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Project Report on Social Media Marketing Services document sample
We are here. We are HERE. WE ARE HERE! The state of Wine Industry Social Media By VinTank, Derek Bromley, and Tom Wark May 6, 2009 2 Forward In my twenty years working in wine communications and marketing, I've seen two significant changes have affected the way wine companies and consumers interact and the way I serve clients: the emergence of direct shipment and the emergence of the Internet as a vital form of communications. Now a third significant change has come to wine marketing and communications: the emergence of the consumer's embrace of social networks and social media. This new development literally turns the tables on marketers. With millions of consumers, particularly those of the Millennial generation, now frequently using Social Networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace, brands are being built and defined as much by consumers and communities of consumers as they are by marketers and suppliers. The degree of change this represents can't be underestimated. When I was asked by VinTank to review a report that explores the impact that social networks and social networking tools are having on the wine industry, I approached the task with trepidation. Although I've participated in the social networking movement as well as the blogging movement for many years, the scope of what this movement means for my career, my business and my industry is not altogether clear. So, I was extraordinarily pleased, when I read through VinTank's White Paper on the subject, to finally come across a coherent, credible and altogether useful roadmap for the changes that are or will affect every member of the wine industry. In this report you'll not only find a deep delve into the functions, implications and philosophies that drive consumers into Social Network sites on the internet, but also strategies for addressing this new medium as well as profiles of those social networking tools and sites at which the wine industry should, at this moment, be directing its attention. The wine industry is notoriously slow at embracing new technologies. However, what this report makes clear is that Social Networks such as Facebook, Twitter, VinCellar, CellarTracker, and more don't simply represent a new technology, but rather a new paradigm for consumer action and consumer motivation. Tom Wark, Founder Wark Communications www.warkcommunications.com ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 3 Table of Contents Introduction 4 Why in the World 5 The Boring Part – The Process 6 Let's Get Legal 8 Bring In the Experts 9 A Little Perspective 10 Let's Get to the Meat, Now We're Talking About the Big Boys 13 Facebook 14 Twitter 16 LinkedIn 17 WineLibrary.tv, a.k.a. Gary Vaynerchuk, a.k.a. The Thunder Show 18 Can You Measure? Of Course You Can! And of Course You SHOULD! 19 Now Let's Talk Social Wine 21 The Impression Chart by VinTank 23 Adegga 24 CellarTracker 29 Cork'd 35 Snooth 38 VinCellar by Vinfolio 46 WineLog 55 OK, for Fun - A Mashup 59 Bloggers, Blobbers, Whatever, They Got Some Power 60 About the Authors 63 Thank You 69 Recommended Reading 71 Good Additional Tools for the Hard Core 72 Social Media/Network Company Questionnaire 76 ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 4 Introduction This has been a herculean labor of love for our organization but we must first present an apology. Sometimes our ambition exceeds our means. When we first decided to publish this report, we had no real idea what a task this would be. Couple that with a brand new business and all the associated challenges, the interactivity with all the organizations, the legal reviews, and just doing our day jobs, we found that completing this report was more than we originally anticipated. Just as difficult is the speed of which things change - as fast as we'd review, there would be new changes (Facebook fan pages), new features, new companies and new ways to measure. This paper is by no means the ultimate answer in wine social media nor does it cover every possible strategy or tactic. However, we hope it offers one of the first real sign posts for our industry to begin to look at traveling down the road of wine social media. We hope it sparks ideas, conversations, and success for wine companies on the Internet. Please also make sure to read our thanks at the end of this document to all the people who helped and inspired us. We hope you enjoy our work and look forward to sharing a glass of wine with you in the future. VinTank Left to right: Eric Hsu, Patrick Angeles, Paul Mabray, Joel Vincent ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 5 Why in the World? Why in the world would you do this? The world is changing best way we believe we can continue to help the industry is by around us as we speak. Finally (and we mean FINALLY) the focusing on segments to analyze, give our objective analysis, Internet is affecting the wine industry in significant ways. and publish these reports for free to all wine industry players. Sales, marketing, operations and more are being streamlined We fundamentally believe that this democratization of by the web. Since the 2005 Supreme Court case (Granholm v. information is one of the best ways that we can help the wine Heald), we have seen more changes in the last four years than industry succeed. But we felt more was required than just in the previous seventy years. The winds of change are blowing analysis. We put ourselves in the role of what would we do as through our industry and it is nothing if not exciting. The an e-business employee at a wine company and added our Internet itself is also going through this type of revolution. The opinions of strategies, tactics, tools and measurement notion of "social networks" is the current focal point of techniques we would employ to manage this key emerging transformational ways we use the Web. The convergence of channel. With the proliferation of wine social networks (28 and these two transformations created a cloud of confusion and counting) and social media experts, this information could at incredible challenges for wine companies looking to succeed in least create a baseline understanding of how, what and why this brave new world. wine companies should participate with this part of the Internet and where they should spend their resources (dollars We believe in helping wine online. All of our previous and time) to get the maximum ROI from their activities. companies (that we worked at or founded) and activities have been expressions of this passion: BevAccess.com, We hope to continue these types of reports for all things wine WineShopper.com/Wine.com, Inertia, Direct-to-Trade, and digital. We are looking to analyze wine "marketing OpenWineConsortium.org, RethinkCompliance.com and now agents", e-commerce providers, email service providers, mobile VinTank. Each one contributing a small modicum of positive services, POS providers, and much, much more. It is our hope change to the industry we love. Considering the amount of that wine companies find these reports helpful in making transformation occurring between wine and technologies, the strategic and tactical decisions to better run their businesses. Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Talk about it at www.vintank.com/?p=121 Tweet about it #vintank ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 6 The Boring Part – the Process Ok, if you don't like boring paragraphs, please skip to the next more of the online wine social universe needs analysis. We section. We know that this report has both math and opinions worked hard to include international groups and blogs, in that people may or may not agree with and will have many addition to domestic groups and blogs. Our parameters yielded supporters and critics. To ensure total transparency, the a grouping that looked like this: following was the methodology we went through in order to arrive at our results. Social Networks It all started with a goal. We started with a pure and simple • Business to Business objective - to understand where wine companies should focus • Consumer Focused their attentions with regard to wine social media, and how relevant is wine social media in terms of audience and ability to Wine Related Bloggers help wine companies, as well as wine consumers succeed online. Understanding this context will help you understand • Wineries why the report is built this way and what information we • Wine Reviews researched. • Business-to-Business First we had to build a team. VinTank already had a group of Then we defined our scope of what is "wine social media." strong wine e-business professionals, but we felt that to do a Wikipedia defines social media as: complete job, we needed to recruit outside help with different experiences as well a clear high level of experience in dealing "Social media is information content created by people using with wine online and social media. Our first recruit was Derek highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. At its Bromley. As Co-Founder of BevAccess in the heady "Web 1.0" most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, days of the late 1990's, Derek has spent the better part of his read and share news, information and content. It's a fusion of career at the convergence of wine and technology. He has also sociology and technology, transforming monologue (one to led e-business efforts from both the winery and wine retailer many) into dialog (many to many) and is the democratization of perspective, so was able to bring a unique and valued point of information, transforming people from content readers into view to our efforts. Since most of the research team had publishers." worked together for years we wanted another fresh, unbiased perspective to ensure objectivity of the report. Wow. That's a lot to digest! In order to simplify it we had to look at all the types of services that fit into this continuum. We Second, we went to the grandfather of the wine blogosphere soon lost control. Between blogs, social networks, news who has helped legitimize wine bloggers through his efforts groups, forums, vlogs, podcasts, microblogs, e-commerce sites with the American Wine Blog Awards, Tom Wark. He was a key with comments, and so many more, the project asked us to contributor in helping us craft the questions and thoughts analyze hundreds, if not thousands, of companies. The associated. mountain looked daunting at that point. To simplify we focused on our objective and created this small filter: In order to ensure we had strong data, we looked to people we knew focused on measuring social network activity on the web. "Wine social networks and wine bloggers" To that end, we consulted with our client, Cruvee.com, and with what was an objective, non-VinTank client that did similar We limited this universe in order to make the task digestible. activity, James Jory from Scrugy.com. Since the start of this Between those two realms, we could focus on where paper, these two companies found such synergy that they have consumers paid the most attention, as well as where wine since merged. companies have been asked to interact. As a result, much ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 7 After establishing our parameters for measurement, we networks and applied our understanding against our filter. We created an online form for wine bloggers to fill out, asking factored in almost all relevant data from these sites, including them pertinent questions to understand influence and different time to register, clicks to submit wine, number of features, methods of influence. Upon every submission we used number of conversations, and on and on. Compete, Alexa, Quantcast, Yahoo, and Technorati to capture data regarding each blogger. We primarily used Compete. As we analyzed the economic models of each network we put Moreover, we asked Cruvee and Scrugy to give us even more them through the regulatory filter. This part of the report detail about the bloggers in their database (frequency of posts, became a key "rabbit hole," as we got deeper and deeper into common comment themes, and more). What arrived in our lap antiquated regulatory challenges associated with selling and was a plethora of data that we might publish in a separate marketing wine online (much as we were already aware). As a report. result, we consulted with Hinman and Carmichael to provide clarity to the challenges we surfaced. Just for the record, we For the social networks, we analyzed traffic, users, and the DO believe these laws are outdated, but we needed to network in general. From that list we decided on 7 networks to demonstrate our objective interpretation and understanding so send our detailed questionnaire. We received mostly complete that companies can avoid regulatory challenges and can create responses from all except Corkd.com and only a partial healthy online revenue models. response from Snooth.com. With each of the responses, we scheduled a phone interview to clarify the answers to the Our legal team then reviewed each parts of our report. It went questions. We then applied the same measurement tools we through multiple iterations and multiple styles until we settled used for wine bloggers. on the results you are reading now. The measurements for all were conducted within 24/48 hours In conjunction, we analyzed the major non-wine focused social from February 10th for the social networks and February 28th networks differently and have recommended tools at the end for wine bloggers. of this document that we like to use to manage our social network activities. We also include some high level strategies, We then determined criteria for our typical dashboard rating tactics, and recommended measurement techniques. system and what mattered most in our macro view of the networks. We determined that the two factors that mattered Upon completion of the reports, we submitted each section to most were VALUE and INNOVATION. We believe that these the appropriate organization for a review, seeking their two aspects are what contribute most perceptibly to the understanding of the facts. At the same time, this gave us a success of the wine industry online. chance to elaborate on our understandings, to ensure we had a complete picture. We spent weeks looking at the data in different ways to understand what was most relevant in helping wine companies After one last edit, the report went through a final round with see through the mist. legal counsel. Hopefully we caught most of the spelling/grammar/style errors. We then went into an extensive analysis of user interface (UI), major features, and business models of all the wine social ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 8 Let's Get Legal One regulator once told us (paraphrased), "We don't make the MasterCard, American Express, and Discover enter the fray, laws, and we only enforce them. The alcohol laws with their revenue share for every transaction model (and were enacted in a different era and never contemplated the justifiably for electronic money management services Internet. We need new legislation to deal with this new rendered). Per John Hinman, "revenue sharing is not permitted medium." We agree wholeheartedly. and is considered by regulators to be the act of the marketing agent 'availing' itself of the privilege of the license of the As wine discussion and availability becomes more widespread seller." on the Internet, we are constantly frustrated with what the lack of flexibility these antiquated laws mean for free trade, ease of We hope that in the future, "Marketing Agents" will be allowed communication and the development of new business to earn an actual percentage of the transaction for their models. The barriers of redundant age validation for e- services (the capture and transmission of customer, order, and commerce purchases, ridiculously unfair compliance reporting, financial information). Advertising activities for revenue share different rules for different wine sellers, shipping challenges, or commission, however, should be shunned by the industry business to business transaction prohibitions, marketing agent until the regulations change. It harkens back to the days where restrictions, and the inability to use traditional Internet newspaper advertisers would visit retailers and offer premier marketing models seriously interfere with the ability of the advertising position for a percent of that month's sales activity industry to experiment with different business models and for those products advertised. develop efficient operating protocols. This becomes particularly toxic to wineries and wine retailers Regulators struggle with the Internet and, at no fault of theirs, due to their inability to "out SEO" the companies built just for do not have the discretion to be more flexible. However, until this type of activity. What results is companies leveraging the regulations change, we strongly recommend that companies Internet to gain a higher natural search rating to pull the conducting business on the Internet consult with their attorney audience AWAY from the winery or retailer in order to earn to conform to the existing restrictions. This is especially true that commission. We do believe in marketing agent models for the burgeoning wine social networks who are working as and advertising models that use cost per click (CPC), cost per hard as possible to not only serve their users, but also generate thousand (CPM), or flat fees based on activity over time. revenue from their business. Why are we so strong on this topic? As John Hinman states, "In In analyzing the marketing models and the current wine essence, because these types of transactions endanger the regulations, as communicated to us by our alcohol regulatory licenses of the sellers, and could result in disciplinary liability to counsel, our understanding is that straight revenue the sellers and criminal liability to the company." That is not share models for marketing activities for social networks may value or innovation for the wine industry. be unlawful. Although we hope companies like Visa, ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 9 Bring In the Experts Since we are not lawyers, we sought to bring in the experts. the licenses of the selling entities (the wineries). The failure to There are many great wine industry firms; however, one of our be part of the licensed entity would endanger the licenses of the personal favorites is Hinman and Carmichael sellers, and could result in disciplinary liability to the sellers and (Beveragelaw.com). Hinman and Carmichael is a firm that has criminal liability to the marketing agents. been an innovative cornerstone since we can remember (showing our age) and has a fantastic team. One of the Affiliate advertising models that use language like the following partners we have much more experience with, and with whom would seem to be especially exposed: some of us at VinTank have been doing business with our 'Featured Merchants must install a small amount of tracking whole careers, is John Hinman. A true leader in wine law, we code on their checkout page to track the sales made by X especially appreciate his penchant for encouraging fair trade company.' and innovation through technology. Our inside joke is that "everyone in the wine industry is one degree of separation This statement is a killer. If sales are 'made by X company' then from John Hinman." X company needs to be licensed. If it is NOT licensed, then it is selling alcohol without a license, which is a crime. He and his firm have seen almost everything since the dawn of direct to consumer shipping (John was the lawyer who Is there a different model that works better? Yes. That would be developed the Windsor Vineyards national DTC model in the the "true advertiser" model where there is a fixed advertising late 1970's) and the firm continues to assist the industry fee based on total account activity over a discrete period, no through tweaking new technologies so that modern Internet direct connection between the marketing agent and the winery businesses can successfully navigate the laws. So our natural other than the exchange of information and the posting of tendency would be to refer John's actual statements about advertising material and clear identification of the selling entity online wine advertising models. Below is the official statement at all stages." from Hinman and Carmichael: What does this all mean? It means that if you have questions "It is becoming increasingly clear based on the public about participation in any online advertising model please statements of the regulators that any 'marketing agent' that consult your wine counsel or Hinman and Carmichael. We do participates in an individual sale (for any % commission) will be hope these challenges of antiquated laws are resolved (and we unlawfully participating in the gross revenue from the sale of at VinTank hope to help catalyze many of them) sooner than alcohol. To be lawful, the marketing agent would have to be on later. ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 10 A Little Perspective The latest buzz is about Social Networking and Social Media. read Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. Ironically the web has almost always been built around social (groundswell.forrester.com and bit.ly/PghJm) interactions since way back when. For those of you who have lived through the dawn of the Internet and the "World Wide Some Successful Social Networks Date Web," you may recall that in its most basic form, the Internet UseNet 1979 was built to allow people to communicate and be social. EUnet 1982 Harkin back to a time in your head when dial up modems FidoNet 1984 consisted of putting a phone on a base to get to the Internet. IRC 1988 When a floppy disk was really floppy. Now that you've traveled Geocities 1994 back in time, remember when BBS's ruled the world and a chat room was a new way to interact with people? Your first time Classmates.com 1995 hearing, "you've got mail!" These were the earliest forms of Epinions 1999 social networking tools via the Internet. Universities, students, Second Life 2003 and government agencies used social tools proficiently and Friendster 2003 endemically birthing a nation of people accustomed to using Myspace 2003 computers to communicate socially. With the advent of a web Linkedin 2003 browser, the "World Wide Web" proliferated. In our opinion Delicious 2003 (though there were precursors) the first foray into social Facebook 2004 networks started with a company called Geocities, an era Digg 2004 started in 1994 and that just ended in April of 2009 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoCities). Soon thereafter the Yelp 2004 first real social network that focused on duplicating offline Bebo 2005 relationships online was Classmates.com, which launched in Youtube 2005 1995. Since then, social networks have proliferated. Ning 2005 Winelibrary.tv (yes, he isn't a social network but when 2006 Today, launching a social network is as easy as pie. There are you read below you'll understand" ) hundreds of open source tools, as well as great SaaS (Software Twitter 2006 as a Service) companies like Ning (www.ning.com) that enable non-techies to easily create and launch social networks. The rapid growth of social network usage over the last decade Moreover, the concept of application programming interfaces has been unprecedented by almost any type of online tool (API's) allows services to be built to interact with these services except for the major search engines. Instead of us or build on top of them. What is more, the concept of social regurgitating the information, if you want a good breakdown of working habits is also becoming commonplace as a result of the the statistics please read Jeremiah Owyang's blog post (one of ethos of open source technology. For example, companies like our favorite online analysts) at bit.ly/PVkKC Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com) leverage user generated content, moderation, and interaction to build a complex Or you can look at Nielsen's PDF report at bit.ly/XKVN3 content site. Furthermore, the frenzy of niche social networks and media is also amazing. There is a niche social network for What is more amazing is the amount of content being almost any hobby or interest on the Internet. produced by these networks. In an interview by the Financial Express with Andrew Tomkins, the director of search research For any individuals who create or manage social networks and at Yahoo! Research, Andrew states: happen to be reading this paper we highly recommend you ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 11 "If you look at the amount of new searchable content that is Why are social media sites important to your brand? Two being produced every day, you will find that the amount of major elements lend importance to social media for wine content that comes from the social media is much more than brands. First, wineries have fans --- like musicians and bands. the amount of content that is produced by traditional, To be more specific, winery customers follow a sales/brand professional media (like newspapers or professionally developed web sites). In traditional media, around five acceptance funnel, from lead to prospect to customer to gigabytes per day of content is being created. Social media regular customer to evangelist. The psychology of a wine content already may be at least twice that. consumer lends them to want to have a direct relationship with the winery. Social media sites are key enablers of this type of Social media is a category that was unknown and has shot interaction (you can see the success that MySpace has had with forward in the volume of content. Almost, 10-15% of global musicians). By participating in social media, fans of your brand consumption worldwide is of this kind of material rather than will self-select themselves to interact with you and thus the traditional stuff. The jury is still out on whether the quality increase the level of contact you have with them over that of per word of social media content will be lower than professional content." them visiting your website alone. In addition, social media can help consumers at the earlier stages of the acceptance funnel The entire article is available at bit.ly/11fwNh. progress more quickly into the all-important "customer" stage and beyond to fandom. As such, social media is an inexpensive Imagine what this will mean to the wine industry in terms of way to connect with new, current and future customers. The wine reviews, ESPECIALLY with the anticipated groundswell of key is to recognize social networks as part of your wine drinkers emerging with the maturation of the Millennial "communication strategy," not just a place to spam your generation AND the fact that this is their chosen methodology contact list. Moreover, the rules of engagement with of Internet use. The industry's understanding and usage of customers on social networks are conversational (two-way and these mediums will be crucial in anticipation of their continued interest in wine and the promise of them spending more and many-to-many communication) versus old push marketing more expendable income. (one-way communication). Why do social networks and social media have so much growth There is an old saying – "wineries live and die by their tasting and attention? In our opinion, it is a number of factors. room traffic" (if they have one). That limitation doesn't allow Humans are, by nature, social and like to connect especially wineries to grow beyond their walled garden and limits their with people of like-minded interests. Social networks, in consumer direct programs. The web is the great equalizer for general, cost nothing to sign up for and participation is free. brand expansion. A customer that comes to a winery's website Blogs give anyone a digital Guttenberg press that publishes to and buys directly is the most valuable customer a winery can the world, at no cost other than time. Social networks offer acquire and carries a low acquisition cost. Wineries must features that promote stickiness for you through fun features recognize that e-commerce needs to be fed properly in order and useful tools. Our culture has shifted its focus to the to grow their business. Wine retailers must also learn to better "search engine" – we use them regularly, and most social harness this channel. Understandably, there are many friction networks and social tools have become adept at allowing us to points for selling online (compliance, shipping costs, weather, use that mentality to allow us to explore and search for people, selection, etc.) but the future for wine is e-business. concepts, or groups that we know or have similar tastes and affinities. They do this through a myriad of tools but mostly Additionally, as email marketing continues to become less through using descriptions or tags in our profiles. As an effective, new channels for customer acquisition are sorely example, think how simple YouTube is. But prior to YouTube needed. One of the benefits of social networks is they tend to creating tags, video content was virtually unsearchable on the be a place where people identify their preferences ("I like web. Finally, social media allows us to interact through wine") as well as engage in conversations ("I just had the best comments and tools that allow for conversations. That is the chardonnay EVER"). This gives a wine company a filter to essence of social media – interactivity and engagement. identify people who might have an affinity towards a product they are selling and potentially create customer conversion or ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 12 increase the LTV (Life Time Value) of the customers that are Vaynerchuk (garyvaynerchuk.com). When net influencers already speaking about their products. speak well about your wine, thousands of people listen, many advance forward in your brand's acceptance funnel, and some Finally, the secret sauce to social networks is not only engaging buy. That is not to say you ignore people without influence. in conversations, but engaging the influencers. Using a real But you need to focus your efforts on those that create the world analogy, we would argue that restaurants like Tra Vigne , best return on investment of your time. Do not mistake high Mustard's, and Cole's Chop House are the some of the most levels of contacts/friends/followers as influence. Influence is a powerful restaurants for CA wines in the United States. combination of "listeners," "messengers," "engagers," and Retailers, restaurateurs, wholesalers, wine critics, and strong "meaningful voices." Let's not forget the magnetism and wine buying consumers who visit Napa Valley tend to visit one charisma with which some people are born. To see an example of these restaurants and in turn have very select wine brands of a successful net influence campaign, we recommend you impressed upon them. This makes restaurants very powerful read this great article by Wendy Piersall influencers. Wine brands that have placements in these (www.wendypiersall.com/influencer-marketing-case-study- restaurants frequently see bumps in their local, regional and kmart-holiday-hoopla-contest/). even national placements, which can result in thousands of additional cases being sold due to the exposure. The same Over time, we predict that social media will evolve into social notion applies to social media. Aggressively communicating in commerce, especially in the wine industry. Remember, the conversations with net influencers, whose voice impacts number one catalyst for making a purchase is hundreds, if not thousands, is key. Examples of net influencers recommendation. Online consumers are turning more towards in wine include Alder Yarrow (www.vinography.com), Dr. Xeno community opinion for purchase recommendations and relying (www.winelog.net/blog/author/drxeno/), Dr. Vino less on professional reviews. (www.drvino.com), and the grand daddy of them all, Gary ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 13 Let's Get to the Meat, Now We're Talking About the Big Boys Dealing with any social network, let alone wine networks, 2. The utility of these platforms for updating statuses, using seems daunting. As with anything we recommend that you widgets, and simply browsing, causes these platforms to have have your house in order before venturing into these deep some of the highest levels of stickiness of any website. waters. Make sure you have processes, strategies, and staff for (Stickiness is the tendency of a visitor to stay on (engage with) your current e-business before starting the journey into this a website. The longer the visitor stays, the stickier the site.) area of the Internet. Wineries should assign staff resources in anticipation of your e-business needs in order to achieve key 3. The streams of real-time conversations make immediate preparatory goals in the weeks or months prior to and after interactivity with (potential) customers and boost the value and launching an active social media campaign. For those forward meaning of the social interaction. thinking brands, e-business will become a more prevalent portion of your business and should yield the highest return on 4. These platforms have open application programming investment (ROI) in sales, customer acquisition and retention. interfaces (API's, tools and services, which encourage second Last but not least, Social Networks are NOT a panacea for party technological extensions of the service far beyond the sales. Social Networks are a powerful communication tool and walls of the URL), creating even deeper market penetration. customer service channel that can help catalyze sales by advancing consumers through your brand acceptance funnel, 5. Most of the networks have alert tools to let you know when and help increase the LTV of customers. Running a social there has been activity associated with your account and bring media marketing program without the integration of other you back to interact with the conversations and events that communication and sales channels will mostly likely lead to have happened in your absence. disappointing results. We strongly advise that you choose a maximum of three of the What makes Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more so different major platforms on which to focus your initial efforts due to and special? Here are five reasons: extensibility, demographics, total users, and pure time commitment (Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn). We also 1. People create profiles (partial or complete) that others see recommend that the effort you invest beyond that of the big and can, without friction, connect to likeminded people. Users three be focused on wine related social networks as this is tend to create online friendships/associations, which already where your highest concentration of customers will be. If you exist in a real world, physical relationship. This adds relevance find additional bandwidth, you may venture into MySpace.com and value to the statements made about products, services, or if you have time and video expertise Viddler, Vimeo, or people, places, etc. YouTube are good places to engage video social networks. ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 14 Company Facebook Twitter MySpace LinkedIn # of U.S. Members 78.6MM 6.1MM 65.7MM 39.2MM Age 60% 18-49 78% 18-49 60% 18-49 74% 18-49 Income 31% 60-100k 24% 60-100k 27% 60-100k 31% 60-100k (30% 100k+) (27% 100k+) (25% 100k+) (37% 100k+) Education 58% college/grad 63% college/grad 48% college/grad 76% college/grad Gender 55% female 53% female 58% female 43% female Facebook What was a college connection service has grown up to be the kiosks" within a very highly trafficked web mall. We do not king of all social networks. Recently exceeding MySpace traffic, mean to diminish the potential and probably inevitable effect Facebook is particularly key for wineries due to the of these "web kiosks." On the contrary, as we speak to the demographic overlay with wine consumers. Moreover, with aspect of social commerce, these "web kiosks" and their the plethora of participating wineries, the consumers who personalities are able to inject themselves into conversations. identify "wine" in their profile, the ability to segregate They will also reap continued sales and develop customers with advertising by "legal drinking age", and its wine widgets, a longer life time value as the platforms continue to grow, Facebook dominates the space. Widgets created by VinCellar providing high levels of stickiness. However, the beauty of the (www.vincellar.com), Bottlenotes (www.bottlenotes.com), extensibility of these sites also may yield to challenges down WineBeagles (www.winebeagles.com), and more help to even the road if advertising is the key revenue driver. Sites like better foster Facebook as a wine friendly social network. Ping.fm and services similar to Seesmic build on top of these Calling Facebook a wine friendly platform is an platforms but never drive the traffic back to the parent site. understatement. When typing in wine in the search bar, you This allows users to have conversations outside of the site and will find over 5000 people with wine as a description, over 5000 will force the networks to look at how they monetize users' pages (the limit for search results), over 5000 groups, over activities vs. site visits. 5000 events, and over 300 applications that refer to wine (some mismatches). What is more amazing is that some of the First, there are common pitfalls in which wineries find their groups/pages have significant members. The Red Wine group programs. So let's quickly talk about poor Facebook business for example has 125,883 fans and a few groups have similar etiquette. Don't use it ONLY as a cheap email list acquisition numbers. Conversely there are groups and pages with only 1 tool. Yes, it works quickly and allows you to add lots of names, member. but the bombardment of information and email blasts from wineries currently on Facebook is causing pretty significant This leads to a new opportunity we see in the Internet in backlash. Until the transformative changes from social network general, but especially with major social networks. It is what to social commerce, Facebook should be leveraged as a part of we at VinTank call the "web kiosk" effect. Mall kiosks are small your PR and marketing plan but with different engagement. extensions of stores, brands, and services placed in high traffic locations to capture the impulse buyer. The cost structure is Secondly, have the system administrator of your winery set up lower than opening a full store and the staffing costs are less as winery/wine retailer profile and add a winery/wine retailer fan well. However, there is still a cost to running and maintaining page. Make sure to document the username and profile and these kiosks. Facebook fan pages and groups are the "web only allow web managers access. Add your staff as ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 15 administrators. To read how to set up a page, read buying—or buy more--from you (winery onsite, but mostly your www.facebook.com/pages/create.php. Fan pages are a website), and to extend the lifetime value of your customers relatively new feature in the platform, but we feel their usage through more frequent social interaction. All of these and strength far outweigh the deficiencies of the older notion activities lead back to one thing - sales. If you remember those of groups. Some experts recommend you do both a fan page principals, it will make it easier for you to devise your Facebook and a group, but if you have limited resources and wish to communication strategy around meaningful social interaction avoid overloading your customers, we recommend only doing a and sales conversion. For example, putting fan events only on fan page. your Facebook page or offering them special discounts for being fans should be easy no-brainers. Post events, contests, Here are the quick reasons why we recommend Facebook Fan and great ratings as well. Local placements like "hey, we just Pages: got in by the glass at Rubicon. If you are eating there, give us a try and let the group know how your dinner was." • Statistics Also make sure to connect your activities. There are plenty of • Fan pages are visible to Google, and so extend beyond widgets that allow you to publish your tweets and your blog the Facebook community posts on your Facebook fan page in an automated fashion. With the new diffusion of attention on the Internet, you want • More freedom with content your efforts and activities to be spread across as many of the networks as possible. • Built in advertising tools Finally, create community. Community building really follows • Events the math of a bass diffusion model (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bass_diffusion_model). Finding savvy • Adding third party applications (even your own) influencers to assist you in managing and participating in the Here are the key weaknesses with Fan Pages community not only ramps the users up faster, but creates user relevance and extends the life of the community. Bringing in • Updates show up in the right hand update bar. With new community leaders is instrumental to extending the life of the plethora of "noise" many users tend to overlook the community. By promoting community through meaningful the updates so it requires more marketing to drive conversations on the shared passion of wine, your brand people to your fan page. creates a draw for likeminded individuals. More importantly, as the community develops, your need to drive people to the • Inviting members does not allow you to send a community reduces while the community organically develops message with the invitation relationships and interests in your brand through word of mouth. The smaller the community, the more work that you • The display of members and discussions are not as will be required to do. We strongly recommend that you conducive to member interaction. The status stream create a "rules of engagement" paper and distribute to all staff is the main interaction tool and is designed for who may participate in the Facebook fan page. While many communications from the company admins to the staff may wish to help edit your Facebook page, be sure that fans. only web and tech savvy staff have administrative rights. Never forget that all your goals and activities on Facebook are for two key reasons: inspiring consumers (including trade) to advance through your brand acceptance funnel and begin ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 16 Twitter What is Twitter? We are not sure that anyone really knows. to the RSS feed in Outlook to pay attention to mentions of Defined as a microblogging site, it allows you to post comments items that are relevant to you in your normal activity of email. in 140 characters or less. It works like a giant stream of conversations in a worldwide chat room. People can then What kind of tactics should you deploy on Twitter? If you follow you based on your content or similar interests and remember your objective from before, simply follow the same engage you in conversations. Even if they don't, your principals you utilized with Facebook. Your end goal is to conversations are a running log that can be viewed by anyone create meaningful relationships with your customers and drive on the web. For us Twitter is the real time pulse of culture and them back to you (physically or to your website) or to your news across the world that you can measure, engage, or just partners (retailers and restaurants) to buy your wine. watch. Let's talk about how you deal with Twitter. • Make sure you list your website in your profile. Be First, owning your brand on this platform is paramount even if transparent. People want to know where you work. you are not ready to do actual activity. Similar to owning • Talk about your site or your Facebook fan page on domains, you need to capture the various iterations of your Twitter when you have meaningful content or brands' names on Twitter. The last thing you want is to have announcements. someone impersonating you and misrepresenting your • Engage in conversations with key influencers, products and brands. Just like the domain rush, we have seen remembering that prolific tweeters are not necessarily people cyber-squatting Twitter names. You don't have to influential. overdo it. Focus on your brand and derivatives for your • Watch for conversations that relate