2012 Wine Industry Innovation of the Year: WineNabber
- The best ideas are often easily explained
- Things created by people immersed in a field tend to align well with user expectations
Enter WineNabber
Anatomy of a WineNabber Offer
A WineNabber offer includes the following:
- An overall "rating" of the offer on a 5 star scale
- The wine being offered
- The region/subregion the wine is from
- The price
- Shipping costs
- Comparable prices
- Ratings from major publications
- The vendor
- A description of the wine
- Which state(s) they can receive shipments to (since retailers have varying policies about which states they can ship to)
- Price
- Ratings
- Region
- Type/Varietal
How Well Does It Work?
Discussion
When I first heard of WineNabber, I wondered whether retailers were happy with their email offers being rebroadcast like this. You'd be surprised how some retailers actually don't want their offers to get publicity for the reasons outlined above. But the offers WineNabber work with are from retailers who have agreed to work with WineNabber. In fact, they pay WineNabber for sending traffic/purchases their way in a variety of per-click/per-transaction affiliate arrangements. WineNabber has done an impressive job signing up retailers (here's a list of some they work with). If you peruse the list I think you'll agree many of the heavy hitters/usual suspects are represented. The only thing that's missing is the "list behind the list". The preferred client list that retailers populate with email addresses of their best customers where the really good deals are. This practice is illegal in Massachusetts (retailers ought not offer wine to one person and not to another and cannot offer wine to different people at different prices) but this practice seems to be quite popular in other states. It's sort of the wine deal equivalent to hyper miling - not for the amateur or casually interested.
For Consumers
For friends just getting interested in online wine deals, I think WineNabber is a great place to start. Tired of paying $12.99 for Estancia, Clos du Bois, Rodney Strong and similar at the grocery store/warehouse club? I think WineNabber could efficiently open up awareness to great wine deals online. For the hardcore wine deal enthusiast WineNabber is definitely something to check out. You'll likely discover some new retailers that weren't on your radar screen and you'll likely be able to relieve some inbox fatigue by unsubscribing to retailers with a low batting average for your preferences.
For Retailers
Conclusion and Recommendations
Folks in the wine industry often lament how online wine commerce is behind the times. In some instances that's true, but there are some very useful innovations going on - and WineNabber is one of them. Since discovering WineNabber I've been wondering: Am I leaving money on the table when purchasing other things online? Things like musical instruments, shoes, mattresses, vacations... Some of the best deals aren't online as I wrote in this blog post a while back. If I purchased things in other categories more frequently would I be more savvy in navigating the space and finding the best deals? Although wine is unique in many ways, each industry has unique pricing pressures and dynamics that make them targets for disruptive innovation. Yipit does this in the daily deals space. WineNabber brings a unique spin on this for wine email offers. Simply put, it's the most notable wine industry innovation I discovered in 2012. To check it out and create an account visit:
WineNabber.com Questions of the Day: Have you tried WineNabber? If so, what do you think? What notable wine industry innovations have you discovered lately?
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