BerserkerDay 12 - Offer feedback from the community

I had lots of comments during BD12 regarding offers, great feedback, but I thought I would open it for all. In fact, a number of berserkers PM me directly in the middle of BDE when offers/links didn’t work and I was doing surgery on the fly, like a M.A.S.H. unit. [cheers.gif]

Regarding offers: what worked, didn’t work, etc. How can the offers do to make things run smoothly? Where were the snags or turn offs?

I’ll get this information back to all the participants in the form of a FAQ

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What a great day. The offers were beyond my wildest imagination.

Some specific thoughts:

All Offers Should…

  1. FIX THE SHIPPING GLITCHES IN ADVANCE!!!
  • Do a test run to make sure everything works up through checkout
  • A crew of 10 Grand Cru Cru could each take a batch of 10 offers and test by 1/24
  • Test other point of purchase stuff as well (ex: does it work different browsers?)
  1. Be clear about shipping
  • What carrier(s) do they use
  • Will they hold for cold weather?
  1. Have a standardized signature line, that at minimum:
  • Hyperlink to website
  • Name
  • Business name
  • Ex: Sabelli-Frisch (his tagline is terrific)
  • Ex: Ladd Cellars
  1. Have a somewhat standardized offer
  • We should look at the “better” formatted offers and figure out why
    they are better. I don’t want to take away people’s creativity, but
    having a little bit of uniformity is easier to follow, such as:
    always knowing that a “to purchase” URL will be underneath every offer.
    Or not having to poke around on their website for ABV, because it’s right there in
    the offer.
  • Along those lines, ABV should be included for every wine, or include an ABV range
    for reds and whites
  • Personal fave examples: Ladd, Brittan, Zoetic
  1. Be consistent with their Promo Code
  • If you have 3 different offers, put the promo code at the end of each offer
  • That way people don’t have to scroll back and forth
  • Personally, I think the next year’s default Promo Code should be BD13
    for everyone, with obvious exception if it creates point of sale issues
  1. Know that they have the option to Extend their B-Day offer
  • Offer can be extended to __________
  • They should change it in the Subject Line
  • And give them examples of how to change it
    i.e. should “Extended” be the first word of the edited subject line,
    or should it be the last word? We should pick one and be consistent across
    the board
  • Maybe the extended offers can be grouped together somehow
    (under Forum, or Announcements?)
  1. Have a backup plan if they sell out of an offer.

Surveys

If you don’t already, I would suggest sending post B-Day surveys.

Producer Survey (sent via PM)

  1. How many offers did you have
  2. How many offers did you sell
  3. How many offers sold out
  4. What was the best part of B-Day (short answer)
  5. What would you like to see improve (short answer)
  6. Were your overall expectations met (Likert scale 1-7)
  7. About how much revenue did you take in? (range?)
  8. Were your revenue expectations met? (Liker scale 1-7)
  9. Other (short answer)

Berserker Survey (sent via PM and/or topic in Wine Talk)

  1. How many offers did you buy (range)
  2. How many new (range)
  3. How many repeats (range)
  4. Estimated $$$ spent (range)
  5. Have you bought wine from a B-Day vendor outside of B-Day? (yes/no/not sure)
  6. Of the Yes
    a) Did you sign up for their mailing list
    b) Did you join their wine club
    c) About how much did you spend on these non-B-Day purchase
  7. Were your overall expectations met? (Likert scale 1-7)
  8. Were you aware of January 26th Preview Day?
  9. Are aware of Grand Cru Cru members could purchase some offers on January 26th?
  10. Would you consider joining Grand Cru Cru for $30/year for an ad-free experience and the ability to purchase offers on January 26th?
  11. Other (short answer)

Post B-Day Support
Maybe a couple of Berserker businesses could host a B2B Zoom debriefing to talk about what worked and didn’t work, how can they make their offers better, etc.


All of these could fleshed out more, but you get the general idea.

12 Likes

Boom!

Lock the thread…great feedback

All wines should be preloaded on Cellartracker.

8 Likes

Lol yes 2 months before Brig you should give all of them a class in website design and POS software!

Thanks! I clearly have too much time on my hands. [cheers.gif]

I don’t intend to sound harsh, because I am in no way a web designer. But it’s not like B-day is the first time someone’s website is getting used.

Take a look at the first 10 comments in a B-day offer. I randomly picked 20 offers… at least 7 had issues that were preventable:

  • Purchase link doesn’t work
  • Purchase link is missing in the offer description
  • Discrepancy between price on website vs price in the B-Day offer
  • Promo code doesn’t work
  • I got charged for shipping
  • Chrome doesn’t work

These recurring issues make it harder for us to spend money on their products. The goal is to make it easier.

Ha!

I do that for Sandler because in the early days, this will sound a bit weird, but Ed called me and said “I didn’t get much action last year, what should I do?” Shit, I don’t know… I love Ed. We talked about all kinds of things and ultimately decided that he’ll create the offer and then I’ll just start hacking away. I came up with idea that CT should be able to have “packages” of wines loaded and then link to it so you can look at reviews, add your cellar, etc. I finally figured it out, create a wishlist in my CT account and add the wines to it, make it public and then use that link in the offer.