to your brand employees (see @Zappos for a great example). If anyone tries (good and bad) and engage in them. to extort you or is misusing your brand, you can find the rules • Organize and meet people with a "tweetup". This is for cyber squatting Twitter names at: where you post your location and invite people to join help.twitter.com/forums/26257/entries/18370. Finally, make you. This is a great way to bridge the gap between sure to tweet occasionally so you do not lose your username. offline and online. Have your sales reps do tweetups at restaurants where they are visiting. If you're good So how do you use Twitter? How often should you Twitter? enough at it, you may generate a "flash mob" Why should you use Twitter? Isn't it just one big chat room? A (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_mob). Some brands huge investment of time? A black hole in which time have been very effective to creating mini-flash mobs – disappears? The answer is yes to all three of the last questions. kogibbq.com (press about Koji at But at the same time, Twitter is a direct line to real-time www.mercurynews.com/restaurants/ci_12246087) conversations about your brand, products, wines, wine • The best way to drive people back to your site or fan business, customers, and more. You follow people that you page is to treat your tweet as a super juicy enticing feel have good content, good input, and conversations that are headline. meaningful to you. As an exercise, go to search.twitter.com. It • Ask questions and then respond. is a new search functionality that permits you to save searches. • Participate in "retweets" for topics you support. Or, go to cruvee.com and try their free search tool to look up People will reciprocate accordingly. your brand name and see how many conversations have been • Tweet if you have something that is highly desired, had regarding your products, brand or staff. Do a few searches very limited, or very exclusive. and see how many conversations are happening about your • Tweet special offers (but don't be a spammer). main competitor, the main varietal you make, your favorite restaurant or wine store. You'll be amazed at the activity that Twitter provides the real time conversation, and through good occurs. Use search.twitter.com with your brand and subscribe marketing, you will inspire people to join in. Be smart about ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 17 how you engage in Twitter, but be sure to include it in one of the three big platforms you include in your strategy. LinkedIn While Facebook and Twitter are used for both business and Any professional in the wine industry should join these LinkedIn social networking, LinkedIn is used purely for business and is groups: one of the most overlooked networks for wine industry professionals. People underestimate this powerful network. Wine Business Network (4,315 Members) This may sound counter-intuitive, since many people use bit.ly/tyDNP LinkedIn as a job searching tool, but encourage all your staff to list their positions with your wine company in their profiles. Direct to Consumer Symposium Group (119 Members) Have them choose "Select Full View" in their settings. Create a bit.ly/8kdJF trade-oriented group for your winery. Also, ask your staff to WITS Wine Industry Technology Symposium (579 Members) list and include your blog and website URLs in their profile. bit.ly/tqqHP Since LinkedIn ranks very high in Google searches, this simple step will actually help improve your blog, Facebook Fan Page, Wine and Spirits and website ranks in Google. What makes LinkedIn so bit.ly/hLvbV significant is when someone "friends you", they have, do, or likely want to engage in business with you. This is ESPECIALLY Through self-distribution systems and emerging programs from key for winery sales representatives, winery owners, business Inertia, The Wine Tasting Network, and others, the ability to development managers, etc. One of the reasons many of us connect remotely with buyers is readily available and a viable joined the wine industry was because it was the last vestige of option for many. In LinkedIn, a search for "sommelier" yields business where you could call your competitor and ask 3,286 results and "wine buyer" yields 2,389 results. Keeping in questions like "my fermentation is stuck, what do you think?", contact with your retail buyers is key as they tend to move or "I am having trouble with my wholesaler in Kansas. Have around. Wine retailers and restaurateurs should also think the any recommendations?" and your competitor would give same about being visible to wineries as our industry is friendly and helpful feedback. Those days still exist and the transforming due to smarter technology and a changing ability to ask more people at once lives in LinkedIn (especially regulatory landscape.The search term "winery" yields 10,237 the groups). When you contact someone in LinkedIn, or they results and "wine" gives 102,782 results. contact you, your intentions are obvious. Other networks are trying to replicate the important distinction between friends and colleagues, but by initial design LinkedIn is made to service the latter. Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Talk about it at www.vintank.com/?p=121 Tweet about it #vintank ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 18 WineLibrary.tv, a.k.a. Gary Vaynerchuk, a.k.a. The Thunder Show You're probably wondering why Gary is in the "majors." Gary V arena, there is no person more powerful or influential across is a one man social network. Probably one of the most ALL networks than Gary Vaynerchuk. He understands that as controversial and yet refreshing personalities to join the wine well, and in his manic cycles chooses to dole out his influence in industry for some time - a man that is loved and hated by bite sized pieces for his community of followers, whether they many, with controversial pricing, aggressive antics, funny jokes, be people that love or hate him. Gary even has an anti-Gary's friendly demeanor, and new terminology for the wine industry. picks group that buys everything he pans. His influence can He single handedly has made people stand up and take notice sometimes move a lot of wine and no person has a mainstream of him and wine. He is a live wire, an instigator, and a man who audience of wine drinkers as large as he does on the Internet. will admit that if you listen to him long enough, he contradicts Yes, it can be argued that the traditional critics have the ears of himself. Gary is one of the wine industry's social media success the core consumers that buy wine, so their influence is greater. stories driving commerce. So much in fact, that he has a book That may be true. But our report is about wine social media, published and a multi-book deal signed. He also has the MOST and in the world of the Millennial wine consumer, Gary is king. exposure ever for a wine critic. At no time in history have you As social media extends its tentacles more and more through seen Robert Parker or any other critic get the mass audience the Millennials and non-users, the question we have is "does that Gary has achieved (Ellen, Conan, Mad Money, etc.). For Gary have the stamina to maintain his leadership position until the first time in our lives, wine has a new voice that reaches they acquire significant expendable income to become the beyond the core consumers. Why do we have Gary listed with dominant buying group for all wines?" Seeing Gary shout on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn? In the wine social network Hulu.com tells us the answer. Most likely. ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 19 Can You Measure? Of Course You Can! And of Course You SHOULD! We've put together a small dashboard of ways we at VinTank 1. ROI through customer acquisition, sales, or extended LTV. look to measure Social Media (the traditional three above). The one other factor that should be measured is TIME spent. 2. Brand "Buzz" that aids your PR/Marketing efforts to achieve The goal of these KPI's (Key Performance Indicator) is to the first goal. understand two major factors from your activities: YTD % % Increase Increase This Month Last Month (Decrease) 01/01/09 (Decrease) Facebook # fans "new" fans (not already in winery CRM database) Wall posts by fans (not by company) Event invites sent Event rsvp yeses % rsvp yes Promotions sent Opens Clicks $$ sales Sales per friend Average lifetime value Twitter Brand Chatter Index (Cruvee) Followers nd 2 order followers (twinfluence) Social Capital (twinfluence) Tweets @replies % Tweets Retweets (retweetist.com) % Tweets ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 20 YTD % % Increase Increase This Month Last Month (Decrease) 01/01/09 (Decrease) Promotions sent Opens Clicks $$ sales Sales per follower Average lifetime value LinkedIn # group members "new" members (not already in winery CRM database) Discussion posts by fans (not by company) Promotions sent Opens Clicks $$ sales Sales per follower Average lifetime value YouTube et al Total Videos posted Total Views # views per video # followers # forwards average video rating Promotions sent Opens Clicks $$ sales Sales per follower Average lifetime value ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 21 Now Let's Talk Social Wine There are approximately 250K wines produced a year, and that winery or wine retailer should deal with and how. We have number is growing every year. Unfortunately, the same thus abstracted these companies along two primary planes, hourglass effect, similar to wholesaler consolidation, occurs Value and Innovation, and determined the size of their with the limited amount of professional critics that exist. That influence based upon the total of their registered users. being said, only a portion of those wines are reviewed by critics. That leaves many products without accolades or reviews. We said two things previously in this document: the number one catalyst for wine sales is the notion of recommendation, and there is twice the amount of content being generated by social networks as there is by the traditional media. For the wine industry, this is super relevant. Very few other categories have such specific networks built around creating content to describe a product, and very few products are as complicated in understanding as wine and have such acute need for that type of content to create conversion. Wine social networks are one of the new keys for promoting brand awareness, as well as connecting wineries with qualified consumers. As one strategist told us, "boys, fish where the fish are, not where the pond is too big or too empty." That crude metaphor is especially appropriate with wine social networks. It is in these networks where people of all different levels of Amazon.com wine knowledge and walks of life share their opinions and thoughts on wine. Some networks attract more dedicated and So, back to "fishing where the fish are." There are thousands of skilled contributors, while others attract the casual reviews social networks emerging on the Internet. It is difficult to with notes like "Ka Pow!" Both are valid contributions and will determine which wine related social media network will become more useful as ecommerce becomes more peer provide you with the best ROI. It is best to determine on which driven. Take for example the godfather of all ecommerce, wine related social network your current customers, and Amazon, who understands that a mix between professional and potential customers, spend their time. Some of your peer reviews sells more of everything. These peer reviews will customers may spend a lot of time on a social network, making help both non rated and rated wines get better consumer the choice clearer. There is nothing wrong with asking your exposure and peer understanding. Of the peer reviewers, customers which social media site they use, while certain people will have different levels of credibility with other understanding that just because your products listed on a consumers, with the wineries, and with the trade. When wine particular site have a great number of reviews, your customers social networks reach critical mass, the dynamics of "live by the are not necessarily writing them as websites sometimes import critic, die by the critic", will be democratized away by the or "scrape" reviews from other sources. consumers who really consume that wine. Moreover, for the first time in history, wineries will have a true insight into what Social networks are looking for content (reviews). They need the market really thinks of their product and who is really users. Their advertising revenue, subscription plans, and other drinking their wine. Right now, these social networks are vying business needs require more users so they can become viable for an audience, the attention of wineries and the trade, and businesses. This is where your needs and their needs align. running in the great "arms race" of features. With all this Your customers love your wines and want to write reviews noise, it is hard to cut through the mix and understand who a ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 22 about your wines and other people's wines. They want to have your brand in places where the net effect is larger than just one an outlet online to discover new wines, talk with other voice. This is particularly powerful on networks which enable oenophiles, and find new information about wine. You need multiple reviews of each wine to better help consumers (and people to speak more about your wines. The best networks the trade) make new purchasing decisions. This encourages have free models (for consumers), and align their motives and social networks to become social commerce. objectives with the industry, as much as possible. Our recommendation is to encourage your consumers to join the Make no mistake, our assessments of these companies were networks that fit your business best and ask them to rate your our best attempt to dissect them from an outside perspective wines. As in the end of Horton Hears a Who, you are asking for where you, a wine company with limited attention, should them to chant in the giganticness that is the Internet and spend your primary efforts and resources. However, every one versus 40,000 other brands and say about your products, "We of them deserves applause and accolades and hopefully some are here. We are HERE. WE ARE HERE!" support. They are pioneers in a new way to help you connect to customers. Some are executing better than others, some We are not encouraging you to "stuff the ballot". Just ask your have a better vision, some are more aligned with the benefit of loving customers to be vocal about their passion for your wine, the industry, but the gestalt of all their efforts is moving the your winery, and you. Your loyal customers are your brand's wine industry forward. ambassadors to the world. Ask them to collectively promote Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Talk about it at www.vintank.com/?p=121 Tweet about it #vintank ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 23 The Impression Chart by VinTank ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 24 Adegga Ratings User Interface Consumer Value Winery Value Trade Value Innovation Team Company Viability* VinTank rates ALL early stage startups a 1. This is not reflective of their business model. It is completely about start-up risk. Company Information URL's Data cleanliness adegga.com est. 95% (due to the AVIN) Category Key Mgmt Team Wine Social Network, Store Locator André C. Ribeirinho - CEO VinTank Company Tags BOD/BOA social network, store locator tool N/A Model Funding Advertising (winery subscription similar to Yelp) Self funded Contact info 2008 Revenue André C. Ribeirinho – CEO Not disclosed. Est. <$100K Telephone : 00351 96 121 08 27 E-mail : firstname.lastname@example.com Founded 2007 Total customers 2,000 Key Partners Not disclosed. Total wines in their database <13,000 ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 25 Traffic Traffic Sources Country % United States 20.90% Germany 18.80% South Africa 14.50% United Kingdom 10.20% Portugal 7.80% Other Countries 27.80% Total 100.00% As you can see, Adegga is predominantly a site that attracts foreign traffic. About Adegga VinTank's comparison of Adegga to the Social Media Median Unlike most other sites, which started as comparison shopping (SMM) underscores the low traffic and relative infancy of this engines or cellar management tools, Adegga is one of the only platform's adoption. Despite an uptick in unique visitors two that made it into our report whose core mission was starting in Q4 2008, Adegga still has a long way to go before developing "wine social network" and their platform reflects their traffic becomes meaningful enough for most wineries to that superbly. consider actively engaging. Building a robust and growing community of wine lovers is a key hurdle, one that will likely We find Adegga to be innovative and a forward thinking determine if the company ultimately succeeds. Visits per platform regarding social interaction and wine. That core focus unique are also below the SMM, indicating low engagement of is evident in all the features and ethos of the site. Almost all the user base. features have a sense of exploration and discovery of other users' wine preferences and social tags. Since their core is social interaction and wine discovery, they fulfill this well (and are copied frequently by competitors) by the way they display data in their UI with an underlying intention of connecting users. Some Things We Found that Stood Out: Follow this Producer What all of the other wine social networks missed is that they are there to connect consumers AND wine companies. Adegga's stickiness metrics underscore the low user Allowing consumers to follow wineries and interact with them, engagement the site has managed to achieve. Average length helps establish meaningful relationships between consumers of stay and pages per visit are well below the Social Media and wineries. Wineries that receive a friend request from a Average (SMA). We feel this is due more to the need for consumer on Adegga should understand that customer content and users than it is to deficiencies in the UI itself. acquisition is very relevant and meaningful. They have some naming pattern inconsistency differentiating between "follow" and "watch list" that will confuse some users. They also have ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 26 the ability to follow wine shops, another key tool for People connecting consumers to not only the wineries, but to their Adegga recognizes that people drive its platform and is one of favorite wine shops. This type of functionality should be a the few platforms that isolate them into an interactive tab (as major push for other wine social networks, allowing this niche well as producers). They break the users down into Top Active type of networking to better create social relationships and Recent Activity. Though we think this is good foundation, between all tiers of the sales chain. However, until this can be we believe that Adegga can improve this even more to realized, better user profiling needs to occur. Adegga handles continue their leadership position in tying activity into this challenge by making it a one-to-one relationship with relationships. entities vs. people. Has Multi-Score Ratings (Your Preference) Update of Activity on Homepage Very few networks have Adegga's ability, allowing users from Adegga's home page heavily promotes exploration as it rolls all parts of the world, to use their scoring preferences. wines across the dashboard tempting users to review other Adegga's rating system is particularly easy to use. users' ratings. It focuses on both activity (most recent notes and users), most activity for their rating system, top rated Adding a Wine wines, top favorites, and top wish list. Top wish list and top Unlike the leaders in the space, Adegga's product addition favorites were particularly interesting from a seller's process is lean and efficient, but lacks some critical information perspective. Having someone identify wines that they loved collection. most and wish they could buy, seems like a very short path to customer acquisition. User Content Scrubbing Throughout the site, Adegga has placed user generated Share auditing tools (change the label, edit the grapes, tell me where Although we were not able to discover more about the this can be bought, do you know this producers address, etc.) extensibility of the platform, where Adegga once again shines is that are solid steps in trying to leverage the community to help in its team's ability to understand social network behavior. On clean the product information data. Adegga will need to every wine there is the ability to send reviews to del.icio.us, answer the questions of oversight and develop ways to Twitter, Facebook, Google Bookmarks, and Furl. encourage activity. Other platforms that take in large parts of user generated content should take note of Adegga's future actions. Useful Ratings Where to Buy Within every rating is the ability to confirm the usefulness of Unlike other platforms, the "where to buy" feature is this rating, helping reviewers create reputation. Other sites community driven. It allows people to suggest inventory levels have this, but it is not as elevated in the UI as with Adegga, and at a particular wine store. Deeper features for stores uploading speaks again to their desire to connect users. their inventories are also possible. Who is Blogging about this Wine Unique Coding Adegga does not focus on professional reviews (a small Adegga has made a noble attempt to create a unique wine deficiency), but it makes up for it in understanding that the identification code. A common theme across all the networks blogosphere has influence. Not only are bloggers specifically is the messy data associated with the "long label name tagged in their user profiles, the site captures blog posts in the conundrum" and how difficult it is to match wine data. Adegga wine detail page when a wine has been spoken about on a blog attempts to resolve this by creating a standard and trying to that uses the AVIN (see below). Blogs that use the AVIN rank have broad market adoption outside