Tasteful Tryst

Wine dot-coms merger to enable personalization more targeted e-mail is the intended fruit following October’s blending of WineShopper.com and Wine.com and the marrying of their databases.

Operating as Wine.com, the new entity has headquarters in San Francisco and Napa, CA. Thanks to financial backing from Amazon.com, features from both companies’ Web sites will debut in one redesigned site next year.

“We want to get to the point where we can target offers in a more personalized way, and include more preferences such as e-mail frequency,” says Gina Diprima, e-commerce programs manager for Wine.com. WineShopper.com brings to the merger an e-mail-newsletter marketing program that’s ripe for expansion. Wine.com contributes a sizable customer base and a solid merchandising track record.

For now, the e-mail program focuses on geographic segmentation. And for good reason: the law. The wine industry faces unique marketing and order-fulfillment challenges because of individual state laws that regulate sales, distribution and delivery.

Certain states, for example, forbid the sale of wine from a California winery directly to the consumer. Other states demand that the wine be shipped to an authorized distributor or to a retailer in the state where the consumer lives.

Complying with different rules in different states requires separate backend systems as well as editing which wine offers appear on Web pages that pop up on computers in different states and which products may be ordered.

In the e-mail realm, each state’s customers receive a newsletter written for their state. But newsletters make no sales pitches. Instead, they are written to inform and entertain, and generate Web site traffic. Editorial content includes wine reviews and serving tips. Sales offers and ordering are available only at the site.

Despite’s its reliance on geographic segmentation, this strategy still delivers, say Wine.com executives. Existing customers return to the site to buy again and, overall, the company enjoys a “bump up” in orders after newsletters are e-mailed. Diprima can’t pin down exactly how much of the bump-up is tied to newsletter recipients’ purchases, because Internet search-engine inquiries and links from marketing affiliates’ Web sites also generate traffic and sales, she says.

As the customer database grows, more information will be tapped for newsletter targeting by segments – down to the ZIP code level. “You have to have a large enough database to break out meaningful segments,” points out Chris Lange, director of e-commerce.

Wine.com will survey customers to discover who prefers red wine and who prefers white. Buying patterns and Web site click-stream behavior will be analyzed to break down future e-mail newsletters by yet smaller demographic segments.

After all, making the newsletter content more targeted and relevant to customers is the key to repeat business, observes David McKay, vice president of corporate marketing at Netcentives, the San Francisco marketing agency that handles these e-mail programs.

The company is already re-examining the purchase patterns in the data collected thus far, with hopes it can infer which customers tend to purchase on special occasions and which for gift giving, Lange says. But even armed with such detailed data, the e-mail newsletters won’t contain specific offers. Instead, the editorial content will be tailored to match customers’ database profiles.

Motorola successfully bets on “Silent Bill” viral e-mails aviral marketing campaign created a “buzz” online for a new Motorola pager. And it was the buzz of success.

After adapting the formerly business-to-business T900 pager for consumer use, Motorola was challenged with creating enough excitement about it that retailers would carry and distribute the pagers. The Boynton Beach, FL, U.S. paging division of Motorola decided viral e-mail would be their best bet to reach the target demographic of 18-to-24-year-olds.

The three-week campaign last August aimed to change how young adults communicate with peers, conveying the message that using a wireless device is cool but using a telephone is antisocial. The e-mail features “Silent Bill,” a cartoon character who gives up talking, communicating only with the T900. “This is a new product category to most people, and Silent Bill is a great way to introduce it and start the buzz,” says Amy Kabcenell, director for distribution marketing for the Motorola division.

Motorola sent 60,000 e-mails with the Silent Bill video attachment to registered users of Web sites popular with college students – such as the young adult membership site www.sixdegrees.com. The company hoped that recipients would find the e-mails so interesting that they would share them with friends. That’s exactly what happened. The e-mails generated 250,000 Web site hits for Motorola. In addition, about 200 pagers were given away to some of Motorola’s online visitors.

No orders resulted from the e-mails, which is fine with Motorola. Awareness of the pager, though, has definitely been lifted, says Kabcenell.