The five tribes of US wine buyers and the ROI of social media

By Erin Smith

Published: 23 May, 2016

The W2O Group has produced a report in conjunction with TMRW Engine The Five Tribes of Online Wine Buyers report that for the first time shows that there are five defined tribes of wine buyers and that social media does contribute to the the lifetime value of a customers.

The W2O Group purchased Vintank last year, which was a social media platform that listened and helped wineries engage directly with consumers that were talking about wine online.

The new study looked "looked at data from more than 12,500 individuals, 183,000 Twitter posts and almost 53,000 online wine purchases equalling $16.8 million in total sales. We dove into the data and uncovered five distinct tribes of wine buyers," according to the report.

The data came from the TMRW Engine which looked at over 2 billion social conversations and 80 million social wine customers across 1200 brands. They then overlaid that data with data from Vin65 which is a winery commerce and point of sale software solutions company. That data set included over $800 million worth of wine sales, 15 million customers and 1500 brands.

So who are the tribes?

The tribes are broken down and named so as to give each tribe a personality.

Sofia: Sofia is a 'digital native' and a millennial taking selfies with her wine glass. She and those like her make up 28% of consumers and 63.5% of them are female. Her average spend is $131 and she drives about 21% of profits.

Graham: Graham is the 'info geek' who as all the latest tech gadgets and logs his bottle of wine on Delectable or Vivino app. He repeprsents about 30% of consumers and they re the largest segment that buys wine online. They are 62.9% male. The average spend per order is $186 and he drives 36% of the profits.

Kevin: Kevin is the 'trophy hunter' who searches for the icon wines while following his favourite football team. He represents 17% of consumers and they are joining the premium wine category in waves. This group is 80.1% male.

Anna: Anna is the 'sophisticrat' and lives to check in online at the newest Michelin star restaurant. She represents 15% of consumers and the group is relativity split down the middle with 51.2% being female.

Don: In the US he would the 'southern conservative and a vocal opponent of Chardonnay. He represents 9% of consumers and 55.6% of them are male.

The tribes which were identified share many common preferences, participate in similar activities, have similar political outlooks and often share the same spending habits. The data analysed included each tribe's "media outlets, sports teams, TV shows and geographies" which then helps to build a "roadmap to target the right audience in the right places in the right time - to sell more wine".

The report also analysed interactions wine customers have had with wine brands and further looked at the value those interactions had. "We found that customers who directly engage with brands on social spend 35% more on average when buying wine online over the course of their customer lifetime than those who do not," according to the report.

The report also found that those consumers that posted about wine once a month on their social media channels did not spend more on wine than consumers who never posted about wine. However the ending did show that for the consumers that directly engaged with a brand three or more times spent 38% more over their lifetime then those that never engaged with brands. That number jumped to 66% for those that engaged 14 or more times.

For the full report contact Paul Mabray, which can be found tweeting @pmabray

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