if you know you can get things when you want them, get what you want, and cancel if it's not right for you anymore.”

Emily Yuhas, Founder & CEO, Awtomic

4. Create More Value Without Offering Another Discount

DTC brands experiment constantly with incentives, but those incentives aren't always another 20% off. Some of the most interesting examples from our conversation involved access, customization, gifts, exclusivity, and identity.

Why this matters:

Not only are discounts easy for competitors to copy, but they're also easy for customers to forget. A benefit that's specific to your winery can have relatively little hard cost while carrying much higher perceived value.

A few examples from the webinar:

• Ipsy has used referrals to unlock products or additional customization.
• Magic Spoon has used a branded spoon as an incentive: simple, inexpensive, and directly connected to the product.
• DTC beverage brands use trial packs to let customers discover what they like before making a larger commitment.
• Liquid Death has built an identity around an otherwise extremely ordinary product: water.
• One wine club gives members a steak knife with each shipment, gradually building a complete set.
• Another idea discussed was seed kits that grow inside an empty wine bottle, connecting the gift back to the product after the bottle is gone.

“Access is a really powerful motivator instead of just a discount. I've seen remarkable campaigns to grow your opt-in list that don't offer a discount at all. What they're offering is access.”

Jennie Gilbert, Founder, RedChirp

What to do:

Look at your current membership benefits and ask:

1. What do our best customers actually value?
2. What access do we have that non-members don't?
3. What products or experiences naturally complement our wine?
4. What could members collect, unlock, customize, or gain access to over time?
5. What would feel uniquely ours rather than like generic wine-club swag?

Then test one against the equivalent discount.

The takeaway:

The best incentive is the one your customers would actually care about, not the one with the highest dollar value.

“When you can find the thing that goes perfectly with your story and leans into that identity, and make it an incentive to convert, that can be really powerful.”

Emily Yuhas, Founder & CEO, Awtomic

5. Know When Not to Copy DTC

Not every lesson flowed from DTC to wine. When we started talking about SMS, Jenny pointed out an area where wineries are often ahead of ecommerce brands: actually talking with customers instead of marketing at them.

Why this matters:

Many DTC brands have gotten exceptionally good at automating communication. But efficiency and hospitality aren't always the same thing. Wineries already have teams accustomed to:

• Answering questions
• Making recommendations
• Helping with orders
• Managing reservations
• Solving delivery problems
• Remembering customer preferences
• Having actual conversations

Technology should make those interactions easier to deliver, not eliminate them.

What to do:

Look at your customer experience and separate transactions from hospitality. Let customers self-serve when they simply want to:

• Update a credit card
• Change an address
• Swap a bottle
• Skip a shipment
• Adjust a membership

Make it incredibly easy to reach a person when they actually need help.

The webinar's example was two-way shipment notifications. Instead of only telling a customer their wine is arriving tomorrow, let them respond if they won't be home or something needs to change.

The takeaway:

Automate the things customers don't need a person for so your team has more time for the interactions where a person actually matters.

“I know the purpose of today's discussion is what wineries can learn from DTC brands, but this is actually something where we need to give credit where credit is due. DTC brands could learn from wineries here. Wineries are doing a fantastic job texting with their customers instead of just texting at them.”

Jenny, RedChirp

Start With One

You don't need to tackle all five of these at once.

• Acquisition: Find customers beyond the tasting room.
• Experimentation: Test one assumption you've been making about your customers.
• Membership: Give members another option before cancellation.
• Value: Test an incentive that isn't a discount.
• Hospitality: Automate a transactional task and make human help easier to access.

Ultimately one of the most useful lessons DTC brands can offer wineries is that you don't have to know the perfect answer before you start. Pick the biggest opportunity, then measure what happens.

Watch the recorded webinar or get in touch with Awtomic.