5 Questions Your Data Should Answer

This post identifies the types of answers wineries should get from their customer information.  When Winealytics first works with our clients, their biggest surprise comes from how much more they can learn from their existing data.  This often comes down to the questions we ask of it and how that shapes our analysis.  If your analysis of your winery’s performance doesn’t provide these answers, you should figure out why and fix it.

WHERE ARE WE?

Most clients have this one at least partially covered.  Looking at your business, it comes down to answers about revenue year to date and year over year.  Moving to customers, it can get into active customers, the number of club members, and number of orders.  Moving up the customer lifecycle, most organizations watch some number of digital marketing elements like web traffic, Instagram followers, and more.  Fewer wineries know details like the number of new customers acquired by channel (email, tasting room, web, etc.)  These types of questions lead to the next level of answers. 

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

If you only have the “Where are we” questions answered, you lose a lot of knowledge about your winery.  To capture those insights so you can build on your momentum, you need to know “how did we get here?”  Knowing the trends that have shaped your business allow you to identify strengths and you can amplify to your benefit.  You often discover interesting positive trends you didn’t actively pursue but you absolutely can strengthen and make a part of your strategy.

You also need to incorporate this backwards looking trend analysis to get the full value from your data work.  This serves as a foundation for learning not only what works and what drives your business but also learning how to more accurately forecast and make the right strategic decisions.  

WHERE SHOULD WE GO?

Backwards facing trend analysis does more than just answer the “how did we get here.”  It also starts to show you “where should we go.”  In short, what can you do by capitalizing on your strengths and closing  up your weaknesses?  You can’t address all of them, so you strategically choose the best ones to address.  By making these choices you begin to understand the potential impact to your business and strategies to make it happen.  For example, you may see that wine club members historically buy 7.5x more wine over 5 years than general consumers.  You also see that your wine club has grown anywhere from 9% to 3% in each of the past 6 years.  Based on these insights, you decide you want to lift wine club growth to 8% year over year for each of the next 3 years.

HOW SHOULD WE GET THERE?

Now you have an informed goal based on past performance but how do you get there?  Your data helps point the way.  It can tell you how you acquire club members based on first sale size, typical number or size of purchase before joining, geographic and demographic tendencies, and more. Customer insights also refine your tactics to achieve the goal.  You may find you have lost more and more of your 60+ year old club members over the past 3 years.  The data may find buying behaviors they had that signal a weakening of their connection to the club or a geographic trend from members outside a particular distance from your winery.  If you want to grow your club membership by 8% for the year (where), you’ll need to reverse this trend (how) or you’ll be fighting a headwind.  On the other side, you can also discover unexpected growth drivers and strengthen them with a more concerted focus, whether it involves building on momentum with 35 to 45 year olds from a 70 mile radius of your winery or other discovered insight.  Although just an example, this type of specificity consistently emerges from your data and provides focus to your efforts.  That focus on a proven growth area leads to greater impact for your winery.

IS OUR PLAN WORKING?

This class of questions most often gets overlooked and really holds wineries back from building sustained growth.  If you use your data to measure and evaluate your plans it benefits your winery in three ways.  One, you learn what strategies work and which ones don’t fit your winery and brand.  Two, your team begins to learn which assumptions prove out as true and which ones behave differently than expected.  This “training” from the feedback loop strengthens your team and your overall decision making as you prune away false assumptions.  Three, your team starts to ask more pointed questions, make quicker decisions, and justify those decisions based on data.  This lifts the overall performance of your winery as you act quicker and with more focus on what actually drives your revenue.