of their platform. Their higher in the search results. solution was called Adegga Vin Identification Number (AVIN), and is a unique code for each wine. They are looking to make it work for wine like the ISBN works for books. We at VinTank ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 27 applaud their efforts, but recommend they collaborate with Word Clouds other larger entities to try to solve the problem as a group. Aside from the social network focused company Winelog.net, few other companies use word clouds in their platform. QR Code Unfortunately, these tag clouds are for the wine blogosphere The QR code is in essence a super UPC code. However, it is and not representative of the internal reviews in the platform. much more informative and cutting edge. Again, Adegga We also saw the collection of food pairing tags, but could not shows its leadership and innovative position by adding this find them surfaced in the platform. Since Adegga has such a upcoming technology to their system. Adoption is still not focus on social aspects, we'd like to see them add the relevant, but demonstrates VinTank's position on the innovative area of experiences or locations as two other word organization as innovative thinkers. cloud categories. Clouds like "romantic", or "in-laws", or "picnic", or "boss", will yield new and interesting wine drinking Multi-Language trends and relationships with their users. Adegga is one of the best, and very few, multi-language platforms. Extensibility As stated with all platforms, the ability to reach into Adegga's Adegga Mobile (m.adegga.com) wine data and review information will be important for the Adegga also has an iPhone-optimized site (not a web app, so strength of the platform. It is our understanding that Adegga not available through Apple's site), that allows access to is currently working on an API to make this accessible and Adegga's search feature, reviews and "Add to Wish List" releasing it this month. function. Cellar Tools It was obvious to us that Adegga had a comprehensive Despite having light iterations of cellar management tools, understanding of social media and was forward thinking in the Adegga is far behind the two market leaders. development of their platform. However, key aspects of Adegga limited their usefulness and our ability to recommend Participation Encouragement them highly. First, the cost for wineries to claim their profile is Aside from Snooth and CellarTracker, none of the other 40 Euros per month. This Yelp-like model sets too high a price platforms tend to reward their users for deeper interaction. point, ESPECIALLY considering the total user base and quantity For stickiness to continue to inspire deeper user interaction, we of traffic currently being generated by Adegga. We did learn recommend all of these social networks look to the Yelp model, this is a new program and is only in beta and we hope to see it which creates true services and notability for the "Yelp Elite." mature soon and with more winery participation. Wine Social Networks have people producing a plethora of Second, the largest challenge with Adegga is the amount of content for free and should reward the top and most influential users and traffic. The platform is an excellent foundation for a contributors to keep the community content and inspired. social network, but for its success to be realized Adegga will have to create mechanisms to encourage traffic, signups, but most importantly, user-content generating activity. User Interviews As it was harder to connect and interview with users due to the A few other key elements we noticed could help improve the platform: distance, we were able to connect with five users and no wineries. All five users were huge advocates of Adegga and Profiling Beyond "Blogger" had no complaints. At time of publishing, VinTank was still waiting for feedback from producers and retailers. The importance of user profiling is a consistent theme throughout this whitepaper. We hope to see great granularity of Trade tags in the future (sommelier, retail wine buyer/seller, winery, broker, sales rep, etc). ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 28 like the platform and recommend Adegga as a company to Winery Interaction watch. When they resolve the user/traffic to price ratio, VinTank recommends you join and interact in their community Although we are not fond of the pay to play advertising model due to the strong social aspects wrapped around producer for producers (especially at Adegga's prices), we do very much interaction. ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 29 CellarTracker Highly Recommended Ratings User Interface* Consumer Value Winery Value Trade Value Innovation Team** Company Viability *VinTank gives a dual rating due to our visibility into the upcoming UI **CellarTracker on the outside appears as if it only a one person company but VinTank views CellarTracker's community as part of the team. Company Information URL's Data cleanliness cellartracker.com 85% Category Key Mgmt Team Online retailer, Wine Social Network, Cellar Management Eric Levine VinTank Company Tags Funding fine wine, social network, cellar management Self Funded Model 2008 Revenue Donations, Google advertising Not disclosed Contact info Founded Eric Levine 2004 email@example.com Key Partners Total customers AbleGrape, Bill Nanson, Burgundy-Report, Brad Baker, 79,368 Champagne Warrior, Carte du Vin, CellarAdvisors.com, CellarSensor, Cor.kz iPhone applicaton, Cruvee, Gary Total Consumer Reviews Vaynerchuk, Wine Library TV, InsureYourWine.com, John 888,529 consumer reviews with 100,000+ professional reviews Gilman, View From the Cellar, John Kapon, Vintage Tastings Lenn Thompson/LennDEVOURS, Lyle Fass/Rockss and Fruit Total wines in their database Roy Hersh, For The Love of Port, Starkland Cellars, Stephen 615,277 Tanzer's International Wine Cellar, WineAccess, Steve Tanzer, Winebid, WineBid.com, Wine-Searcher, WineZap ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 30 Pages per visit hover in the 10-20 range, well above the 5-10 of Traffic the Social Media Average (SMA). Average length of stay is also strong. Traffic Sources Country % United States 60.2% India 8.9% Germany 7.6% United Kingdom 3.6% Sweden 3.0% Other Countries 16.7% Total 100.0% The majority of CellarTracker's customers are in US based with India and Germany making up notable minorities. CellarTracker's unique visitor traffic is far above the Social Media Median (SMM), underscoring its role as one of the dominant wine social media platforms. Other than a seasonal About CellarTracker spike around the holidays, traffic seems relatively static, CellarTracker is the granddaddy of wine social networks. It has indicating the relative maturity of this platform (and, in our been around the longest of any. Fundamentally built as a labor opinion, the need for the new UI launch in order to attract of love by ex-Microsoft engineer Eric Levine, CellarTracker was more users and continue growing). With both CellarTracker and still is wrapped around the core function of cellar and VinCellar closing in on 100k registered users, we do management. Building the first sometimes is the best. Over wonder how large the potential market is for collectors serious the years CellarTracker has improved its functionality based on enough to invest the time to manage their collections through user requests, learnings through the transformation of wine one of these platforms. Visits per unique are also well above online, and comprehensive understanding and vision for the the SMM, indicating the value CellarTracker's user base places needs of a wine collector. Almost every software platform that on the platform to help them manage their collections. In fact, has wine reviews and cellar management has gotten inspiration only eRobertParker and Open Wine Consortium (mostly trade from Cellartracker.com. audience) were in the same league as far as regular usage. What makes CellarTracker a force of nature is its users. There is a no more active, nor concentrated, group of wine reviewers and collectors on the Internet. Their activity even dwarfs the other leader, VinCellar with pure activity and reviews. The people that live on CellarTracker live to share their opinion of wines in their cellar. Moreover, they live to help Eric improve the data and features with his tool. It is our opinion that the power users of CellarTracker should be considered part of his team. Finally, with few exceptions, his users are not casual consumers either. They are wine drinkers with trained palates so we feel the quality of the reviews are much higher than ones from some other networks with comments like "groovy." We feel that these reviews carry an authority that is higher than other networks and we can only imagine the data behind the As could be inferred from CellarTracker's visits/unique stats, scenes that CellarTracker has but does not surface. In an the site's stickiness measures are extremely strong as well. ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 31 attempt to help create relevancy and community, CellarTracker CellarTracker but a plethora of other networks and forums. has over time added features that connect users based upon These users are some of the most valuable in the industry and authorship (review alignment), and cellar buddies (friends). more importantly, they buy wine and lots of it. Where Though phrased differently than newer, hipper networks, the CellarTracker lacks for its users is in "fun factor" to attract effect really creates additional alignment with the community beyond the most hard core wine aficionados and penetrate the members. growing consumer groups like Gen X and Millennial. A core addition in focus will be required to attract these users. As a coveted list of data, CellarTracker has fallen prey to "web scrapers" who have harvested his data to create a foundation Relationships for their platforms. As a byproduct, Eric has become incredibly CellarTracker immediately understood that it had a strong limited in his openness to data partnerships. This has resulted community of likeminded individuals with a passion for wine. in a lack of extensibility to his platform that would be extremely Early features of connecting these wine lovers is probably the beneficial in driving his business to broader usage and to first official wine social network. The ability to create cellar different verticals--API's that could power or assist in the wine buddies as well as well as choose (follow) favorite review universe. It is our hope that CellarTracker finds peace and authors or ignore authors who's opinion you feel does not help alignment with other complimentary services where the end your understanding of wine is the foundation of a social tool. Gestalt is better for all wine industry tiers (trade, consumers, Moreover, the level of statistics associated with their activity wineries). (total wines reviewed by time, by region, by producer, by varietal) are significant and we can only imagine what type of However, aside from cathedral data problem, the greatest historical data exists in the database for trends, etc. Although factor inhibiting broader and deeper use of CellarTracker is the still crude in functionality, the foundation for a stronger social archaic user interface that permeates throughout. Due to the network exists and is recognized by CellarTracker, resulting in a strong emotion his users have to his platform, we can new feature/UI makeover to arrive before the summer. understand Eric's reticence to change. However, due to this VinTank was allowed to review the full use cases and report, Eric was kind enough to give us a preview to his screenshots and without question, this will catapult it into one, upcoming UI. We were privileged to review almost 200 pages if not the, strongest wine social network. of screenshots and use cases and, as you can see by the ratings above, it has incredible use patterning and in our minds Forums (though it will disrupt some legacy users) it will help launch Where most of the activity occurs (similar to discussions or CellarTracker into more mainstream usage. even sometimes status updates in traditional platforms) occurs in the lively forums. Not as harsh or insular as other wine Features forums (not any in this report), CellarTracker's forums seem to breed a continual esprit de corps between the members and Without question, CellarTracker is one of the two richest tighten relationships. The most significant part of the forums is applications for cellar management in the industry and the rest why VinTank states that CellarTracker's users are its team and are light years behind. Just like their counterpart, we could can be found in the Wine Data Errors and Correction section as spend another whole paper writing on about all the features in well as the CellarTracker Support section. Both of these CellarTracker. Albeit not aesthetically pleasing, its use and categories have more discussion topics each than the general functionality are almost unparalleled. In order to be relevant forum (although it has almost double posts representing to this report we only focus on the social aspects. conversations) and demonstrate the users' fervor for not only improving the tool, but also improving wine data, general Users scores, user interaction, and much, much more. CellarTracker has one of the most prolific and wine educated groups on the Internet. Many of their comments carry much CellarTracker Wiki weight and respect on CellarTracker, in blogs, on Twitter, and With the mountains of evolving content required to manage a other networks. Many of them participate not only on cellar, CellarTracker once again cleverly tapped its educated ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 32 masses to create strong content that is leveraged by both the the data themselves. CellarTracker already has wiki sophisticated and emerging wine users on the site. functionality for general wine information, we would like to see a process created to allow editing and merging of duplicate Our problem with this review is that we were hindered by our wine data. ability to speak about his next iteration after getting to look at it compared to the new one. We can without question say that Extensibility everything we were allowed to view took the majority of Due to incidents mentioned above, CellarTracker has held its deficiencies and emerged stronger and better. The only lacking data sacrosanct and allowed very few people to leverage it to aspects of the new platform were the disconnect in help drive more customers and attention back to its platform. CellarTracker's ability to understand how to elevate to even In conversations with Eric Levine he has begun to see the value MORE social interaction between wine lovers especially the in finding "the right partners" and opening up his walled younger generation. Since we cannot show screen shots or talk garden to allow non-competitive services to interact and build about too many of the features we ask Eric to accelerate his businesses on his wine data. We see this as paramount for release so that you will be able to see for yourselves. widespread growth by building API's and services by which the wine ecosphere can interact with CellarTracker and create even Deficiencies more value to all tiers of the wine industry. This extensibility includes interaction with other wine social networks, Facebook, and more. UI It is not hard to see that where CellarTracker fails most is in the SEO archaic UI and the user patterns that have developed Though CellarTracker has a decent job in SEO, it has not put the organically over time. We understand that function over form proper effort in working to help create better SEO. We belive was the intention of the original software but we feel this is the that CellarTracker's intentions of displaying wine reviews and greatest barrier for more usage and more adoption of connecting wineries to users is noble and thus a trustworthy CellarTracker as a platform for more wine lovers. It even source to send your customers. Since they are not commerce unfortunately masks the strength of the existing features driven but customer and influence driven, we'd like to see within the platform. them do a better job so that wine reviews fall only below wineries' sites when wines are searched. Payment for the Deeper Features Though we understand the donation model and the need to User Definitions derive income from the incredible hard work it takes to build Like other wine social platforms, CellarTracker lacks in such a monumental piece of software, many of the features distinguishing users based on profiles such as blogger, retailer, that are premium are now being copied and given out for free sommelier, winery, wholesaler, etc. These key drill downs will by competing platforms. CellarTracker needs to explore other add to what we deem as "street cred" for increased relevancy options to generate revenue that do not create user friction for of reviews and for better helping people understand intentions deeper and more extensive use of their platform. and influence. Data Cleanliness Community As with all of the social networks that have amassed any kind of Even with a strong community and Eric being a "cult of database of wines, data cleanliness is an issue with personality" among his users, we feel that some more CellarTracker. Whereas VinCellar has enough resources to designated community leaders (a la Ning) would benefit the allocate human eyeballs to help clean up their data, growth and also be great loudspeakers to encourage more CellarTracker, being a "one man show," does not have a similar consumers to better use and sign up for CellarTracker. Dividing luxury. We rated CellarTracker's team 4 because we included the community leaders into wine consumer segments (a key the strength of its near-fanatical user base; we wish Eric would sommelier, a fun Millennial, others) will help make this introduce tools to harness the power of this base to clean up community stronger, more prolific, and encourage different ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 33 segments to participate in the core ethos of the community, varietal, flavors, wines, etc can all be extracted to help users people who love wine. drill into popular themes. Fun Stickiness from CellarTracker comes from its usefulness. To User Interviews attract more common wine drinkers, millennial Internet users, and people without cellars, the platform will need to add more Users of CellarTracker were somewhat of zealots, in love with elements of fun. This is crucial for the company to move more features. Many expressed the "user learning curve" which we into the mainstream customer acquisition of a platform attributed to lackluster UI. However, despite that challenge, desperately needed by our industry. almost all users were extremely satisfied. This is made more relevant by the fact that the majority of income for Food Pairings CellarTracker comes from DONATIONS. Yes, donations. The Food and wine are and always will be linked. The notion of user community is so supportive that they donate to make adding food pairings is something that will help bring in CellarTracker healthy. Eric in returns has reinvested that different types of users and also be a powerful lever to help support back into the tool by hiring professional UED experts to site stickiness. upgrade the platform's key deficiency, its UI. A LA IMDB With such product and tasting notes richness, it would be little Winery Interaction effort to add even more details about wines to allow for We HIGHLY recommend you suggest to all your wine club dynamic searching a la IMDB.com. For example, exploring members and ecommerce customers to sign up and rate your wines via winemakers, appellations, vineyards, and much, wines on CellarTracker. With limited time and funds it is key much more. Since CellarTracker is so strong in data, we'd like that you ask yourself and your users to focus on key networks to see him expand into areas that permit both expert and instead of spreading their attention across ones that do not novice users to explore through non-traditional relations to deliver the value to you and them. This way you gain the discover new wines. maximum value for them and you harness your tribe to help build up and solidify your brand reputation in a medium that is Word Clouds powerful. We feel strongly that CellarTracker is one of the two With so much data being generated, leveraging the power of platforms you and your loyal consumers should focus their trends or reviews would be incredibly helpful for users to attention on. navigate the incredible richness of the platform. Clouds for ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 34 Last Minute Update – CellarTracker New UI Screenshot Preview ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 35 Cork'd Ratings User Interface Consumer Value Winery Value Trade Value Innovation Team Company Viability Company Information URL's Key Mgmt Team corkd.com Gary Vaynerchuk, owner (Co-Founders Dan Benjamin and Dan Cederholm are minimally Category involved) Wine Social Network BOD/BOA VinTank Company Tags Not disclosed social network Funding Model Not disclosed Advertising 2008 Revenue Contact info Not disclosed firstname.lastname@example.com Founded Total customers 2006, purchased by investors led by Gary Vaynerchuk May 20,000 (est.) 2007 Total wines in their database Key Partners 73,305 WARNING: wine database contains "spam" records WineLibrary.tv advertising drugs and other inappropriate content Data cleanliness est. 40% ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 36 Traffic Traffic Sources Country % United States 53.4 India 8.7 Germany 6.8 United Kingdom 5.4 China 3.3 Other Countries 22.4% Total 100.0% U.S. traffic accounts for over 50% of total. About Cork'd We at VinTank have taken to referring to Cork'd as the "sleeping giant" of the wine social networks. Launched in 2006 In spite of relatively little investment into the site, Cord'd with a clean, simple yet engaging user interface, the site unique visitors are well above the Social Media Median (SMM), zoomed up to a claimed 20,000 registered users within a year averaging near 40k per month with a spike at the end of 2008. after launch. The founders quickly found themselves unable to Visits per uniqe are below the SMM, indicating the site does keep up with the growth and user requests for site not have a high degree of engagement with its users. improvements, and began seeking strategic partners to take Cork'd to the next level. They found a suitor in May 2007, when a newly formed company led by the one man force of nature Gary Vaynerchuk bought out the founders. This deal proved both a blessing and a curse for the Cork'd community— Gary's involvement gave instant credibility to the site, and seemed to put it on course to become the dominant player in the space. Unfortunately, Gary's popularity was on an even steeper trajectory, and he has thus far chosen to focus his very limited time on building the success of his other enterprises. We have chosen not to conduct an in-depth analysis of the site's strengths and shortcomings, as it appears to have been all but mothballed since the acquisition. The site has been the target of hackers and spammers who at one point redirected Pages per visit and average length of stay are both below the the site's traffic to an adult site, and have created bogus users Social Media Average (SMA), indicating a low level of and wine records promoting everything from escort services to engagement with its user base. prescription drugs. Winery Interaction While we don't recommend wineries spend time populating and curating their data on Cork'd at this point, we recognize that Gary could place his substantial influence and a bit of development work behind the site at any time, and create a market leader in fairly short order. We hope that he will choose to do so, and will continue to watch Cork'd closely. ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 37 ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 38 Snooth Ratings User Interface Consumer Value Winery Value Trade Value Innovation Team Company Viability Company Information URL's Data cleanliness snooth.com est. 40% Category Key Mgmt Team Wine Social Network, Retail Price Aggregator, Philip James, CEO Recommendation Engine Mark Angelillo, CTO Adam Levin, Marketing Director VinTank Company Tags Gregory del Paz, Community Manager social network, price comparison engine Mike Solomon, Creative Director Chris Carpita, Senior Engineer Model CPA Lead generation, Advertising and various discontinued BOD/BOA models Not disclosed, investors include Bob Williams, Joe Meyer, Kevin Fortuna and Ted Jansen (as reported by TechCrunch) Contact info 419 Lafayette St, Floor 2 Funding New York, NY 10003 $2.3MM (TechCrunch) Tel: 646 723 4328 Fax: 866 263 5721 2008 Revenue Not disclosed, estimated <$1,000,000 Total customers 100,000+ registered users Founded 2006, launched June 2007 Total wines in their database 1.1MM wines from 35k brands (average of 31 wines per brand), Key Partners many duplicate wines Wine & Spirits Magazine 2.3MM public reviews, including Wine & Spirits Magazine Inertia 10,500 store partners in 50 countries (through various content feeds) ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 39 Traffic Underscoring Snooth's high reliance on search engine traffic, the site's average pages per visit and length of stay are generally below the Social Media Average (SMA). Converting Snooth's "one-off" site visits from search engine referrals into registered, regular users will be a key success measure for the company moving forward. Traffic Sources Country % United States 60.70% Germany 5.30% United Kingdom 4.60% India 4.30% South Africa 3.10% Other Countries 22.0% Snooth tracks well above the Social Media Median (SMM) for unique visitors, and is growing rapidly. A significant portion of Total 100.0% this traffic is believed to be driven by its heavy emphasis on SEO, resulting in Snooth ranking high in search results from U.S. traffic accounts for over 60% of total. We would be Google and other search engine queries for wine. The focus on interested to see how these traffic numbers match up with the SEO supports their core model of a comparison shopping footprint of Snooth's registered users. engine platform with social review functionality. By leading SEO they can aggregate consumers and resell that traffic. This could explain why, despite the large traffic numbers, Snooth's About Snooth visits per unique ranks at, or below, the Social Media Median Billing itself as "the world's largest and most trafficked wine (SMM) for visits per unique. The site receives many unique website," there is no question that Snooth's traffic (claimed to visits, but a lower proportion of repeat visits, since search be over 500k uniques per month) and user base (claimed to be engine visitors don't necessarily have any connection to over 100k) are impressive. The company is working hard to Snooth, or reason to return. A key challenge for Snooth's aggregate as many wine lovers and reviews as it can, in what continued growth will be converting search engine traffic into appears to be an attempt to insert itself as a launch pad to registered users. wine information and purchase online. Unlike VinCellar and CellarTracker, Snooth's core value propositions to its members are its comparison shopping/recommendation engine and social networking features, as well as editorial content generated by Snooth employees, third party providers and the community itself. We also attribute a significant up-tick in their registered users due to the changes they have made that try to get all users that visit the site to register. One of their two most impressive endeavors is their ability to harvest content. Their aggressive business development team has done an excellent job leveraging their API for partners to build services and applications on top of Snooth's existing platform. The other very impressive feature is the "loudness" of the public relations and their community. They are avid, active and outspoken and help drive the brand into general awareness in ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 40 the wine community. For a small organization, their ability to demystify wine for everyday consumers, the natural language become a household industry name is impressive. algorithm still needs some work. For instance, searching for "good with short ribs $20-$50" did not yield any results—the The site boasts an impressive number of reviews (2.3MM), site translated the search criteria to "'good wine' or 'short both community-generated, harvested from retailer partners, wine.'" We credit Snooth's ambition to create a complex and as of recently numerical scores from Wine & Spirits algorithm that would yield useful natural language search Magazine. The community can also vote reviews as helpful results, but think that the reality does not yet achieve the (although reviews cannot be flagged as "unhelpful"), and the promise. Another improvement to the search feature would be most helpful reviews are listed first. We do wish that the to allow searches for more than just wine by including friends, reviews were more accessible without drilling into product forum posts, or even general company or FAQ information in detail pages (it would also be useful to be able to search for the search results. wines with a minimum number of reviews, as well as wines reviewed by a specific reviewer.) Moreover, we found that The site has an attractive look and feel. In general, the user only a small subset (many Snooth staff), were the most prolific interface is well laid out. The search function displays results of the user reviews and that most of the reviews truly had no and with linked keywords that allow you to immediately go to content or only a few words. It would be helpful to know if a other wines with the same attributes. Snooth also allows users wine with a SnoothRank of 4.5 was reviewed by 1 user or 100, to update, and even "curate" content, not only about wines, as a larger number of reviews suggest a more valid review. but also about winemaking regions. This wiki-type approach to While the SnoothRank algorithm attempts to account for these content requires a lot of input from the community initially, but factors, wines with fewer reviews still receive a less reliable could eventually yield a rich source of information for users. SnoothRank score because fewer opinions are going into the Many of the top-level region pages do have content (i.e. Spain), score. We found ourselves asking more questions than we while the many lower level appellations and AVA's are less answered when it came to the SnoothRank methodology—the complete (i.e. Jumilla). An interesting feature of the site is that company states its algorithm is proprietary, which is users can "follow" regions, sub regions, varietals or even understandable as they want to avoid the manipulation of specific wineries, so that they receive a feed of new reviews or product scores. But we question the validity of a SnoothRank activity about that subject. The "Interact" menu in the wine based on 1 review or, worse, 0 reviews. The company states detail section allows quick completion of common actions. "The SnoothRank is sometimes calculated from information, reviews, and ratings on the wines that we do not display." The social/friending functionality, which is engaging after a Although consumers tend to take comfort in the idea of a user has fully established their account, seemed clunky in the numerical review of a wine, we stress the limitations that such initial steps. Unless we were willing to allow Snooth to access an approach presents. The discussion about the validity of our online address books on Yahoo, Gmail or similar, it was numerical reviews becomes much more complex when we difficult to find new friends, other than by clicking on reviewers factor in issues of duplicate data discussed below. of wines we liked. The "find friends" feature needs improvement in its search of users, local users (based on While wines that have been tagged by users will show those member profile), large cellars, love CA wine or other attributes tags in search results, it's not clear if the tags are sorted by that Snooth already knows about its users. The default "Find number of instances. A "word cloud" format common on the Friends" screen prompts the user to search address books or web would visually represent these tags more usefully. send email invites to existing friends, rather than offering up friend recommendations. The site does offer a "neighbors" The site's natural language search feature has some interesting recommendation for users that have similar wines reviewed, functionality, above and beyond traditional wine search criteria but as a new user (when attrition rates are highest) with only 7 including vintage, varietal and region. Users can type in a wines reviewed the site did not have enough data to search such as "good with steak under $20" and receive 40 recommend any neighbors. We felt that improving the recommendations for wines tagged "good," "steak," and conversion process from a new user to an active user with "under $20." While we believe this is a noble effort to friends could be improved. This could pay big dividends for ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 41 Snooth given their need to convert casual traffic into dedicated ability to clean up and merge duplicate or incorrect data. The users. site does not, however, allow wineries to delete incorrect data such as the Lynmar Requiem 2005 mentioned above. While we Once a user creates a group of friends with wine reviews, the believe that the key to cleaning up duplicate and incorrect data user has a great deal of visibility into those friends' wines. ultimately lies with the brand owners (wineries and/or Users can subscribe to an RSS feed of a friend's cellar and importers), the task of convincing thousands of brand owners search that cellar in many of the same ways a user would to do so poses a significant burden to success. Asking brand search the broader site. owners to regularly maintain all of their data on Snooth, as well as on ALL the other wine social media sites they engage with, is Snooth derives revenue from a variety of sources, but primarily placing too much of a burden on the brand owner. Again, the from advertising. Wineries, retailers and other companies can issue of wine product data cleanliness is a very common one buy CPM banner ads throughout the site and sponsor email amongst social networks, but we strongly feel that it is campaigns to users. "Featured" sponsorship opportunities also primarily the social networks' (or other electronic solutions) exist, although we caution all parties to tread carefully in this responsibility to resolve this issue, and not that of the brand area given John Hinman's legal statements mentioned before. owner. Snooth has also been working to syndicate its data to other wine applications. The company did not disclose terms of The challenge of convincing brand owners to clean up their these syndication deals. data on Snooth brings forth some more difficult questions. Since Snooth's user acquisition model is based on SEO, the We do see some challenges for Snooth to realize its vision. company's motives are not necessarily aligned with the brand Primary among them is the quality and hygiene of the site's owners'. One of the primary goals for a winery (or wine wine data. Searches for specific wines yielded multiple retailers) website is to capture traffic for people interested in iterations of the same wine, often with differing SnoothRanks. that their offerings. Budgets are generally expended in getting For instance, searching for "Lynmar Quail Hill Pinot 2005" a well-designed site with ecommerce established and perhaps yielded 3 different wines with 3 different SnoothRanks, all of some basic SEO practices. One of the winery's primary goals is which were for the same wine. One of the SnoothRanks (4.0) to have their site come up first in Google search results. As was based on a Wine & Spirits Magazine rating of 94/100, Snooth gains users and wines and continues to invest in SEO, another (4.5) was based on 2 user ratings and the third had no they place themselves in competition with wineries for that ratings. A fourth result was for a "Lynmar Pinot Noir Requiem traffic. For instance, a Google search for "buy Lynmar wine" Quail Hill Russian River Valley 2005," a bottling that the winery yields Snooth as the first "natural" (non-advertising) search never produced. result. The Lynmar Winery website is listed seventh. While a consumer interested in buying Lynmar wine could eventually Data integrity is a key challenge for all of the wine social media end up at the Lynmar website by clicking on the Snooth link, it sites. Snooth in particular seems to be adversely impacted by would take many more clicks to get there. The consumer this challenge, as it populates its database from multiple would have to choose to buy from Lynmar over the potentially sources. Our data sampling resulted in 40% of the total figure hundreds of other retailers and featured merchants also listing quoted to the press. One of the ways Snooth has attempted to the wine for sale on Snooth. As another example, when address this problem is by offering wineries the ability to searching in Google for "Kistler wine" or "Beringer wine," "claim" their winery profile and wines. Snooth does not charge Snooth ranks above the wineries' wine store detail pages (not wineries to claim their information and gives wineries the their homepages) in natural SEO (not purchased words). ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 42 But again, when you start looking at iterations of SEO to get to demonstrates that even the largest wine company has producers using terms such as "buy Gallo wine" or "buy Paloma challenges to "out-SEO" Snooth and very small producers have wine" Snooth ranks even above the winery in natural SEO. This no chance. ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 43 In terms of the actual click to purchase/referral part of the user who are paying promotional consideration to Snooth, are listed experience, Snooth has integrated the purchase option into first before the non-featured ones in descending order of user both the search results and the wine details pages. From there, rating. Within the same user rating (many of the retailers don't however, the user is given a list of retailers selling the wine have a rating) however, there does not seem to be a rhyme or without a clear explanation of how they are being sorted and reason to the sort as it does not appear to be by price or without the ability to sort. The "Featured Merchants," those alphabetical order. While helpful for retailers who are paying ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 44 Snooth promotional consideration, the user experience is really allows access to Snooth's search feature, retail locator, reviews compromised by this format. The pioneering "retail and the "Add to Wish List" function. aggregator," wine-searcher.com, is far behind in terms of overall user interface, but at least their search results are sorted in ascending order of price so users can make sense of User Interviews them. Almost every Snooth consumer was pleased, to some extent, Snooth has made efforts to extend its reach across multiple with their experience on the site. They were advocates of the platforms. A user can utilize their Twitter account and "tweet" ease of service and the "fun" associated with searching for their reviews. There is also a Facebook application that allows wines and purchases. They also were big fans of the users to show their recently rated wines on their profile page. community aspects and ability to interact with other wine Snooth friends that have also installed the Facebook lovers. However, retailer users found the CPA fees to be high application will show up, so users can send Facebook friend and yielded "the same or fewer conversions as WineSearcher." requests to their Snooth friends. Unfortunately, the reverse is Two retailers in San Francisco and Los Angeles, with particularly not true. A user cannot see which Facebook friends have the high end and allocated wines, were surprised at the results of Snooth application and then send them friend requests for sales generated despite having high profile wines in great Snooth. This could be a relatively easy way for the company to demand. Wineries also found minimal, if any, conversion from encourage the conversion of casual users into regular ones. the site and also complained about the efforts required to The data displayed on the profile page is limited to 1 - 2 update their wines in relation to the sales they received. reviews at most. Facebook friends who do not have a Snooth account are prompted to sign up. We tested this process and selected "Skip this step" to bypass the sign-up process and read Winery Interaction more reviews, but the Snooth application returned an error While the traffic Snooth generates is substantial, wineries need message each time. Current status of this functionality is to carefully weigh how involved they want to be with this unknown. platform. Ensuring accurate data on your winery profile page is a reasonable first step. If time and resources permit, cleaning Twitter and Facebook integration is a small but strong step up the wines listed on the site will allow you to get the "real" towards extensibility of their reviews. Both of these networks consolidated scores coming from the Snooth community. align well with wine consumers and increase not only the Taking the time to set up an XML feed, so consumers can click wine's exposure, but also Snooth's. to buy your wines, may not be worth the effort as featured retailers will always be listed before the winery and many Snooth also has an iPhone-optimized site (not a web retailers make a point of offering wines below what the winery application, so it is not available through Apple's site) that sells them for. ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 45 ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 46 VinCellar by Vinfolio Highly Recommended Ratings User Interface Consumer Value Winery Value Trade Value Innovation Team Company Viability Company Information URL's Total wines in their database VinCellar.com, vinfolio.com, wineprices.com, 386,244 wine/year/size specific vinfolio.com/thewinecollector, hongkong.vinfolio.com/hk/ Data cleanliness Category est. 75% Online retailer, Wine Social Network, Wine Cellar Management, Full Service Storage Key Mgmt Team Stephen Bachmann, CEO VinTank Company Tags Rachel Blatt, VP Sales & Marketing wine retailer, fine wine, social network, price comparison Andres Camacho, VP Engineering engine, cellar management, wine storage Mike Murphy, VP Operations Model Tom DeSpain, VP Finance Online retailer, private seller transaction enablement, full Anthony Mak, Managing Director, Vinfolio HK service storage services and on-site inventorying services BOD/BOA Contact info BOD - Jean-Michel Valette (Chairman), Colin Lind, William 1890 Bryant Street, Suite 208 Timken, San Francisco, CA 94110 BOA – Charles McMinn, Rajat Parr, Martine Saunier, William Toll Free 800-969-1961 Shea Tel 415-946-1300 Fax 415-946-1359 Funding $9.3M in equity Total customers 53,562 + registered users 2008 Revenue $20.9M Total Consumer Reviews 19,892 public VinCellar reviews and 166,842 professional Founded reviews 2003 ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 47 Key Partners Able Grape Cellarworks Allen Meadows, Burghound AIG Stephen Tanzer, International Wine Cellar Firemans Fund Richard Juhlin, Richard Juhlin Champagne Club Hydrant Roy Hersh, For the Love of Port Global Wine Stocks Traffic Despite lower absolute traffic than the SMA, the "stickiness" measures illustrate the high value VinCellar's functionality provides to users. VinCellar ranked higher than the SMA for VinCellar tracks lower than the Social Media Average (SMA) for pages per visit, often substantially, throughout 2008. Length of unique visitors, although they are trending similarly. In stay (in seconds) was correspondingly higher as well. While addition, the ratio of total visits to uniques is lower than the users don't go to VinCellar as often as they go on average to SMA, meaning that each VinCellar unique is visiting the site other social networks, they spend more time there when they fewer times per month than the SMA. Perhaps this can be do. attributed to VinCellar's primary functionality as a wine portfolio management tool versus the more pure social Traffic Sources attributes of the other networks. In addition, while the SMA Country % uniques has been on an upward trend since October 2008, United States 67.9% VinCellar's traffic has remained relatively static, underscoring Canada 8.8% our opinion of the platform's need to improve SEO and China 5.9% promote the service better outside of its base customers and Germany 3.3% collectors (which is a smaller subset of online wine United Kingdom 2.6% consumers.) Other Countries 11.5% Total 100.0% The majority of VinCellar's customers are in English speaking countries (US/Canada/UK based). A notable minority of China traffic reflects Vinfolio's investment to establish a presence in the Hong Kong market. ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 48 About VinCellar by Vinfolio The strength of VinCellar is its origin. As a functional tool meant to help you manage your cellar, it has been able to add deep and rich features for adding wines, understanding & Without question Vinfolio has been building an incredible analyzing collection wines, valuing wines, and depleting and business. Originating as a company with collector services, replenishing your cellar. The multipurpose tool not only including full-service wine storage and inventory management, creates stickiness with its users, but the integration of function, it has evolved to everything wine with a keen focus on form, and community supports a long term viable community. delivering and managing high end collectable wines. The Though powered by a retail store, we found that the service offering is so deep that we had trouble documenting all community still adhered to the network. This is due to a of it. However, at their core they are a retailer/inventory member's ability to see into each other's cellars and manage management service for collectors. They have very exciting their cellar, as opposed to exist solely as a vehicle to collect plans and ambitions over the next 18 months, as well. The consumers. It was this underlying theme that we appreciated, product we focused on, VinCellar, originated as a cellar as we conducted interviews with users of VinCellar. It was management tool and was almost not included in our analysis almost as if Vinfolio was viewed as a partner of the community, since it was not deemed social. However, great improvements rather than a potential vendor. This is relevant in that VinCellar in the way the software has evolved, led us to look deeper into has done a great job creating a strong value proposition in this how it has begun to transform into a social tool. It platform, whose brand exists independently, but in conjunction demonstrates a trend of the Internet to add social components with their other endeavors. to utility tools. VinCellar was clearly one of the two strongest wine cellar The richness of the cellar management tools, could alone, be management tools and intersection tools for oenophiles. It by reason for a full product analysis document, but some of the far beat all but one platform in wine cellar management tools. key highlights that were notable and relevant to community Where we found faults were in SEO and the relative immaturity functions were the following: of the social functionality. It also had tremendous amount of free information (prices, drinking, reviews, and much, much Community notes roll up into an aggregate rating. This creates more) which develop the sites high level of stickiness. a new strong scoring tool that wineries can leverage for helping ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 49 them merchandize non-scored wines. However, Vinfolio needs Tasting note assistant. This wizard is great for normalizing the to increase activity for community notes. tasting process and guides novice and professionals alike. Community inventory. The glue of VinCellar's community is its Twitter (for adding products and tasting notes) and Facebook ability for people to look into other wine collectors' widget integration is a small, but strong, step into extensibility inventories. This is the foundation of the community ethos. of their reviews. Both of these networks align well with wine Collectors buy and sell their wines via Vinfolio and have tools to consumers and increases not only the wine's exposure, but also ensure they are working within a legitimate community. VinCellar's. They also have integrated email recommendations. Searchability through the inventory of wines is incredibly strong (though can benefit from some additional criteria and Their Facebook Application provides an incredibly strong better sorting functionality for results), but finding groups of integration and is a full featured Facebook application that wines was easy and interesting on many levels. The user posts activity to news feeds as well as profile pages. You can interface on reversing the filter tree does needs some view all their VinCellar detail pages in Facebook directly. moderate adjustment to make it more intuitive. Facebook friend activity is pulled down into VinCellar as well. The integration is very much like Facebook Connect (they Market prices. This function calls from auctions, previous sales, implemented well before Facebook Connect). They will be and other sources to give a clear framework for future trading implementing Facebook Connect in the future to further activity or collection value. Auction data is provided by enhance integration. WinePrices, Vinfolio's free iPhone application, giving it access to detailed auction data. ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 50 Profile ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 51 Wine Detail apps.facebook.com/myVinCellar/?doAction=wineDetail&wineId=48111&year=2007 Twitter Users are able to Tweet on: • Every tab in VinCellar. • All wine detail pages • When adding, consuming or writing a tasting note Users are also able to follow @VinTweets for a stream of all VinCellar community tasting notes. ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 52 Blogger and Trade Tags content becomes accessible and usable by the rest of the wine Though other networks also have blogger tagging, which adds companies on the Internet, the net benefit will be incredible for what we call "street cred," VinCellar takes this concept further consumers, wineries, and the trade. and expands the tags by adding additional criteria (Master, Trade, Vinfolio, Winery). We hope to see great granularity of Since the tool is so strong functionally for its original purpose, Trade tags in the future, including: sommelier, retail wine we tried to focus our commentary on social components. buyer/seller, winery, broker, sales rep, etc. Below are comments on features we had challenges with or wanted to see added to give more community based features. Score Preferences A user has the ability to use the type of rating they are Trust Rating comfortable with and the VinCellar tool simply normalizes it. We understand and agree with the concept of a "rate the This reduces the friction associated with different people liking raters" concept. However, the algorithm choice to roll up the to score wines differently. This is a key differentiator, since we percentage of people that find the review useful into their trust have found no other product that offers this functionality and factor could be misleading. A single score with a bad rating can find it is especially helpful for the European review system. lower the trust. This feature is found much more useful in other platforms where the algorithm is created separately We were fortunate enough to see the future direction of based on an additive score factor of a bell curve. As an VinCellar from Vinfolio and the future looks bright. Our example, Alder Yarrow, with 224 reviews has a trust rating of greatest challenge with VinCellar wasn't how good it was, it 94% where as Jake with 41 tasting notes had a trust rating of 0 was how much it was under-promoted on the web as one of and Daniel B with 1,884 notes had a trust rating of 89%. It is the cornerstones to helping wine lovers with wine collections our understanding they are working on remedying this. and community. Wine Information Speaking of community, we found the greatest deficiencies in Though VinCellar has one of the cleanest databases and the the platform with what most companies deem as community most extensive in some categories, we were surprised at the or social aspects. We believe the challenges in the current lack of deep oenophile information and tagging. Descriptors VinCellar platform are more a result of the original functional like TA, Oak, Vineyards, Winemakers, Varietal Mix, etc. were vision with them moving toward social platform features. noticeably absent. The same information deficiencies occurred with producer information and the ability to explore a winery However, without question, VinCellar has amassed a hugely production tree (other wines made by X). We were pleased relevant audience of qualified wine consumers with the that most wines had a label, but it was unfortunately a poorly financial wherewithal and desire to buy wine. Steve Bachmann photographed image and often not necessarily a vintage- has done an excellent job following Seth Godin's advice in specific label. For example, Lynmar Winery changed their Tribes and led collectors through a shared vision. Though the labels in 2003, many pre-2003 wines show the newer label and foundation of VinCellar is in the desire for wine aficionados to vice versa. create a community around this large collection of great wine, VinCellar has some deficiencies in features focused on creating While VinCellar, like all of the social media sites, suffers from community interaction beyond commerce. less than perfect data (a much larger challenge for the industry than can be fully addressed in the scope of this report), we We also believe that although VinCellar sees the value of found the integrity of VinCellar's to be well above average. content, their platform has been focused on data as opposed Few duplicate wines were found in the database. What we to content. The creation, leverage, and extension of their instead found was a fair number of wines that don't actually content will be key factors in the success of this network. exist—100ml or 350ml bottlings for wineries that do not bottle These qualified and mostly educated wine drinkers will in such sizes, vineyard designate and reserve bottlings with generate more detailed and educated reviews as an asset to vintages in which no such wine was produced. Using Caymus the company's portfolio of user generated content. When this as an example, we found 32 wines with NV or a pre-1972 ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 53 vintage, when 1972 was Caymus' first. The "garbage Better Social Network Integrations in/garbage out" principal is in full effect when managing user- With new API's (Facebook, et al) the ability to share and generated content. One way that VinCellar could potentially synchronize profile information makes the network more reduce the instances of human error is to rethink the new wine powerful. We also would like to see scores shared across social setup process. A user is required to enter a wine name and a networks (Winelog, et al) to help users make more informed vintage to begin the process. From there they are brought to a purchase decisions as well as extend the VinCellar brand. screen with all matching wine names in the database, and the ability to add any of those wines for that vintage, even if no Tasting notes are anemic relative to the number of users and such bottling was made in that vintage. For instance, entering bottles. This feature needs expanded participation and "Lynmar 2002" yielded 23 possible wines to choose from, even content, especially considering the probable value of members' though the winery only bottled 4 wines in that particular accolades. vintage. Predictably, there are 11 vintages of Lynmar's "Requiem" Pinot Noir bottling in the database, even though the We noticed many of the users were not active in reviews or winery only made 1 Requiem bottling in the 1999 vintage. adding wine, so we were confused by why they were VinTank believes that clean data can only come from the considered "active." The algorithm was originally weighted to source—without VinCellar engaging wineries directly to police factors that created user interaction (picture, profile). It is our and improve their data (including the producer information understanding that VinCellar is working on changing this. concept mentioned above), this issue will not likely resolve anytime soon. As mentioned before, this is a major drain on Not enough grouping or friending abilities outside of the wineries time to manage across all networks and we hope to Facebook application. This is the key missing element for social see a solution or data sharing between the networks to ease aspects. We would like to be friends on VinCellar with Alder the burden. In the interim we only recommend that wineries (who we know in real life) or others whose cellars we like. We deal with key networks until this challenge is solved. would like to tag friends with concepts such as "like their cellar, like their reviews, real life friend" – these are deficiencies in Community Scores grouping that even the largest networks are just starting to As pleased as we were with community scores, the notes help organize. aggregate rating does not define how many people's ratings had been aggregated. Doing so would give the aggregate rating Not enough focus on common the wine drinker. Most of the better relevance, especially if these ratings are to be wines are collectable and the barrier for average users is meaningful outside of VinCellar. apparent. Common store wines are not prevalent on the site and users tend not to review wines that are not particularly Word Clouds collectable. A common tool to graphically display the highest instances of user generated tags. Very helpful for organizing large groups of Deeper User Profiling user generated data. Clouds per product, for food, and overall Though VinCellar has done a great job of creating definitive user reviews would fulfill this community focused feature. user groups, we see the incredible value of even further granulation, especially with the trade and bloggers. e.g. If they Third Party Reviews are trade, are they retailers, restaurateurs, brokers, wholesaler We believe that the professional review needs more openness reps, etc?. If they are bloggers, what type of wine do they and also has normalization. For users that do not also focus on? VinCellar could further encourage additional social subscribe to many of the professional reviewers (Robert Parker, aspects including friending and friend recommendations, Wine Spectator et al), we found the site lacking in the number comments, tools to encourage engagement, status, birthday, of outside accolades available. We thought VinCellar could also groups, favorite wines, events (Twitter tastings, local events), benefit from more flexibility for other avenues (wine fairs, favorites, and messaging as incentives for more activity on the bloggers, Snooth score, CellarTracker score, Winelog scores, site. etc.) ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 54 Producer Participation • View public profiles of other users Wineries have no access to manage their winery information This further demonstrates our belief that VinCellar is the leader (both product and info) and ensure data is complete and clean. in innovation for wine social networks. Moreover, by creating winery pages where users can become fans and wineries can interact with the people that self select, this tool will become the cornerstone of attention for wineries User Interviews looking to connect with some of the highest qualified wine consumers on the web. It is our understanding that VinCellar is Most of the users we interviewed were extremely satisfied with working on this. the platform. It fulfills most every need for cellar management, price research, and buying wine. When we asked the glaring Community Manager question about why they don't review wines more frequently VinCellar would benefit from a true full time community the most frequent answer was "lack of time." manager (although the CEO, Steve Bachmann, does a good job) and some more net influencers. Winery Interaction SEO VinCellar reviews are not super SEO friendly. This will be key We HIGHLY recommend you ask all of your wine club members for producers (so that people can naturally discover their and ecommerce customers to sign up and rate your wines on wines), consumers, and especially for VinCellar to extend its VinCellar. With limited time and funds, it is key that you ask brand across the Internet. Two other networks do a superior yourself and your users to focus on key networks instead of job at SEO. spreading their attention across ones that do not deliver the value to you and them. This way, you gain the maximum value Mobile VinCellar for your customer and you harness your tribe to help build up The Company has a mobile VinCellar site, which allows users to and solidify your brand reputation in a power medium. We do the following: believe strongly that VinCellar is one of the two wine specific platforms you and your loyal consumers should focus their • Search and browse wine within the community and a attention. user's cellar • Search for tasting notes • Add tasting notes and post to your Twitter account if you have it linked to your VinCellar account • Add wine to your cellar • Consume wine ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 55 WineLog Ratings User Interface Consumer Value Winery Value Trade Value Innovation Team Company Viability Company Information URL's BOD/BOA winelog.net , Not disclosed Twitter: @winelog Funding Category Unknown Wine Social Network, Retail Price Aggregator, Recommendation Engine, Wine Cellar Tracking, 2008 Revenue <$100k (estimated) VinTank Company Tags social network, price comparison engine, Founded 2005, launched March 2006 Model Lead generation (Retail wine, advertising) Key Partners Wine Retailers including: Contact info Amity Wines and Spirits Bedford Wine Merchants Contact: Jason Coleman Drink the Grapes Tel: 610.741.6640 Fine Wine House Great Corks Total customers Gwine.com 18,872 Laurenti Wines Saratoga Wine Exchange Total wines in their database Star Wines & Liquors The Ultimate Wine Shop 31,588 The Wine Buyer We Speak Wine Data cleanliness Wine.com est. 60% Wine Chateau Winebuys.com Key Mgmt Team ….and dozens of other wine retailers Bill Loftus, CEO Jason Coleman, Founder & Developer Kim Coleman, Founder & Designer ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 56 Traffic in subsequent visits. WineLog has much to offer the industry by way of connecting wine consumer and the trade, but in order to create a beneficial balance of supply and demand WineLog will have to expand the efficiencies of its loyalty programs. It's simply Econ 101. Traffic Sources Country % United States 59.6% India 9.5% Germany 5.4% United Kingdom 3.5% Switzerland 2.8% Other 11.2% Total 100.0% WineLog tracks consistently above the Social Media Median (SMM) for unique visitors, and has grown, although erratically, U.S. traffic accounts for approx. 