2019 PROGRAM
Watch this page for updates of Keynote speakers, Workshop Sessions and Sponsor Sessions.
Keynote Speakers
The goal of our keynote speaker program is to provide a combination of broad-based updates on the DTC marketplace, as well as thought-provoking speakers — mainly from outside the wine industry–who inspire creative thinking and insights.
An Advance Preview of 2018 Wine Shipping Data
Larry Cormier, General Manager, ShipCompliant by Sovos, will share highlights from 2018 and how wineries can use the data to increase DTC sales in 2019. This presentation is a sneak peek on the widely-anticipated release of Sovos and Wines & Vines’ 2019 Direct-to-Consumer Wine Shipping Report. Topics covered include: Which states are buying the most wine? What varietals, regions and price points saw growth in 2018? What can we expect in 2019?
State of the States: A Legislative Update on DTC Legislation
Steve Gross, Vice President, State Relations for Wine Institute will present the “state of the states” legislative update. Steve’s presentation, a perennial favorite, will highlight recent wins, areas of concern, future priorities, and implications for winery compliance in 2019.
A Moving Target: Diversity for Profit
For years the wine business has focused primarily on male baby boomers as the key target for wine clubs and tourism. Meanwhile, the economic power of women, and especially millennials, as well as consumers of color and the LGBTQ community, continues to trend upward. There’s a real and present risk to wineries’ bottom lines if these dynamics and evolving attitudes and demographics are neglected. Recognizing that consumers are ever more diverse and demanding is critical for wineries, branding, and tasting room operations. So how can you effectively market to a broader, more diverse audience? How can inclusivity differentiate your brand from others? How will doing so increase your return on investment? Kristi Faulkner, president of WomenKind, presents her research and recommendations.
Workshop Sessions & Town Halls
Workshop Sessions provide a practical counterpoint to the more “blue ocean” topics of our keynote speaker program. Workshop Sessions offer experience-based insights, data, and tangible ideas that can implemented immediately. Our Workshop Session speakers are primarily culled from experienced professionals in wineries, wine industry suppliers and associations.
2019 Workshop Session titles, descriptions and speakers will be announced as they are finalized.
Wine Clubs Reimagined
Family wineries derive the majority of their profits from wine club subscriptions, so club member retention is top of mind for owners and club managers. Additionally, we tend to treat club members as irrelevant once they cancel – but they are still engaged with wine and our brand! What can we learn about retention from successful wineries and out-of-industry subscription businesses? How do these brands engage and retain current members, and re-engage past members? Come to this session if you are ready to think differently about attrition and hear from leaders who are winning by challenging the definition of membership. Intended Audience: Owners, General Managers, Wine Club Managers, Marketing Managers
Content Level: Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced
Moderator: Tammy Boatright, President, VingDirect. Panelists: Patricia O’Brien, Vice President of Sales & Operations, Danza del Sol Winery; Janiene Ullrich, Executive Vice President of DTC, The Family Coppola
Competing in the Age of Amazon
Much of what drives Amazon’s success is their relentless focus on customer service, fueled by constantly experimenting, testing, learning, and iterating in order to provide the best possible experience for their customers. How are we in the wine industry competing with the changing retail landscape and delivering speed, ease, accuracy, personalization and customization? Hear about solutions straight out of the Amazon playbook–ideas that create a culture that enhances the customer experience. Intended Audience: Tasting Room Managers, DTC Managers, Digital Marketing Managers, and General Managers looking for ways to stand out in an ever-increasing competitive environment.
Content Level: Intermediate, Advanced
Moderator: Adrienne Stillman, Marketing Director, WineDirect. Panelists: Miryam Chae, Director of DTC, Constellation; Susan DeMatei, President, Wine Glass Marketing; Adam Ivor, Co-Founder/VP Operations, Gliding Eagle
We May be Small but we are Mighty: Small Wineries and Strategies for Success
Managing a wine club, hosting guests, doing tours, planning events and executing digital marketing – it’s demanding on even the largest of wineries. In this workshop, small wineries will share their business models, organizational structures, techniques and creative solutions for how they get it all done. Intended Audience: Tasting Room Managers, DTC Managers, Event Managers, General Managers looking for creative ways to operate a winery with a small team, or those looking to mobilize smaller works groups within a medium-to-large company.
