How wineries and wine retailers can use AI to unlock more value from existing customer data

In today’s data-driven world, businesses recognize the importance of collecting and analyzing customer data. Yet, much of this data remains underutilized, resulting in missed opportunities to generate sales and build customer loyalty.

Through conversations with executives at wineries  and wine retailers, it’s clear that significant resources have been invested in building CRM databases to enhance customer service and improve marketing strategies. Still, many companies struggle to effectively acquire, activate, and retain customers. Why?

While it's easy to blame declining wine sales on shifting consumer habits and socioeconomic trends, I believe the core issue is internal: many leaders have yet to fully understand and respond to what their customers want. That disconnect prevents them from adapting to changing behaviors in real time.

The paradox is striking. Most wineries and wine retailers have CRMs rich with data—purchase histories, preferences, and behavioral patterns—yet this data remains largely dormant. The challenge? A lack of tools, skills, or both to transform information into action.

That’s where AI comes in.

In late 2024, we launched a market-leading group payments solution that allows customers to buy wine together with friends, colleagues, or wine club members directly on your website to drive incremental revenue. But we didn’t stop there.

We believe businesses are sitting on a gold mine of customer data. The key is turning that data into timely, personalized insights to engage customers when they're most likely to buy.

Our latest innovation, an AI-powered recommendation engine, does exactly that.

How it works:
Our engine analyzes your CRM data in real time to identify, score and recommend individual customers who are ready to purchase specific wines. The engine also recommends to you what customers should purchase together in groups of two, three, four, etc and what wines they should purchase.

It's all very cutting edge.

Why am I sharing this now? Because I’m genuinely excited about its potential to help wineries and wine retailers maximize the value of their CRM investments. I believe this is not just innovative: it’s a gamechanger for the industry.

We’re currently seeking beta users for our AI Recommendation Engine ahead of its launch this summer. If you're interested in participating, please reach out. 

What if your highest-spending customers aren't your most valuable?

In today's world of Social Buying, where people can purchase together online in real-time, it’s worth considering that your biggest spenders may not be your most valuable customers.

Traditionally, we’ve been taught to focus on customers with the highest Average Transaction Value (ATV) and Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV). However, this approach might be flawed.

Take wine purchases, for instance. We often assess customer value based solely on their spending. Yet, we overlook the influence of friends, family, colleagues, and members of wine clubs or online forums who may sway their buying decisions.

At Cobuyr, we’ve created an innovative payments, data, and analytics solution that enables customers to shop together in groups. Our platform also provides valuable insights into who is buying with whom and the dynamics of these relationships.

The data collected through Cobuyr gives retailers a competitive edge, allowing them to effectively acquire, engage, and retain customers through highly personalized marketing strategies.

So, are your biggest spenders truly your most valuable customers? Perhaps not.

Consider this hypothetical scenario:

Dan is labeled a "high-value" customer in your CRM with a CLTV of $8,500. He consistently purchases two cases of wine each year but never visits your winery.

In contrast, Isabella has a CLTV of $1,200. While her average transaction value is lower, she frequently splits costs with friends and often introduces new customers to your winery through group buying on your website.

Which customer holds more value? Both are important, but if your winery is investing heavily in customer acquisition, it may be wiser to focus your marketing efforts on Isabella. She actively contributes to expanding your customer base.

Retailers using Cobuyr gain access to powerful analytics that highlight key customer purchasing behaviors:

• Primary Buyers: These customers initiate wine buying groups and invite others to join. They are crucial as they act as active advocates for your brand.

• Secondary Buyers: These customers are invited by Primary Buyers to share costs at checkout. While they are valuable, they typically do not initiate buying groups.

As you evaluate your marketing and sales strategy, consider whether you truly understand why your customers are buying and who influences their decisions. Word of mouth significantly impacts wine purchases. 

How to get more revenue from your wine club

To boost revenue from your wine club, the key lies in attracting and retaining members by delivering new value and engaging experiences. That may sound easier said than done - but here’s a quick win that can both revitalize your wine club and accelerate your winery’s digital transformation.

Wine clubs have long been a reliable revenue stream for wineries. But today, a combination of micro and macroeconomic pressures has led to declining sign-ups and lower retention rates.

The good news? A powerful and growing social trend offers a clear path forward: Social Buying: the consumer desire to purchase together with friends, family, colleagues, or club communities.

Innovative wineries are now reimagining their wine clubs to align with this trend, transforming them into vibrant social experiences where members connect and engage like never before.

This is where Cobuyr comes in. Our group payments, data, and analytics solution integrates directly with your e-commerce platform, allowing wine club members and customers to purchase wine collectively - right from your website.

Online group buying is a game-changer. It creates a unique, community-driven buying experience that reactivates your membership base, drives sales, and amplifies word-of-mouth marketing. Best of all, it makes your wine club more accessible, letting customers join from the comfort of their own homes.

Group wine buying also enhances existing member benefits like complimentary tastings, member-only discounts, and exclusive events while simplifying the path for new members to join online.

Even better, it delivers valuable data and insights about your customers and members, allowing you to personalize communications, improve targeting, and increase customer lifetime value.

Ready to get started? Here are five practical ways to integrate group wine buying into your wine club—and inspire members to engage and purchase more:

• Reward Behavior: Offer loyalty points or discounts to members who participate in group purchases.

• Recognize Referrals: Incentivize members to invite friends or colleagues to buy together.

• Special Offers: Give members early or exclusive access to limited-edition wines.