60% of total, following a during its first year. WineLog's traffic growth has been fueled common trend amongst wine SM sites. Comparison of mostly by the organic influence of an increasing membership WineLog's membership base with traffic would help define base, which maintains a loyal base of users. While WineLog's where the sites loyal members are and in turn further define SEO appears to provide adequate results in ranking in search the value to U.S. retailers and producers. results in Google, it is apparent that they have not made the heavy investments in keyword buys with major search engines as a few other sites have done. About WineLog WineLog provides its users with the ability to log and discuss their wine experiences as well as have personal wine recommendations made based upon a their reviews. While the concept of affiliate marketing to a social media network is far from unique, WineLog does a particularly good job of integrating the recommendations in a non-intrusive, yet readily available, manner. WineLog's content is primarily member generated, which helps to develop loyalty amongst a core group of members whose names become all too familiar within your first few visits. Although a core goal of WineLog is to help connect wine consumers with its affiliates, it still provides less WineLog 's inconsistent stickiness has been indicative of a site of a commercial feel than do many other sites which have which has seen only modest changes and advancements during turned off their visitors through a corporate structure. While its first year. Also, the average time per visitor spent on the hand crafted site lacks the robust features of some larger WineLog does not correlate well with the average pages per and very successful businesses, it satisfies a small niche group visit. Usually, an increase in time spent on site correlates to a of wine consumer. WineLog was one of the first wine social great number of pages visited per visit. For WineLog, this networks and started as a pet project by the founders. occurs only coincidentally during a few months in the above Incredibly innovative at the time, WineLog has remained a chart. VinTank has found that first-time visitors spend less time labor of love by Jason and Kim but not their primary focus. on each page during their initial visits as they spend a higher However, their ability to attract key influencers to the network percentage of time explore a site's general offerings as they do (Ward Kadel aka Dr. Xeno) coupled with solid UI and ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 57 technology has been a key asset that keeps this smaller gives the affiliate direct access to a potential new customer. network healthy. WineLog also offers a widget which will scroll the activity of any member on your site. WineLog has 10,000+ wines in its database, most of which were created by WineLog itself. Members have the ability to add Wine Cellar new wines, but there is little to no oversight as to how the wine WineLog's Wine Cellar tool enables a member to track and data is entered. This results in duplicate wine products and interact with their wine collection. Members may review even more frequently, incomplete wine products which are estimated aggregate dollar value and ratings for their missing either vintages or other pertinent data (e.g. - vineyard collection, export their wine cellar information and even print designate, vintage, varietal, full producer name, etc.). pre-formatted wine cards to be used at tastings or included in Duplicate wine entries not only reduce the experience of the journals. While these tools are simple they are valuable to site visitor, but can also cost affiliates sales. If a potential encouraging the novice and intermediate wine consumer. customer searches for a wine and clicks on a poorly entered WineLog's Wine Cellar does not have all the functionality of product, the applicable affiliate wine for sale can be CellarTracker or VinCellar, but does provide a very basic overlooked. Duplicate products and data quality is an issue method of adding your wines and tracking them, albeit that every wine social media site has. The first site to solve this occasionally quirky. issue will take three steps forward. WineLog Ambassador Revenue Winelog has two primary revenue streams. The sale Ward Kadel (aka drXeNo) is the resident Mohawk sporting of ad space throughout the site is available on a CPM or blogger and power member on WineLog, although he officially monthly sponsorship rate. To date, Google Ads have appeared maintains the title of West Coast Ambassador. His postings prominent on the site and indicates slow ad space sales. are focused on news, events and tastings held on the west Affiliate partnerships are structured appropriately. We were coast. While a regional focus is attractive to many members unable to verify monthly revenue from any of WineLog's and may increase loyalty to some, the absence of ambassadors affiliate retailers. from the other wine regions becomes blatantly apparent. Ward is currently one of the strongest assets and his influence Some Things We Found that through other social networks can be easily measured. Other social networks should emulate the model of strong Stood Out community managers (like Winelog and Snooth). Multi-Language Twitter Integration WineLog is currently available in English only, with no WineLog gives members the option to push their reviews to a indication of expanding to other languages. If they are to Twitter account in a simple one step process. Also, each extend their reach beyond the English speaking market, which member's review, rating and product addition are individually includes a growing Spanish speaking demographic in the U.S., tweeted on WineLog's Twitter account (@winelog) as well as they will have to add additional languages. scrolled on the WineLog home page, unless a member chooses one of the increased levels of privacy in their account settings. Growth In order for WineLog to become a viable long-term For affiliates this provides additional SEO for their products by company it must expand its membership base and continue to posting on Twitter as well as providing secondary exposure to release new features to its membership and affiliate partners. all of the WineLog member's Twitter followers. The speed at which WineLog grows must be twice as fast as that of the social media channel which it serves or it will lose Product Activity Notifications market share and will devalue. WineLog offers its members and affiliates product activity notification email for whenever a selected product receives a review, rating or is added to a wine cellar or wish list. This ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 58 User Interviews Winery Interaction Due to the limited number of responses we received from WineLog currently has minimal traffic from which an affiliate WineLog end-users (7), we cannot provide a summary which is can capture and transactionalize. Although we see potential statistically accurate. An anecdotal summary of comments for the site to grow, we cannot currently recommend it for an would reveal mostly positive reviews but with indicators of lack affiliate partnership until their next phase of growth is realized. of engagement in the site overall. At time of publishing, For those businesses interested in ad space, WineLog could VinTank was still waiting for feedback from producers and provide an economical bump to reaching your demographic of retailers. qualified wine consumer. We recommend interacting with Winelog.net. Sidenote Winelog.net is a part time project for the founders. WInelog.net would be a good acquisition for a major retailer or other company trying to add a wine social network to their growth path or a dedicated partner for a key business development deal. The team members are strong programmers and forward thinking and the platform, if funded, could accelerate and be a viable niche network. ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 59 OK, for Fun – A Mashup A Mash-up on the Internet is where you take multiple services and put them together to form something new. Google Maps for example. An interesting mashup of wine social networks would be CellarTracker + Adegga + VinCellar – KUNG FOO PLATFORM. Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Talk about it at www.vintank.com/?p=121 Tweet about it #vintank ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 60 Bloggers, Blobbers, Whatever, They Got Some Power So the wine industry does not know what to make of wine that is true in for some bloggers. But the same can be said of bloggers. Candidly, within the wine blogosphere they don't traditional media. And just like traditional media there are sometimes know what to make of themselves. Striations of stars that will emerge in the blogosphere (both wine and not) intent, purpose, and personal rules along the wine blogosphere like Gary Vaynerchuk, Dr. Vino, Alder Yarrow, Guy Kawaski, separate many like oil and vinegar. Seth Godin, Arianna Huffington, and more. The function of blogging is so endemic that even forward thinking professional What is a wine blogger? The blog is a magical tool. Content wine writers leverage the medium such as Steve Heimhoff, Eric Management Systems (CMS) emerged soon after the dot com Asimov, W. R. Tish, Alice Fiering, and many more. Blogging has wave in an attempt to help companies save money and time power. Not all bloggers have power. The wine blogosphere in from costly design and inefficient individual page design. As aggregate has a larger audience than any single traditional these systems matured, they evolved into interactive tools media company's online presence (and possibly of a few of whereby people could communicate via comments as well as them combined). A few other points: syndicate their content through RSS (Real Simple Syndication). Parallel to that the cost of developing those tools and the Every blogger that has an audience over 20 people has business models on the Internet changed significantly enough influence that is relevant. that companies like Wordpress, Blogger, Moveable Type and others were able to allow users to use their software for free. Wine bloggers in aggregate may be more powerful than What happened? It was like giving anyone a Guttenberg press traditional online outlets but are so fragmented in ideologies, and a distribution mechanism. The only responsibilities of the practices, and goals that creating a unified marketing and PR blogger was content and to attract audience. And thus the plan almost impossible. blogosphere exploded. In addition these tools created platforms by which "plug-ins" could be developed to enhance Bloggers are trying to find their way in the world and having the blog. Now blogs can have widgets to connect to Twitter, difficulty with other bloggers trying to impose their set of rules. widgets to serve ads, widgets to show wines, and more and These rules include overly protective expressions of advertising more and more. Thus they became functional portals for and accepting samples. We at VinTank believe that sampling is people to digest good content. And if you were not able to common practice with wineries and as long as you display your visit, RSS readers allowed you to collect the bloggers that you policy, no one can feel slighted. As to advertising, bloggers enjoyed to read. provide some of the ONLY cost effective methods for customer reach for small and medium wineries. There are ways to When we first said we were going to measure bloggers to help accommodate the conflict of rating a wine that you accept validate them in the market (positively or as an upcoming advertising from the winery: media channel), how much was the reach of bloggers that took samples and how much audience did the aggregated audience 1. Disclose that you accept advertising of bloggers that take advertising make up of the Internet we had a mixed reaction and lots of judgment about how we were 2. Don't review that wine for any of the term that you accept going to "rate" bloggers. A few months after, a thread on advertising (for gosh sake, there are 250K wines made a year, eRobert Parker shot up about wine bloggers as well we are sure you can find ways to avoid your current (dat.erobertparker.com/bboard/showthread.php?t=200356&p advertisers). age=1&pp=40). Some may say bloggers are a waste. An online diary for the ego-centric. A bunch of amateur journalists. All of ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 61 3. Ask the winery if they'd prefer an objective review or to run their ad (our guess is that they'd chose the latter.) We believe that bloggers making even a small pittance of income are more dedicated to their blog, which will extend its life. There are bloggers that do so for passion as well but if they made an extra bit to buy a Kindle for Christmas, their dedication firms. This is good and healthy for the industry. What a sad state it would be to lose the voice someone like Alder Yarrow, Jeff Lefevre and many more. Bloggers are trying to be seen as professional and have standards. We actually like that there are differentiated standards and that bloggers can exist in all categories. It allows fresh voices to emerge and become stars (Gary V). Bloggers like bloggers and are aggregating themselves (wineblogger.info). Perhaps we'll see a wine bloggers union soon. Our attempt was to show not that they were powerful but WHAT power they did possess and how it could be harnessed. As a result of the fear of being rated we had a sub-optimal turn out and many of the blogs that participated in the survey did not show up on Compete for us to validate their traffic and had to be discounted (which unfortunately was more than we wanted to lose). However, we gathered enough data to make comparisons to drive the following results. According to data from Compete, the top 20 wine bloggers in aggregate have a larger audience than the Wine Spectator online. Because data from Compete is derived from a combination of absolute and extrapolated sources, it is notoriously difficult to use in obtaining absolute numbers (i.e. blog x's unique visitors in March were 2,342). However, it is generally more accurate when comparing the audience of one site relative to another, or measuring a site's growth rates. TO NOTE - We could not find enough data from wine bloggers to determine their strength in advertising or in accepting samples. We want to have charts below to with a display of results to paint a general picture of the landscape. We hope to rerun this survey again. We also intend to reach out to all the bloggers to request their permission to Blist.com the results of the survey. This will allow PR agencies, wineries, retailers, etc. ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 62 a place to go to create their PR or marketing program against Moreover, we have heard consistently about the blog readers this new channel. complaining about infomercials and conversations about terroir, the weather, or a picnic that they had. If you do pursue Two goals we'd like to get from our next run at the data: a winery blog then commit to it. Find a voice or multiple voices at the winery that create interesting and meaningful content. The bloggers that accept ADVERTISING (including the ones with And all the best of luck but send us your blog and we promise unverified info due to lack of Compete data) represent this to add it to our RSS feeds and comment when we can. approximate level of audience and here's who they are and how much it costs. And what does it all mean? The bloggers that accept SAMPLES (including the ones with unverified info due to lack of Compete data) represent this Social Media is not new, it has been around since the dawn of approximate level of audience and here's who they are. the Internet. Social media allows people to be engaged in online hallway conversations, cocktail party chats, or water So bloggers that want to be understood under those two cooler topics--not just one but thousands. More importantly, premises, please, please help us get to that answer for wineries all those conversations are recorded and the modern tools and wine retailers. allow you to isolate key topics that interest your brand or your products and join those conversations. All of the largest mediums understood that where people intersect time with Should a winery blog? visual real estate is an opportunity to capture someone's attention. Social media has become one of the most relevant With all the activity that you need to do online do you really software platforms, in terms of time spent using, since have the time to blog? We at VinTank believe in blogs, all types Microsoft Office (where a majority of us spend our days looking even winery blogs. However, with the limited amount of at Word, Excel or Outlook). Even Google can't match the page resources, with the amount of work it takes to build audience stickiness since it is their goal to springboard people to the that differentiates you, and with all the other activities you information or ad they are looking for. Social media is about need to do (e-commerce, interact with customers, social staying there, being a voyeur, having a conversation, and networks, etc, etc) we feel that a winery blog is last on the list connecting. We hope you'll find new ways to connect with of marketing tactics (and we have been a loud opponent of your customers and colleagues through this inexpensive winery blogs for some time). Approximately only about fifteen medium. winery blogs even show up with traffic in Compete tools. Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Talk about it at www.vintank.com/?p=121 Tweet about it #vintank ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 63 About the Authors Derek Bromley Derek has spent his career innovating in and around the wine industry. In 1998 he merged his experience as a Sommelier and Beverage Director at Drew Nieporent's Myriad Restaurant Group in New York with an intuition for the "Web 1.0" world as Co-Founder and Co-CEO of BevAccess, an industry exchange linking the three tiers of the global drinks trade. After relocating to the Napa Valley Derek successfully launched Domaine Chandon's still wine portfolio in the U.S. He went on to become the Director of Sales and Marketing for Lynmar Winery where he played a key role in the transformation of the winery into a top-tier producer and destination. As Vice President of Marketing at Vintrust, the leading provider of wine management and cellarage services to collectors and wineries, Derek oversaw the company's marketing, communications and branding initiatives. He now advises a select group of wine industry clients on strategy, marketing, sales and technology. Derek holds a Bachelor's degree from Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration, and has been a guest lecturer at both the Hotel School and at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management. He is also a lecturer for the WISE Academy, the only wine industry education, training and certification program dedicated solely to direct-to-consumer sales. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Jen, and his daughter Lila. twitter.com/dbrahms www.linkedin.com/in/derekbromley www.openwineconsortium.org/profile/Derek85 www.derekbromley.com ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 64 Paul Mabray Chief Strategy Officer, VinTank Paul has been in the wine and spirits industry for over sixteen years. He has worked for Napa Ale Works, Niebaum~Coppola, WineShopper/Wine.com and also was the North American Beverage Consultant for Sumitomo Corporation of America from 2003 through 2005. He founded Inertia in 2003 as one of the first major companies established to bridge the barrier between wineries and their customers. Paul Mabray was CEO from 2003 until 2008 creating the largest and most powerful e-commerce platform for the wine industry, the Rethink Engine. Under his leadership, Inertia created incredible new products for the wine industry to help open up the ability to sell and market direct including the innovative Direct to Trade, ReThink Compliance, Brix Open Source CMS, Marketplace Services, and many more. For his last six months at Inertia, Paul was Chief Strategy Officer and EVP of Business Development in charge of creating key strategic direction, business development, and mergers and acquisitions. VinTank is a continuation of his desire to help revolutionalize the wine industry through e-business and innovative digital products and marketing. A key contributor to the Inertia blog, a two time American Wine Blog Awards finalist, he has also been a guest lecturer at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, UC Davis and many other symposiums, seminars, blogs, and periodicals for his leadership in the wine industry. He is also a lecturer for the WISE Academy, the only wine industry education, training and certification program dedicated solely to direct-to-consumer sales. Paul formerly sat on the Board of Directors for the leading wine business social network, Openwineconsortium.org, and the Board of Advisors for Snooth.com. Paul is currently on the Board of Directors for Cruvee.com and the Board of Advisors of Taste.com. He lives in Napa with his wife Sherry, and his son Finn. twitter.com/pmabray www.linkedin.com/in/pmabray www.openwineconsortium.org/profile/PaulMabray ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 65 Eric Hsu Partner, Creative Strategy, VinTank A professional website designer since 1993, Eric has worked for agencies such as Tribal DDB, where his client roster included Sony, Pepsi, Amtrak, Michelin, WB, and Lockheed Martin. Through his own design studio, Eric also worked with AOL Broadband, Cingular, Reader's Digest, Marie Claire, Columbia House, Johnson & Johnson, BestBuy and Hasbro. Eric was also one of the founders of Inertia and has been working with wineries since 2001. In addition to art direction, Eric also managed the web development department, streamlining the client launch process. And he headed the design efforts for all versions of the REthink Engine, developing and improving user interface and process workflow. On the side, Eric performs with his band Johnny Hi-Fi. The band has toured both Asia and US, and appeared on MTV, Billboard and publications such as the New York Times. twitter.com/johnnyhifi www.openwineconsortium.org/profile/EricHsu www.johnnyhi-fi.com ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 66 Joel Vincent Partner, Marketing Strategy, VinTank Joel Vincent is the Founder and Executive Director of the OpenWine Consortium (the OWC), a global trade association whose mission is to partner technology with the wine industry to open new avenues of business and networking in the wine world. With over 2300 members and businesses among its membership, the OWC runs education and networking events around the globe and maintains the largest online social network dedicated to the wine industry. Prior to OWC, Joel led product marketing and management teams at leading high technology companies -Cisco, Meru Networks, Netgear, and Lucent - where he has successfully brought over 65 products and services to market worldwide, garnering awards ranging from Comdex best-in-show to a nomination for a ComputerWorld Smithsonian award. He combines over 15 years of experience in the high-technology industry and a lifelong passion for wine with his degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to provide a visionary voice to the wine and technology industries. twitter.com/juicecowboy www.openwineconsortium.org/profile/Joel www.joelvincent.com www.winelifetoday.com ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 67 Patrick Angeles Partner, Technology Strategy, VinTank Patrick has over 13 years of professional experience in software development. Starting with Bankers' Trust, he was part of a group that developed a patented technology for issuing risk-bearing digital certificates. As Director of Engineering with Acquire Inc., he led the design and implementation of a content-based monitoring platform used by Chase Bank, Nielsen//Netratings and Experian, among others. His latest stint was as VP Technology with Inertia Beverage Group, where he set the technology vision and built the team behind the leading software-as-a-service platform for the wine industry. Patrick holds a bachelor's degree in English and Computer Science from Oberlin College. twitter.com/patrickangeles www.linkedin.com/pub/0/881/378 www.openwineconsortium.org/profile/PatrickAngeles ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 68 Alex Kajani Associate Analyst, VinTank Alex is a Direct Sales Consultant to nascent and expanding domestic wine brands. His consulting specialty is in developing direct-to-consumer and trade direct sales programs for wine brands wanting to change their sales channel dynamic. Prior to his consultancy and working with VinTank, Alex worked with three of VinTank's founders at Inertia, where his primary focus was on expanding Inertia's Direct-to- Trade program, which enables wineries to ship direct to retailers in a number 3-tier distribution states. Alex caught the wine industry bug close to home and while his fiancé was