Direct-to-Consumer Marketing Case Study

The Client

Reimagining a Direct-to-Consumer Original

Wine of the Month Club is one of the most well recognized and longest standing direct-to-consumer businesses globally. The company was founded in 1972 as a way to remove anxiety in the wine buying process. It was first to market in the online ecosystem and, over the following years, set the benchmark for direct-to-consumer businesses, providing subscribers with access to an award-winning selection of wines, delivered to their door on a monthly basis. Today, the company’s founders are committed to going beyond the bottle and driving education around wine and the wine buying process in a way that makes it more approachable and fun.  

The Pain Point

Marketing A Different Kind of Platform

In the years since its first paper “score card” was hand delivered, the direct-to-consumer ecosystem has exploded. That growth has driven customer expectations, purchasing behavior, and competition in the wine space. And, while the company had maintained a loyal online following, its solution couldn’t compete with the type of fully integrated digital marketing stacks driving today’s most popular brands. They include highly relevant customer journeys using personalization, relevancy, and behavioral targeting to attract and retain customers.
The brand needed to perform a full migration of its direct-to-consumer and marketing infrastructure, but it was a daunting task, and one that the company had spent years deliberating. It needed a future-proof solution that delivered flexibility, scale, and power – and looked good doing it. Once the company picked a cloud hosted direct-to-consumer software solution, the next step was finding an integration partner who could make it sing.
The Strategy

An Integrated Marketing Strategy

Migrating a decades old digital marketing ecosystem is no easy feat. Catalyst committed to the challenge by bringing a fully integrated team of content, digital, and communications strategists to the table. Our goal was to deliver a property that could serve as more than a website, but the hub of the business’s marketing outreach for the next decade.
1

Branding

We modernized the brand’s online persona, working from its existing logo to create a contemporary, engaging and unique website design that helped showcase its founder’s personality and wine industry knowledge.

3

Digital

In addition to developing a mobile optimized website, we provided a wide array of digital marketing support from technical scoping to search engine optimization, implementation of updated help desk features, automation, and loyalty marketing integration.

2

Content

The company had a unique opportunity to leverage content that it had built over the course of two decades, to drive inbound sales around long tail keywords. They included educational blogs, reviews, videos, recipes, et al.

4

Communications

Manage the company’s editorial calendar, including social media, email marketing, and messaging. Engage in daily conversations with learners using the platform to develop long standing relationships

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THE PARTNERSHIP

Keeping the Team Focused on Growth

The Catalyst Integrated project team embedded with the company’s senior stakeholders for over eighteen months and implementing the project in three steps: In-depth project scoping, website design and development, and finally, technical marketing integration. Throughout, we used an agile methodology to keep team leaders, developers, technical experts and creatives in line with the strategic vision and moving quickly.

“Catalyst’s team has been great from the start to the finish. They’re thorough, communicative, and solution oriented. They’ve been the hub of communication for the project throughout the migration and we plan to continue the engagement to build on that growth.”

5/5
THE OUTCOME

A Direct-to-Consumer Marketing Strategy that Works

Since launching the website and follow up marketing programs, the company has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from customers and team members alike. The site is demonstrably easier to manage, provides a better user experience, and speaks positively to the brand.

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