So Ed’s 4-pack offer is my wishlist DB12S4 in my CT account 72003

CellarTracker Shortcut: [url=https://www.cellartracker.com/list.asp?table=Tag&List=BD12S4&iUserOverride=72003]Click here[/url] to add this 4 pack to your CellarTracker cellar

ends up looking like this

CellarTracker Shortcut: Click here to add this 4 pack to your CellarTracker cellar

There are 75+ wine offers… That’s a lot of work…

3 Likes

WTF!!! Like Todd and Brig don’t have enough on their plate…metrics far too complicated for most humans. Would kinda prefer to leave things as they are. Life’s too frigging short to require everything in some spread sheet or other.

As for not getting much action, I’d suggest Tinder.

I love how Ed has the CT link; did not realize Brig did it gratis. Is there anything preventing other Berserker Businesses from doing this on their own? Folks could opt in or decide it’s not worth it. That could be part of the post B-Day B2B support.

Todd and I try and go through every offer, I don’t tell them, but I make changes to the offers all the time. If they are really big changes, I’ll ask. If it’s formatting, readability, URL issues or bbcode related I’ll just do it and move on to the next.

We run into issues where lots of offers are created the weekend before Berserkerday, on the 26th or even the 27th. Seriously. There is so much shit going on administratively there’s no way to go back and review much less help.

On Berserkerday as Todd launches a new group every 30 minutes I go into every offer and read every post for the first 15 minutes looking for problems that berserkers might post like “link not working”, “shipping issues”, “Chris Freemott was play xbox when his launched”, whatever. And figure out the best way to fix it as quickly as possible. Todd and I are texting 1000 times during BD - “problems with offer XXX call them now” or he’ll pass me all the clean up so he can stay focused on the launching.

It sounds crazy because it is crazy but it’s fun and very rewarding when wineries send a PM and thank you for making their year. It’s more than rewarding, it’s gratifying, enriching and the list goes on.

[berserker.gif]

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I’m good with the chaos - though normally I impose order on professional comms - but I’d love each offer Subject line to begin with the supplier’s name. I (and I think others) tend to read and reread the offerings multiple times and of course they move around as comments load, etc. When I go looking for one I want to revisit or actually order, I sometimes find it really hard to find them in the list.

Patrick’s notes are impressive and clearly show serious smarts and expertise …but … I sorta lean toward Steve’s comment … again, this is said as someone who has spent a lifetime doing various types of pro comms. There is a real charm and personality to the whole experience that I would hate to see lost. I also think that quirkiness is part of why we buy so much on BD - it’s not simply looking at another auction or catalog listing. Instead, it’s clearly not a pro marketing presentation but a direct conversation (typos and all) with the winemaker.

I definitely think some looks at what works/what doesn’t for the offering winemakers would be nice behind the scenes help along with help testing links — and having maybe a standard sig with the basics at the end of the offers (www, name, company as Patrick suggests and maybe pop in a line on shipping) but please keep the berserker personality alive.

(Would a small volunteer team doing some orientation/copy advice ahead of time be helpful?)

3 Likes

I get that, but if you want as a winemaker to be able to consistently track your wines on CT, people get “creative.” I bought some wines that had odd variations or none at all on CT, so I created new wines which now maybe duplicates.

Every offer I bought from went without a hitch. So kudos to Tercero, Loring, Scherrer, Jean Edwards, Bougetz, and Veleta.

How many hundreds of thousands of dollars are exchanged on Berserker Day? Seems like it’s kind of worth the effort to gather feedback and optimize the process, for all parties involved.

No negative feedback. BD rules, works incredibly well for us consumers, and is a true gift.
That said, it is very helpful to know what shipping will be. Free shipping is obviously great, but I also don’t mind paying for it–would just be great to know what to expect before loading up a cart and clicking through to find out. Most producers are very clear, and that’s great.
I personally gravitate to the producers who offer a mixed set. Three or six different wines, or the ability to pick and choose. I’m less inclined to bite on a vertical or a half case of something that’s new to me.
But truly I have zero complaints and feel lucky to be able to stock up with cool new stuff at great prices every year.

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I’ve thought about this. First, I think every winery should be doing this when they send out their emails with offers to their mailing list. That’s where the idea came about. If I’m buying 8 different wines from the Carlisle fall offer, why not have a link to add the entire package to my cellartrack. Boom, done in one shot.

First we have to admit that 99% of the wineries putting up offers are not cellartracker geeks, hell, every year we have a couple post their berserkerday offer in wine talk… Todd, there’s a code blue in WineTalk, stat

What I have thought about is crowdsourcing this task. We get a couple of people (I’ll teach them, super easy) and I just send a list of the wines and the wishlist name I want for the offer and then they create a public wishlist in their cellartracker account. It’s done and I just paste the link into the offer behind the scenes.

I hear ya. I don’t want it to look like an auction catalog, either. The charm is part of the fun: see Liquid Farm. But there needs to be some basic structure. I don’t care if an offer’s narrative is left-justified with 3 different font sizes, but the purchase URL should be located right underneath it.

I really like your idea about having the subject line begin with the supplier’s name. That will help with readability.

And a small volunteer team doing orientation/copy advice is a terrific idea! I nominate you. :slight_smile:

Those same few people can bench test the point of purchase.

1 Like