What Three Small Winery Teams Are Actually Doing to Win Right Now

Small but mighty.

That's the phrase that kept coming back to me throughout last week's webinar. The three panelists who joined us are running lean DTC teams — Chelsea Leniart, Wine Club Manager at Scheid Family Wines, Hilary Berkey, Director of Sales, Marketing and Operations at Emeritus Vineyards, and Kristy Quigley, Operations Manager at Alma Rosa Winery.

"Lean teams" meaning two or three people deep. At the most.

The outsized results they're seeing, in a market that everyone agrees is hard, are genuinely remarkable.

Here's some highlights and takeaways from  what they shared in last week's webinar.

On Wine Club Customization

The fear is that if you give members flexibility, they'll race to the bottom and swap out for your cheapest wines. 

What Chelsea actually found was the opposite. 

By studying what members customized in the previous year's March run, she reshaped this year's offering more intentionally. 

The results? 

A 167% increase in sales of a higher-tier estate Pinot, and edited club shipments with a 14% higher AOV than default shipments.

Customization, done right, grows revenue.

On Hyper-Segmentation

Hilary’s team makes goal every month.

Every single month. 

She runs coordinated campaigns across every DTC channel — Club, outbound, email, text — with no customer touched more than twice with a sales message per month. 

The key advantage? 

Cross-platform data integration. 

Enolytics aggregates across Commerce7, Tock, RedChirp, and more, producing segments more precise than any single system could.

In February, one team member was $3,000 short with four days to go. They went into Sell More Now, identified the right customers, made the calls, and closed the month.

That's not luck. That's data, used right.

On Automating the Customer Journey

Kristy’s team at Alma Rosa joined Enolytics in February. Two months in, they've already built a fully automated re-engagement campaign for lapsed high-value customers — running daily, with no ongoing manual work. 

Enolytics identifies which customers have slipped, updates the list, and the emails go out automatically.

Kristy is now building a differentiated welcome journey based on where a customer made their very first purchase. 

Tasting Room versus Website. Two different customers. Two different conversations. Much better personalization, automated.

If you missed the webinar, you can watch the full recording here. 

And if you're ready to try this with your own data, we'd love to talk.

Thank you, as always, for reading —

Cathy