in the UC Davis Viticulture & Enology graduate program. After taking what he likes to call a "very hard-working vacation" as a harvest intern with Pahlmeyer winery, he closed his database management service and moved to Napa to begin work at Inertia. His more distant background included five years of managing Bay Area political campaigns, sales for an educational dot com and as a trial litigation paralegal. As a native son of the Philadelphia area, Alex frequently travels back to the east coast to visit friends and family. Alex has lived in Napa with his fiancé for 5 for years. www.linkedin.com/pub/1/3b4/8a0 ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 69 Thank You We wish to extend out our thanks to all the people that made Thank you to people who have been inspirations through their this possible. First we'd like to thank our families, who yet work in the wine industry: Andrew Kamphuis from Vin65.com, again, are allowing us to be startup junkies. They give us the Doug Cook from Ablegrape.com, Aaron Rutledge from strength to work late nights, when it would be much nicer to Pokeny.com, Peter Granoff from Ferry Wine Merchants just be enjoying a glass of wine and watching Survivor. We love (founder of Virtual Vineyards/Wine.com), Peter Sisson (founder you all. of Wineshopper.com), Lesley Berglund (founder of WineTasting.com and now the WISE academy), Mike Moone, We would also like to thank key people who helped make this Jeff Stai, Vic Motto, Mary Ann Tsai, Erle Martin, Chris Deardon, possible through helping to support the research: Tom Wark, Asa Baird, and so many more that we may have overlooked in The Cruvee/Scrugy team, John Hinman and Hinman and our haste to complete this paper. Carmichael, and Kimon Cambouroglou (Technology Law Group - www.technologylawgroup.net). And finally, from me (Paul Mabray) – a thank you to the team that devoted tireless hours to make this report a reality, my A special thank you to Chris Edwards and Wine Tasting business partner for eight years and closest friend Eric Hsu (I Network/1-800-FLOWERS for paying for our introduction to the am lucky to call you family), my other two partners and friends report and being a staunch supporter of VinTank. Patrick Angeles and Joel Vincent, our Associate Analyst and good friend Alex Kajani, and finally a long time colleague and EXTENSITVE THANK YOUS – to Mike Wangbickler for his editing new friend, Derek Bromley. It was all of you that really made services (although we never gave him a chance to finish) this possible. Most importantly thank you to my family for enduring my absence as I typed through many late nights. Thank you to the following people for their unwavering support of our efforts; Randy Hall and Richard Kasmier a.k.a. Kaz, Rob McMillan, Amy Atwood, Steve Koetzner, Lisa Adams Walters, Disclosures Kathleen Buckley, Melissa Dobson, Peder Arneson, and Milton Cornwell. Thank you to Roger Roessler and Cuvee for their The Internet is the king of transparency and to ensure we support and lending us their facility to do our first presentation match that ethos here are any conflicts that may be discussed of the methodology. ahead of time. A giant thank you to ALL of the bloggers who participated in Paul Mabray, Eric Hsu, Patrick Angeles, Tom Wark and Alex our survey and for blogging and starting online conversations Kajani all worked for/with Inertia Beverage Group. Paul about our efforts: Arthur Przebinda, John Corcoran, Lisa de Mabray and Eric Hsu founded Inertia. Inertia has worked with Bruin, Mike Wangbickler, Alder Yarrow, Jeff Lefevere, Tim Snooth.com and others. Elliot, Ryan Opaz, Terry Christiani, David Honig, Amanda Hendershot, and Rick Breslin. Cruvee and Scrugy merged during the process of writing this paper. Cruvee is a client of VinTank.com and VinTank holds a We'd also like to extend our hand of thanks to our friends and seat on Cruvee's board with options for equity ownership. tweeps (Twitter peeps) that continuously cheered us on (even Vin65.com and Wine Tasting Network are also clients of when we were late) and engaged in meaningful conversations VinTank.com. about this project. Paul Mabray was on the BOA of Snooth.com. He resigned in Q4 With all our thanks to the companies that FULLY filled out our 2008 for personal reasons. He is on the BOA of Taste.com survey and helped expedite our work. (possible social network) and on the BOD of Cruvee.com (a social network monitoring company). He is 5'11" and 165 lbs ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 70 but hopes to lose 10 lbs this spring. He also considers himself a Tom Wark is the head of the Specialty Wine Retailers friend of Gary Vaynerchuk and hopes the sentiment is Association, runs his own blog Fermentation, and also founded reciprocated. and spearheaded the American Wine Blog Awards. Joel Vincent is the founder of the Openwineconsortium.org and The entire team is friends with multiple wine bloggers and organized the WBC (Wine Bloggers Conference). He also runs professional traditional wine writers. his own blog Winelifetoday.com and the OWC has taken over responsibility for the American Wine Blog Awards. This paper probably has some grammar/style errors which we hope to someday fix (if we ever find the time). Derek Bromely worked for VinTrust, one of the key competitors of Vinfolio. Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Talk about it at www.vintank.com/?p=121 Tweet about it #vintank ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 71 Recommended Reading Blogs Mashable.com Ideavirus.com Longtail.com Web Pages marketingwhitepapers.s3.amazonaws.com/smss09/SocialMediaMarketingIndustryReport.pdf www.facebook.com/marketing Twitter's "Getting Started" Help Guide twitter.zendesk.com/forums/10711/entries A blogger's perspective on Getting Started with Twitter www.searchengineguide.com/jennifer-laycock/part-one-from-twits-to-tweeple-why-i-emb.php How Comcast used Twitter to build positive Social Media buzz (Good case study on power of Twitter) bryanperson.com/2008/04/28/comcastcares-is-listening-and-not-only-to-michael-arrington/ Social Media – The Do's and Don'ts of Sharing mashable.com/2009/02/27/social-media-for-business-2/ Facebook for your business – Step by Step Guide onlinebusiness.volusion.com/articles/facebook-for-your-business Books Wikinomics – Don Tapscott Good to Great – Jim Collins Purple Cow – Seth Godin ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 72 Good Additional Tools for the Hard Core Managing networks knowem.com A service to check most social networks to see if someone is using your name or your brands name. For pay you can register your name at most social networks with only a few short clicks. www.tweetscan.com If you've been on twitter and experienced the craziness of bugs, downtime, etc you may be worried about losing your tweets over time or may have additional use. Tweetscan lets you download all your tweets to a CSV file. twittersafe.com A place to download all your previous Twitter conversations so that if you ever get the "fail whale" and twitter loses them, you won't. ping.fm A centralized broadcasting tool that allows you to send messages to key social networks from your phone, the web, and other tools. One message to rule them all. Networks include Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, and 34 more. cliqset.com A tool for helping users and programmers connect the dots between social applications. On Twitter you may have one identity and another on Facebook. Cliqset looks to help help you and the Internet align these connections. friendfeed.com A place where you can manage and review conversations from various networks. chi.mp Chi.mp is the ultimate mix between Friendfeed and Cliqset with a little Blogger/Wordpress thrown in for good measure. Creating Social Media Ning A simple and large SaaS for building social networks. Wine 2.0 and Openwineconsortium.org are built on Ning. Wordpress.com Our favorite tool for creating a blog. VinTank's site runs on Wordpress. ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 73 Research or resources twitter.grader.com A tool to measure a person's influence on Twitter. facebook.grader.com/page A tool to measure a business on facebook. facebook.grader.com/user A tool to measure a person's influence on facebook. Managing Conversations and people hootsuite.com A good manager of twitter that allows you to manage multiple accounts, integrate your RSS feeds, schedule tweets for later, and broadcast to other networks through integration with ping.fm and measure statistics automatically from their URL shortner. www.tweetlater.com A tool to allow you to schedule tweets in the future. Great Twitter management tool. One of our personal favorites. Xobni.com Xobni (Inbox spelled backwards) is the best Outlook plug in for managing email conversations. It is relevant in our report because it also lets you easily see into LinkedIn and Facebook for anyone that emails you. Digsby.com The best tool that integrates instant message platforms and social network conversations. In one dashboard you can chat on AOL, Yahoo and monitor your Twitter, Facebook, and other conversations. desktop.seesmic.com One of the two best Twitter/Facebook conversation managers. Tweetdeck.com The other best Twitter/Facebook conversation manager. thecosmicmachine.com Great communication/RSS manager for Mac. Better than Tweetdeck IMHO since it incorporates RSS so great for monitoring blogs that you can then tweet. www.pitchengine.com Great for "social media-izing" a traditional press release www.twellow.com Twitter yellow pages. IE search for "wine" and get a good list of people to follow. ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 74 Cruvee.com (DISCLAIMER – Cruvee is a VinTank client so we gave them a bit more room in the tools section) Cruvee is a customer acquisition vehicle that is designed for wineries to connect with consumers. It aggregates all the conversations and tasting notes around the web including: • Over 19 Millions of blog posts with 700 dedicated wine bloggers • Over 6,000 forums – both wine related and non-wine related • Over 2 million tweets a day • 100's of social networking sites and wine groups • Major wine related tasting note sites This tool helps to protect and promote a wineries brand by effectively monitoring, measuring and interpreting the online chatter, clutter and its inherent viral effect. They help their clients leverage this consumer generated media as a competitive advantage in today¹s online marketplace. Cruvee not only gives wineries a unique view of their brands public perception in near real-time but they also enable wineries to engage consumers to continue brand loyalty and sales efforts. Anyone that puts in VinTank as a promo code when signing up for Cruvee will sign up at the rate of $29.95/months for their service (normally $150/month) Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Talk about it at www.vintank.com/?p=121 Tweet about it #vintank ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 75 Social Media/Network Company Questionnaire ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 76 Social Media/Network Company Questionnaire Welcome to VinTank's annual Social Media Matrix Report. Your company has been chosen due to its relevance as a wine social network. Over the next two weeks, VinTank will be researching your company as well as compiling the information you provide in this questionnaire. We hope you can fill in as much as possible, and we will insert data from our research what you leave blank. Therefore having the information from you directly will be a stronger and more accurate reflection of your vision and goals. This survey forms the basis for VinTank's positioning of companies on our Social Media Matrix Report. Completing this survey does not guarantee inclusion in this report. Companies are reviewed in five areas: Finance, Marketing, Sales, Operations, and Technology. Companies are asked questions that pertain to their vision and execution in each of these five areas. VinTank will use all categories to create relative measurements for your organization. Please keep answers brief and to the point. Submissions that are not returned on this form will be returned to you for completion and/or for further explanation. If some of the information is confidential yet critical to improving your explanation of your vision (and hence something that would make VinTank or any other outside entity view your company differently), we can provide a mutual Non-Disclosure Agreement to protect the information you request to be confidential. If necessary, we can schedule a live conference call to discuss questions before the deadline for submission. For top companies, in depth interviews on product, features, and futures may be requested. Please include any additional materials that you feel are relevant to the questions asked. This document is considered confidential and is not distributed among our clients or other companies except in our final report format. You will need to identify information that you do not want to become public information. Some information is required to be published and is indicated with the color red. Companies completing this questionnaire will receive an advanced copy of the completed report prior to its public release date. ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 77 Company Company name : Site URL : Any special login instructions/information (we are more likely than not to login and review the service) : Mission statement (if applicable) : ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 78 Finance Vision What is the revenue model (membership, advertising, ecommerce, data, referral [i.e. Snooth, WineZap…])? What are the financial objectives of the company? How will they be met over the next 3-5 years? What are your strategies for financial growth (mergers/acquisitions, strategy for raising capital, etc.)? Explain the corporate vision for becoming profitable (if not currently so) in this market segment : What are the contingency plans in case of a prolonged financial downturn? Execution Total revenue last fiscal year : US$ When does your fiscal year end? Revenue generated from online activity/products alone : US$ Please provide historical revenue results and future revenue projections. (Answers are to be in US$ Millions.) Also, comment on primary revenue drivers and inhibitors. Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 FY Revenue Drivers & Inhibitors 2008 2007 2006 2005 Additional comments : If public, please attach latest financial statement. What are your company's 3 most important key performance indicators? 2007 2008 2009 Projection KPI 1 KPI 2 KPI 3 Startup Companies Only ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 79 Total amount of capital raised to date : US$ Date of last round of funding : Total amount of last round of funding: US$ Total amount of cash available : US$ Burn rate per month : US$ When do you expect to become profitable? Who are primary investors? Are partnerships used to raise capital (yes or no)? (please comment) : Are venture capitalists used to raise funds (yes or no)? (please comment) : ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 80 Marketing Vision Explain your go-to market strategy : Is there a different global versus domestic marketing strategy (yes or no)? (please explain) : What is your market segmentation strategy and related marketing plan? If vertical markets targeted, what are they? What are the segments of the wine industry that you serve (restaurants, wineries, retailers, millennial consumers etc.), and what is the most compelling value proposition of your product/service for each segment? What is your budgeted marketing spend and mix? Line Item 2007 2008 2009 % increase (decrease) SEO (include in-house labor) Advertising SEM Banner Offline Media Relations/PR Direct Marketing Email Snail Mail Catalog Phone Other Consumer Events Trade Events Marketing Collateral Strategic Relationships (referral fees paid, discounts ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 81 given to partners etc.) Sponsorships Donations Editorial (Expense for bloggers, content generation, syndication costs etc…) Other (please specify) Describe your strategic partnership vision : How will your marketing strategy change as the market develops? Rebranding or widget strategy (yes or no)? (please describe) : Execution Are you a global company (yes or no)? (please list countries) : In what countries do you specifically target your marketing today? In which markets do you feel you have established significant presence? Briefly describe marketing partnerships : Who do you see as your competitors? How do you position yourself against the competition? (You may include a competitive spreadsheet here or at the end of the survey) Additional comments : Please provide any published articles within the last six months, either as attachments or as links. ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 82 Sales Vision What is your sales strategy/plan? What kind of salespeople have you hired/plan to hire? Explain your channels strategy/resellers/affiliates : Plans to expand visitors/users/active accounts (yes or no)? (please describe) : What is the strategy to expand business activity in current active users (i.e. increase expected lifetime value of acquired active user)? Execution If you have transactional capability, please describe the sales here and include detail below : Describe your sales channels (direct, indirect, retail, etc.) : Do you have a direct presence outside of the U.S. (yes or no)? (please list where) : Who is your target audience (business community, consumer, producers, retailers, producers, etc.)? Is your platform capable of private virtual deployments (yes or no)? o How many private deployments/customers? o What is the average number of users per deployment? What is your average sales cycle : o Average sales value? How many new active users within the last six months? Do you use affiliates in any way (yes or no)? (please comment) : Briefly describe any significant sales and/or support partnerships : What percentage of product revenue comes from affiliates? Additional comments : Please include your pricing model and any pricing details you wish to submit or more detailed explanation of sales model in the form of editable white paper. ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 83 Operations Vision How do you plan to build the operations side of the business (customer service, HR, development, etc.)? Are there innovations planned to retain and attract top employees (yes or no)? (please describe) : If you look across the operations components of your company, do you have a plan for increasing their efficiency (yes or no)? Describe your customer service strategy : Does the company use contractors, consultants, for the network/products/services covered in this questionnaire (yes or no)? (please indicate which operations are outsourced) : Execution How many unique visitors do you have? Page views? What is the average visit time of a member to your site? (you can obtain this from services such as Google Analytics) How many users do you have? How many active users? If you are a wine review site how many wines do you have? How many reviews? How many wine brands? How many retailer partners? Total number of employees : What is the breakdown of employees (sales, accounting, HR, partnership and business development, marketing, engineering, support, professional services)? How many offices worldwide? What are their locations? If you do not have offices worldwide, do you have other means of establishing a global presence (yes or no)? (please explain) : Have you closed any locations (yes or no)? (please explain why) : Have you opened any new offices (yes or no)? (please explain why) : What types of executive officers do you have (CFO, CEO, President, CIO, etc.)? Please attach their Bios/backgrounds to this survey How long has you upper management team been together? How is customer service handled? Is it outsourced? ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 84 Technology Vision Is your primary focus on Social Media/Networking products (yes or no)? o If not, what other areas are you involved in? What other areas do you plan to pursue? What is your vision of Web2.0/Social Media technology over the next 3 years? What is your technology and product specific strategy as it relates to this vision (if you choose, you may enclose a slide deck or White Paper)? What do you see as the competitive advantage your platform(s) and their respective feature sets have over the competition? List significant technology partnerships : Please include additional articulation of technology vision in an editable white paper if the above doesn't provide enough space or if it's more readily available. Execution What types of Social Media/Networking products do you market today? (NOTE: the questions asked in this section only pertain to currently public products. Do not include future projects or enhancements in this section. Future products/enhancements should be reflected in the TECHNOLOGY: Vision section) Do you develop your own platform (yes or no)? Which products are live and generating revenue according to your sales and operations execution listed above? o How long? If you have virtual private networks, what is the largest deployment to date? What is the average deployment size? Which products/services are still under development or are in beta testing (please provide public availability dates)? Other features Please provide a list of features for all Social Network products that you feel are unique and differentiating that you may not have already mentioned and a competitive matrix. ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: email@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf 85 Contact Information Information listed below is not for publication. It is used for quality control purposes only. Name : Title : Telephone : E-mail : Thank you for taking the time to complete this form and ensuring that the information is accurate and correct. ADDRESS: 1250 Main Street Suite #270 Napa, CA 94559 • PHONE: 800.605.8265 • WEB: vintank.com • EMAIL: firstname.lastname@example.com TWITTER: twitter.com/vintank • FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/14R1mf