As the SVP of Marketing and Communications at Jackson Family Wines, Kristen Reitzell has the considerable challenge of bringing the luxury vineyard experience to a digital customer.
While many people – this writer included – may jealously envision working for a winery involving travelling from vineyard to vineyard to try the latest drop, perhaps while nibbling on a slice of cheese or two, there’s a lot more to it than that.
Indeed, with 40 wineries across 11 locations and five continents, implementing a CX strategy is no mean feat, as Reitzell explains:
When you look at the number of brands we have, each one tells a different story, often with a different winemaker and sourcing.
“So, when you're thinking about how to enhance digital capabilities while creating a bridge between our brick-and-mortar tasting rooms, national retail presence, and online experience, it’s a big undertaking.”
It certainly is, but it’s one that Jackson has sought to embrace rather than simplify.
With 40 unique brands, each with a distinct identity, the company prioritized maintaining these differences in its digital strategy.
Instead of a one-bottle-fits-all approach, the company focuses on ensuring each brand’s personality shines through, enhancing the customer connection with the specific brand’s story and aesthetic.
While Sonoma-based Kendall-Jackson represents a classic Americana style, Oregon’s Gran Moraine carries a more edgy and expressive vibe, as an ode to the winemaker’s belief that the wines remind him of certain music or cultural moments.
In order to deliver such a broad and personalized CX strategy, Jackson needed some help, as Reitzell explains: “We’re not a technology company, we’re a wine and agricultural company.”
That’s where Deloitte Digital and Salesforce stepped in.
A Wine for Every Occasion
When Reitzell talks about protecting the distinctiveness of each of Jackson’s brands, she really means it.
The SVP explains how “unless there’s a specific reason,” the company doesn’t emphasize that Jackson owns all of its wineries during the marketing process.
However, while highlighting these distinctions was crucial from a customer perspective, on the backend, she needed a platform that could unify things – allowing her team to spot cross-brand overlaps and opportunities, while eliminating data silos.
“Before, it was impossible to look at all the brands together to uncover insights or overlaps. You had to manually compile everything. That was a huge hurdle,” she explained.
So, we needed something nimble that allowed the brands to appear different while remaining unified from a backend perspective. It took a bit longer than expected, but it was for the right reasons.
Reitzell also praised Deloitte Digital and Salesforce’s solutions for their ability to “evolve and scale” with Jackson, outlining the combination of Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, and Service Cloud for enhancing the company’s overall CRM and CX offerings.
More specifically, the vendor’s data integration capabilities have been vital in allowing Jackson to engage consumers across multiple channels in real-time and offer more tailored experiences.
The solutions enable Jackson to integrate its diverse customer data sources – including websites, reservation platforms, and third-party retail – into a streamlined, real-time system.
Additionally, the company wanted to leverage a solution that was experienced with AI, as this would allow it to target its growing, global customer base without needing to expand the marketing department.
While these changes helped with Jackson’s overall CX transformation, Reitzell also discussed how she and her team had been able to cater to the individual.
The Sommelier Experience
Described by Reitzell as the “OG of subscriptions,” Wine Clubs – where a customer signs up for a set number of shipments on a fixed, rigid schedule – are an integral part of Jackson’s digital experience that the SVP admits needed to be “modernized.”
Once again, Deloitte Digital and Salesforce’s data capabilities were key in delivering this revamp. The company now uses customer data to provide what Reitzell terms an “integrated brand experience,” which helps “bring the wine country lifestyle to life.”
This is particularly effective for targeting Gen-Z and Millennials, who are less likely to sample Jackson’s products in traditional settings like wine tastings or buying a bottle at a restaurant.