Content Level: Beginner, Intermediate
Moderator: Sally Srok, Principal, Inner Compass. Panelists: Carla Jeffries, Director of Hospitality, Blue Rock Vineyards; Robert Rainwater, Director of Sales & Marketing, Amista Vineyards; Jess Zander, General Manager, Fidelitas
Staying Legal with Social Media
As social media channels become more important to DTC communications, how do you keep your social media program both effective and legal? If you re-tweet a post from a retailer or restaurant, is that considered a “thing of value” by alcohol regulators? Can you promote winemaker dinners on Facebook? What about event promotion? This session will explore legal questions, outline restrictions, and recommend guidelines to help you and your team stay legal. Intended Audience:Social media managers, marketing managers who need to understand regulatory constraints.
Speaker: Tracy Genesen, Vice President and General Counsel, Wine Institute
Not Your Mother’s Marketing: Leveraging Influencers, User Generated Content, and Experiential Marketing to Drive Sales and Brand Awareness
Gone are the days when the quality of the product alone determined a brand’s success. Today, consumers rely heavily on online product reviews, word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and peers, and their own emotional triggers when making purchase decisions. This session will explore the latest successful marketing tactics and how wineries of all sizes can implement and leverage them, as well as challenges to be aware of.
Content Level: Intermediate, Advanced
Moderator: Rhonda Motil, VP Marketing, J. Lohr Vineyards & Wines. Panelists: Hope Helton, Digital Marketing/Ecommerce Manager, Sonoma-Cutrer Vineyards; Tara Guthrie, Marketing Director, William Chris Vineyards; Lamar Engel, Owner, The Wine Militia.
Driving ROI From Events
Events are terrific vehicles to create brand awareness and customer engagement, but how do you translate that into revenue? Event profitability is a challenge and executing the event often feels like more work than it’s worth. Hear how wineries large and small maximize event opportunities to drive customer engagement, drive positive social media buzz, and most importantly, drive revenue!
Content Level: Beginner, Intermediate
Moderator: Sandra Hess, DTC Wine Workshops. Panelists: Brendan Finley VP of Hospitality and DTC Retail, Wente Vineyards; Jason Haas, Partner & General Manager, Tablas Creek Vineyard.
Storyselling: Capturing Customers and Sales Through Narrative
Successful companies begin with a clear understanding of their brand essence and then communicate that through a compelling story at a macro level. But it can’t stop there! Breaking the narrative down into micro stories that entertain and create emotional connection is what ultimately sells products, especially luxury goods like wine. Winning brands stay true to their essence and leverage it across all customer touch points. In this session we’ll discuss the benefits of a compressed and focused wine storytelling skill set, and how to apply this to your customer experience online and onsite.
Content Level: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced
Moderator: Colin MacPhail, Partner, Vinfabula. Panelists: Tracy Thornsberry, Senior Brand Manager, Sonoma-Cutrer Vineyards; Chris Puppione, Sr. Manager, Sebastiani; Sam Schmitt, Vice President, Trade & Consumer Education, Adelsheim.
Sponsor Sessions
Sponsor Sessions provide our sponsors with a forum for more in-depth explorations of operational challenges and solutions than is possible in the Trade Show format. The Sponsor Sessions content is conceived and presented wholly by sponsors, but is vetted by the DTCWS Steering Committee.
