Use Automation to Make Club Management Easier

Wine clubs have been around for decades and have become a core sales channel—not to mention a great way to build customer relationships and encourage loyalty. Their structure has been borrowed and adapted by breweries, distilleries, cideries, coffee roasters, and more. 

See how Vista Brewing used VineSpring to create a community grow their club.

Many craft producers start out small, possibly managing their club with spreadsheets. But if you want your program to grow, you need to incorporate systems that work together and include automation. 

Scaling Up with Personalization and Automation

Advances in technology have not only made managing clubs easier but have allowed producers to create a more personalized experience for their customers. Clubs have become more scalable while allowing customers to feel like they are valued. Not only does automation and personalization provide a better online experience, but a frictionless path-to-purchase increases sales. 

For more information, read Investing in Wine Clubs and the Subscription Model is Great for Business.

We define automation as the combination of software and processes that help eCommerce businesses simplify workflows and eliminate repetitive tasks to deliver personalization. Not to mention, automation saves craft producers tons of time, allowing them to focus on other tasks.

With personalization, you can offer customized interactions and experiences on your eCommerce site through individualized offers, product recommendations, and other communications depending on your website visitors’ previous actions, interests, and purchases. 

Automation and personalization combined prove to be a powerful tool for clubs. 

Read more about how to boost eCommerce sales with personalization and automation. 

How to Improve Your Club Process with Automation

There are lots of ways to incorporate automation into your club process that will save you time while delighting your customers. Here are a few of our favorite methods.

Automate Your Communication

Email has stood the test of time and still rules as a great communication tool. To help craft producers manage their clubs and give members the information that they need, set up automatic emails. These emails can remind customers of upcoming shipments, alert customers of expiring payment methods or activate actions when certain events occur. 

Watch the video to learn more about how VineSpring integrates with MailChimp for email automation.

One email automation that we find super effective is an abandoned cart email. This is when a customer is in your eCommerce store, has put items in their cart, but never finished their purchase. These customers are only one short step away from checking out! Use automation to encourage them to complete the purchase. Watch the video below to learn how you can use VineSpring and MailChimp to set up specific emails for cart abandonment. 

Batch Automation for Payments

Everyone knows that when you group similar tasks together and execute them all at once, you save time. 

A task that often bogs down craft producers is updating credit card information. Thankfully, through VineSpring and Stripe, club managers can run a credit card updater service. VineSpring automatically runs a process to ID declined charges, notifies the customer, prompts the customer to update their card, and re-runs the charge. To learn how watch the video below: 

Make Club Customization Easier

VineSpring customers can also create custom clubs that allow customers to modify their shipments. The craft producer can designate default items and identify items that can be customized. Perhaps the customer wants to swap out a bottle for something different or wants to add on a product that they love. Craft producers also have the ability to batch notify club members and let them know when their order is available to customize.

Customers will love that they belong to a club that delivers exactly what they need and craft producers are able to manage their programs with ease. To learn how to set up custom clubs, watch the below video. 

Integrate Your Store and Your Website Seamlessly

Want to customize your customer’s online experience even more? VineSpring developed a Software Development Kit (SDK) to enable a seamless integration between your website and your store. With these tools, you or your developer have the control to create a custom experience for all who visit your site and want to purchase, access their account, manage allocations or join a club, from the pages on your website. Chris and Aku explain how it works. 

If you’d like to learn more about how VineSpring can help automate your processes and create a personalized experience for customers, contact us and we’ll give you a live demo.

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