WISE wants everyone in the industry to aim for the WISE Tripe Score (ask for the order, invite to join the club, and collect contact data) every day because when we hit the triple score, our wineries make money! However, our mystery shopping data shows that’s not as realistic as it sounds.
Over the last 15 years, WISE has completed over 6,000 mystery shops. We can use these snapshots in time to identify trends to see how the client is doing overall– what’s going well and where do we have opportunities for improvement. Then we provide recommendations to tackle those weak spots. That’s how we typically use our mystery shopping data in the day to day, but this data can be valuable to identify trends in our industry as well.
New Industry Averages
In 2021, we noticed a dramatic change in our triple score averages. In particular, data collection dropped from the pre-covid average of 34% down to 18%. The details in these reports support our theory that this drop was due to the rise in tastings by reservation (an overall good thing for our industry, especially in terms of guest satisfaction). It seems we all started to assume the data was being collected through the reservation process, so we stopped asking to stay in touch. But what about the rest of the party in the tasting? What if the reservation was made with a “junk” email address? WISE spent all of 2022 showing client after client the impact this is having on their performance and sales.
Here’s some good news – we are seeing the industry average for data collection is on the rise again!
| 2022 | 2021 | |
| Ask for the Sale | 67% | 73% |
| Ask for the Club | 33% | 38% |
| Ask for Contact Data | 26% | 18% |
When our tasting rooms are quiet during the year, that contact data can be leveraged into revenue through other DTC channels such as Outbound Phone Sales, Events, and Segmented Email Marketing.
As for the other channels, the industry continues to ask for the club sign up about 1/3 of the time. We hear from our Tasting Room Professional attendees quite frequently that we assume everyone is hearing about clubs all day and they don’t want to hear about it anymore, but the data consistently shows us that is not the case. Wine clubs work because people DO like to be a part of them (did you know the average guest belongs to 6 wine clubs?) but yet they are only hearing about club offerings in one out of three visits. Wine clubs saved our industry during COVID. The proof is in the pudding – asking for the club sign up is vital!
What about asking for the sale? Pre-covid the industry was asking for the sale 80% of the time. We saw a slight drop in 2021 to 73%, but the average continues to decline as 2022 was at 67%. If we only ask for the sale 2 out of 3 times, we are missing revenue 1/3 of the time. Imagine what our metrics could look like if we asked for the sale 100% of the time!
So what is WISE Triple Score Day?
WISE Triple Score Day is a friendly reminder to aim for 100% on these special metrics. Naturally, March 3rd (3/3) is our favorite day of the year – it is a day to kick-off the busy season with a bang. And it’s a day for fun! We invite you to participate in WISE Triple Score Day with your team. Get everyone to wear WISE orange (we know you don’t usually wear orange – just this once?), celebrate with ORANGE juice (Mimosas anyone?) and play WISE – Bingo Printable. Perhaps most importantly, aim to hit the triple score with every guest this day, and every day!