2019 Sponsor Session titles, descriptions and speakers will be announced as they are finalized.
3 Transformational Changes Impacting the Digital Customer Experience and How to Apply them to Your DTC Program, Presented by Commerce7
Today’s modern retailers are all resetting customer experiences and expectations online. Using technology and data to personalize their message and recommend products, these modern retailers are able to greatly increase their sales. Learn how wineries can offer more personalized online experiences and get in front future trends and demands with minimal effort. In this session we will discuss how three transformations are impacting our industry:
- From ecommerce to personalized shopping experience
- From CRM to machine learning
- From domestic sales to global e-commerce
Discover the ways to reset the online experience and go from an outdated e-commerce structure to a modern, personalized experience. Gain insights into how to increase customer value and establish more, longer-lasting customer relationships. Through directing data and technology outward, wineries no longer have to be traditional.
Content level- Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced
Speaker: Andrew Kamphuis, Founder and President, Commerce7
Increasing Website and Tasting Room Traffic using Search Engine Optimization, Presented by Astra Digital Marketing Services
SEO matters now more than ever. With new competitors popping up in the market daily, the question becomes how does your website content break through the noise? High page-ranking search results build trust, and trust yields results, but you can’t depend on website software and developers to optimize your SEO. It all sounds great, but what are the tactics you can apply today that will make a difference for your winery? CTO of Astra Digital, Nick Billings, will walk you through the importance of SEO, how to determine your current relevance, and share best practices around what steps you can take to make an impact on your rankings to drive more qualified traffic to your site
Content level- Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced
Speaker: Nick Billings, CTO, Astra Digital Marketing Services
Personalization Made Simple: How a single customer record can help predict customer behavior and increase sales performance. Presented by eCellar.
Today, one customer record across all channels brings hospitality to life, and can help wineries predict consumer behavior. But how is that relationship managed in real time at your winery and after that consumer is back at home? Using real life examples, CEO of eCellar Paul Thienes will demonstrate ways to optimize sales and develop closer customer relationships using consumer segmentation, customization and automated communication. With simple solutions that involve Winery Reservation systems, wine clubs, and open-system websites, this best practices session will help your team tie it all together to sell more wine and increase club conversions both in the tasting room and after the winery visit.
Content level: Intermediate, Advanced
Speaker: Paul Thienes, CEO, eCellar
Structuring Winery Data for DTC Marketing – A Practical Approach, Presented by Premier Cellar
Capturing and tracking customer behavior throughout their relationship with your business is essential to build marketing strategies that appeal to their unique preferences. This session will take a deeper dive into ways wineries can implement customer lifecycle marketing using simple CRM and analytics tools. Learn practical ways to:
- Organize & Standardize Data Categories and identify meaningful input at every layer of the brand
- How to Track Touch Points throughout the customer journey
- Unleash the mystery of data metrics triggers and tools to employ data to increase sales
- Understand ways to utilize Google Analytics with minimal effort
- Build dashboards and templates with tools you have today
Content level: Intermediate, Advanced
Speaker: Corben Ketelsen, Vice President, Premier Cellar
Understand Your Unique DTC metrics vs. Market Data—Both Quantitative and Qualitative – To Better Focus on How and Where to Best Drive More DTC Sales. Presented by WISE
Your DTC dashboard tells you WHAT is happening with your customers in your DTC channels and helps you make better data-driven decisions. Your customer listening tools (like mystery shopping, social feedback, etc.) tell you WHY your metrics are the way they are. Then, comparing your own metrics to your competitive set through industry benchmarking tools, you gain new additional perspective on where to focus your attention. Get inspired by winery DTC superstars who use the full prism of these three different perspectives to drive their DTC success.
- What to measure that really matters
- Why your dashboard metrics alone are not enough to drive change
- Which actionable metrics – in light of market trends – you should most focus on
Content Level: Intermediate, Advanced
Moderator: Lesley Berglund, Chairman at WISE Academy. Panelists: Alysha Lee, Senior Manager, Hospitality at Far Niente Family of Wineries and Vineyards; Jessica Link, GM at Davis Estates; Kasey Martin DTC Program Manager at Adelaida.
