Mailing lists: guaranteed allocations versus first-come first-served

[Anne_Fogerty]

@Robert Alfert

@Brian Tuite

Looking at the Myriad Dr Crane Release letter there were 400 cases available to a mailing list of something like 7,000+ customers. 200 cases of the regular Dr Crane and 200 cases of Elysian You do the math and suggest how they were supposed to guarantee allocations. Cookie cutter approaches don’t always work for small operations.

The Bedrock model?

Imagine you are the second person on that list and for years have bought very large quantities of the wine. And one day a first come, first serve email is sent to all the list owners, and you happen to be unavailable, and somebody who just made the list and has never purchased anything before, is the very first person to hit reply, and therefore snags bottles that perhaps would’ve been allocated to you under a different methodology.

IMO if you are the second person on that list/have bought large quantities for years, any list manager worth their salt should be contacting you directly a week before the release to secure your annual needs. But that assumes that you do fall in that upper echelon (not just where you think you are), and that they have the resources to make that outreach.

Figuring all this out is hard for wineries too. Many have a blended model of taking care of the customers they deem their most loyal (may be different than whatever moral compass of capitalism you follow), and the exercise of rewarding spending, time on the list, buying both the lower and upper tiers of wine, deciding who gets what, holding wine back for those “wishes”, or surgeons who call in two hours too late, or the angry phone call, or the hopeful phone call, all happens far outside the view of any individual.

I also whole-heartedly agree with the sentiment that there is lots of fabulous wine in the world, and being spurned by your current infatuation can give you the opportunity to take notice of others. Channel that rage!

[Greg_Smith]

@Anne Fogerty

@Robert Alfert

@Brian Tuite

Looking at the Myriad Dr Crane Release letter there were 400 cases available to a mailing list of something like 7,000+ customers. 200 cases of the regular Dr Crane and 200 cases of Elysian You do the math and suggest how they were supposed to guarantee allocations. Cookie cutter approaches don’t always work for small operations.

The Bedrock model?

Imagine you are the second person on that list and for years have bought very large quantities of the wine. And one day a first come, first serve email is sent to all the list owners, and you happen to be unavailable, and somebody who just made the list and has never purchased anything before, is the very first person to hit reply, and therefore snags bottles that perhaps would’ve been allocated to you under a different methodology.

IMO if you are the second person on that list/have bought large quantities for years, any list manager worth their salt should be contacting you directly a week before the release to secure your annual needs. But that assumes that you do fall in that upper echelon (not just where you think you are), and that they have the resources to make that outreach.

Figuring all this out is hard for wineries too. Many have a blended model of taking care of the customers they deem their most loyal (may be different than whatever moral compass of capitalism you follow), and the exercise of rewarding spending, time on the list, buying both the lower and upper tiers of wine, deciding who gets what, holding wine back for those “wishes”, or surgeons who call in two hours too late, or the angry phone call, or the hopeful phone call, all happens far outside the view of any individual.

I also whole-heartedly agree with the sentiment that there is lots of fabulous wine in the world, and being spurned by your current infatuation can give you the opportunity to take notice of others. Channel that rage!

“moral compass of capitalism”? We have now moved way beyond the original topic.

[ky1em1ttskus]

So, you’re saying we’re right on track for a berserker thread. Excellent!

[Cris_Whetstone]

It’s pretty difficult to make the claim that a winery values a customer that it is willing to not sell any wine to simply because they couldn’t place an order within a few hours. It certainly presents a different attitude when they have more people on their list than they can give full allocations to and sell first come, first served than it does when they tell a certain set of their customers that their allocations will be available for a week.

[Brian_Tuite]

@Robert Alfert

@Brian Tuite

Looking at the Myriad Dr Crane Release letter there were 400 cases available to a mailing list of something like 7,000+ customers. 200 cases of the regular Dr Crane and 200 cases of Elysian You do the math and suggest how they were supposed to guarantee allocations. Cookie cutter approaches don’t always work for small operations.

The Bedrock model?

Imagine you are the second person on that list and for years have bought very large quantities of the wine. And one day a first come, first serve email is sent to all the list owners, and you happen to be unavailable, and somebody who just made the list and has never purchased anything before, is the very first person to hit reply, and therefore snags bottles that perhaps would’ve been allocated to you under a different methodology.

I just emailed Mike and asked him to up his production to 30,000 cases. He thanked me and marveled over how he hadn’t thought of that first. Win win!

[Robert.A.Jr]

I have always subscribed to a simple business philosophy: love those that love you. Your best, repeat cusomers get priority over all others. While that may be difficult in law and medicine where you owe the same duty to all, this is why in both professions I believe in the concierge model for some practitioners that can cultivate a small group of long-term clients. Smart retailers and wineries do this; and I give them love right back. The others, it’s transitory.