#ACwine Symposium Review
It was my first time attending the Atlantic Canada Wine Symposium as a member of the newly founded Atlantic Wine Institute hosted at the Acadia Centre for Rural Innovation at Acadia University. This awesome event occurs every two years and is hosted by the Winery Association of Nova Scotia (WANS) and wineries from three other Atlantic provinces.
Building Effective Customer Relationships with Elizabeth Slater
On Sunday, I participated in the “Building Effective Relationships and Marketing Techniques to Increase Visitors” by Elizabeth Slater, a world renowned winery direct marketing consultant. The session was very informative and focused on being original, telling your story, providing different reasons to visit your winery, and learning about why your customers are at your winery. Slater stressed finding out why your customers are at the winery…is it because they need to use the washroom on their road trip or are they a food critic. Why? The road tripper may not care about what foods to pair with your wines. Know your customer!
Getting to Know your Customer
Rule of thumb: listen 80% of the time, talk 20% of the time. Key message: Talk less about yourself. Ask your customers what they like, what do they like to do-find your commonalities. Ask your customers, what do they want to get out of their winery experience? Thank your customers and thank your regulars. If you are bold enough to ask your customers what they would like to get out of their experience, you need to know your product.
Millenials with Suresh Doss
In the past, wine news came from a small amount of traditional publications and therefore was only accessible to few. Today, the way we get information about wine is open ended, the internet and the way we use it (blogging and social media) has democratized wine content. Everyone has the ability to share their opinions with the world, regardless of if we want to hear it.
Characteristics of Millenials and Wine
- Constantly seeking new
- Have no favorites
- Huge foodies
- Twitter addicts
- More women than men
- Order more wine then men
- Attend more events
- Love local
- Plan trips around food and wine
“Millenials are a large audience, don’t ignore them”
They are your ambassadors and they love small intimate events. There is a rise in the number of wine meetups occurring. Follow Suresh Doss for more insights.
Thoughts
The 2012 Atlantic Wine Symposium is an incredible event for networking, learning, and doing business. I learned about a Absinthe distillery starting in New Brunswick, I met many of the wine makers and winery owners of Atlantic Canada, I tasted Rhubarb wine for the first time, and gathered many new ideas for research for the Atlantic Wine Institute. Needless to say, I had a blast. I would have like to see more depth in the sessions as many of them I left with the feeling of wanting more. That said, for someone who is very new to the wine industry overall it was informative, accessible, and engaging.
At a certain point I stopped taking notes on paper and started tweeting them. Find my tweets by searching #ACwine” on Twitter, via @WinesofAC, and on @debata
