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Shopping for an Online Wine Club: 5 Hints

shopping for an online wine club

Over the past decade, wine has increasingly been sold online. That change has largely mirrored the growth of eCommerce as a whole, with growth rates often exceeding 10% per year.  Unlike some other industries though, the growth in online sales has created totally new business models. In this case, the online wine club.  If you’re shopping for your first online wine club, I wanted to give you 5 hints to have a better experience.

Don’t Pay Full Price:

Seriously, don’t ever pay full price.  When you first begin shopping for an online wine club, you should be able to find heavy discounts.  An example of this, Naked Wines is currently running a special where you receive 15 bottles of wine, priced at $20 for only $79.  If my math is correct, you’re receiving over $300 in value for under $100 and that’s awfully hard to beat.

Pay attention to Cancellation Policies:

Like any subscription business, online wine clubs vary greatly in how difficult they are to cancel.  Some will make you call on the phone during normal business hours. Others will cancel you via email, but for those you’ll have to plan ahead in your billing cycle.  The easiest and in my opinion, what all online wine clubs should aspire to, allow you to cancel through their website the same way that you signed up.  Firstleaf does an especially good job at this.

Do Your Research:

For the oldest online wine clubs like California Wine Club, the Original Wine of the Month Club and Gold Medal Wine Club, you should be able to research what wines they have previously shipped and what those wines would cost you to order directly from the winery.  If the online wine club you’re researching isn’t delivering great value, you should move along to the next one.

Don’t Fall for Influencer Marketing:

By now we’ve all seen ecommerce shops that all seem to be everywhere, being touted by every Instragram model and influencer.  Don’t fall for it.  It should be without question, but not enough people realize that those campaigns are paid advertisements.  Too often the influencer isn’t following FTC guidelines which require them to state that they’re being paid for their opinion, but it’s 2022 and as consumers we should all know better already.

Don’t Fall for Wine Talk:

Like finance and many other industries, there is a lot of terminology in the wine trade. For those first starting to enjoy wine it can be overwhelming. Don’t get overwhelmed! For the most part at the beginning, you should ignore the majority of the terminology and definitely shouldn’t be sold by any of it. Wine ratings? They don’t really matter, largely because wineries and wine clubs can shop around for a score that’s high enough to put on their bottle. Vineyard location? Sure, eventually you’ll know this stuff, but right now? It’s simply not important. Instead of focusing on what they want to tell you, focus on what you can control.  Was this bottle of wine good?  Am I happy to drink it for what I paid?

Ok, I hope you learned a little something about shopping for an online wine club.  When you’re first getting started this should be a surprisingly cheap and effective way to learn about and drink some good wine.

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