Making Wine Accessible w/ Podcasts, Amanda McCrossin & AJ Resnik, Wine Access

As the podcast space matures, it becomes a more meaningful channel to market wines to consumers and create new experiences.  3rd time guest Amanda McCrossin, Host of the Wine Access Unfiltered Podcast, and AJ Resnick, CMO of Wine Access, explain their rationale and experiences in launching and building the podcast and associated wine club.  From celebrities crying on the show to creating a 360 experience with their wine club and podcast audio and video, the Unfiltered Podcast continues to build traction, make wine more accessible, and build Wine Access into a loved wine brand. 

Detailed Show Notes: 

Wine Access background

• Launched in the late ’90s, it hosted wine retail websites and described wines
• 2004 - offered wines on their platform
• Curate wines (team includes an MS), tell the story behind every wine, excellent customer service, and technology (powers wine clubs like Michelin Guide, Sunset, Decanter, and Williams Sonoma)
• Goal - to be a loved wine brand

Wine Access Unfiltered podcast

• Launched in 2020
• A wine podcast w/ conversations around wine w/ wine, but not about wine
• Released every other week, 45 min - 1 hour show length
• They have done podcast ad buys and have seen success
• Format - Season 1 - talk about wine stories, mostly with celebrities
• Season 2 - off more value add, more thematic (e.g., wine regions), added a wine club to drink the wines w/ the show (full 360 experience)
• Has IG (>10,000 followers) and YouTube (>300 subscribers) channels

Listener base

• They assumed it would be the same as Wine Access customers
• They found it to skew younger and less wine-savvy, but very curious
• Another way to connect with members

Traction

• >100,000 cumulative downloads
• Past episode performance increases with new listeners
• Holds people’s attention for an extended period of time
• Most podcasts fizzle out after five episodes

Getting celebrities on the show

• “Do you want to drink wine with us?” worked during the pandemic
• They did a lot of cold calling, worked with a few producers
• More prominent celebrities didn’t always have the best performance
• Bert Kreischer’s episode was very successful; he cried on the show and then mentioned it and FaceTimed Amanda while on 2 Bears, 1 Cave podcast

Wine Club

• Four wines for four episodes, sent every other month, curated by Amanda
• 10% off all Wine Access purchases
• Includes shipping, can add wines w/ free shipping to shipment
• Some wines exclusive to the wine club
• Q3 2023 - Unfiltered Wine Club had more new members than any other club that Wine Access runs

ROI

• The wine club helps cover the cost
• The goal is more brand awareness
• Retention through connecting w/ members in a different way
• Content creation (audio, video) that can be reused

Podcasting

• Spotify is bringing new energy to the space with a better listening experience (went from 15% -> 30% of Unfiltered listeners)
• YouTube has a podcast section
• Repurpose clips for social media is a best practice

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