• Personalized Buying Groups: Let members create their own wine-buying circles with curated experiences and special offers.

• Flexible Memberships: For members considering cancellation, offer the option to split their wine allocations with friends.

How wineries can transform wine sales with Social Buying

In an age when we effortlessly split restaurant bills and taxi fares, why can’t consumers do the same when buying wine?   This has always puzzled me because drinking wine with family, friends and colleagues is the ultimate social experience.  

While payment technologies have evolved impressively - enabling purchases anytime, anywhere, on any device - they remain focused on the individual. One tap, and it’s bought, delivered, done. Yet, these advancements overlook something fundamental: the joy of shopping together. The social aspect of buying with friends is what often makes the experience memorable, rewarding, and fun. 

A few years ago, as I started getting serious about wine, I wanted to split the cost of a purchase with friends directly at checkout. (Do I really want to pay $500 upfront and then ask my friends to manually transfer their share to my bank? No.) Surprisingly, no winery or wine merchant offered that option online. So, I launched Cobuyr, a group payments, data and analytics platform company designed to make buying wine a shared social experience. 

If you’re in the wine business, you might be wondering: Why should I care? Here’s why. 

What if you could generate incremental revenue in a market growing just a few percentage points a year? Lower your customer acquisition costs? Reactivate club members to purchase more often? Create an experience so unique it drives word-of-mouth buzz? 

The answer lies in enabling group wine buying. 

How it works. 

Cobuyr integrates seamlessly into your e-commerce platform via standard APIs. This allows customers to purchase wine together - friends, family, colleagues, or club members - directly on your site. 

The customer journey is simple: a new or existing customer visits your website, selects wine, and initiates a Group Buy checkout. They then invite co-buyers to join, assigning how much each person pays and what they receive. With just an email, the Cobuyr system prompts everyone to pay. The wine is then shipped or picked up by group members. 

For wineries, Cobuyr creates a new kind of engagement: a social buying experience that turns customers into evangelists. This network effect leads to higher conversion rates and higher average order values while building deeper customer relationships.  

But technology is just the beginning. 

The true value lies in the data.  Modern wineries are using tools like Cobuyr to not only boost revenue but also to understand their customers better and foster loyalty. With budgets tighter than ever, the priority is making existing tools work harder - while also investing in innovations that unlock new growth. 

Cobuyr’s advanced analytics reveal the social buying networks of your customers - showing not only who is purchasing together, but also who should be buying which bottles or cases of wine, and with whom. These insights help you understand both individual and group behaviors, enabling you to supercharge your marketing strategies. 

Adding group buying to your checkout isn’t just a technical upgrade - it’s a strategic one that will drive your digital transformation. It opens up untapped sales potential. 

Even as wine sales have declined over the past five years, wineries have built solid customer databases through tasting rooms, online sales, clubs, and events. But many still treat their customers as isolated individuals, missing the bigger picture: each customer is part of a wider social network that can be activated to buy more wine and to promote your wine as brand ambassadors.  

Likewise, wine clubs, the hero of the past for wineries, are often managed as one-to-one relationships, rather than communities. The opportunity isn’t just to sell more - it’s to build social connections. 

The good news? Wineries are sitting on a goldmine of customer data, collected through a variety of marketing efforts, that’s just waiting to be monetized. 

Group wine buying transforms transactional shoppers into active and loyal customers. It brings people together. It builds and fosters a community. And it unlocks a new era for wineries: Welcome to Social Wine Buying. 

What is Social Buying

Social Buying is poised to revolutionize online payments, offering retailers a new avenue for generating additional revenue.

Developed by Cobuyr, Social Buying empowers consumers to make purchases in groups with friends, family, colleagues, and members of various communities for the first time.

Thanks to innovative technologies, Social Buying enhances the shopping experience by integrating the social dynamics of group buying, which have traditionally been limited to in-store or mobile app interactions (similar to how Uber allows you to split a taxi fare).

The rise of Social Buying is fueled by consumers' desire to shop collaboratively online, combined with advancements in technology that integrate payments, e-commerce, customer relationship management (CRM), analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI).

In contrast to traditional payment methods, which only allow retailers to sell to one customer at a time - where Customer A visits an e-commerce site, selects a product, and completes a single-party payment transaction - Social Buying enables retailers to cater to multiple customers simultaneously. In this model, Customer A can invite Customers B, C, and D to join in the purchase during checkout, resulting in a multi-party payment transaction.

It's crucial to distinguish Social Buying from simple split payments, which merely divide the cost of a product. Social Buying involves group purchasing with significant real-time engagement and interaction throughout the payment process, both before and after the transaction is completed while enabling co-buyres to split the order by cost and by number of products in the basket.

The benefits for retailers are substantial:

• Reduced customer acquisition costs, as multiple customers can be secured in a single transaction.

• Increased average order value, as customers tend to spend more collectively.

• Preservation of profit margins without the need for discounts to attract and retain customers.

• Access to networks of eager buyers based on personal connections.

• Valuable insights into the relationships and networks of thousands of customers.

What excites me most about group buying is the wealth of data retailers across many industries can harness to better connect with, engage, and serve their customers.

Historically, retailers have focused on marketing to individual customers. With group payments, they can now tap into their customers' social circles, unlocking a treasure trove of data that provides unparalleled insights into purchasing behaviors, such as who is buying with whom and the motivations behind those choices.

Welcome to the era of Social Buying pioneered by Cobuyr.