Turn Your Wine Club Into a Best-in-Class Loyalty Program

Forty percent of wine club members cancel after their first year. The cost to replace each one averages $150 in new customer acquisition. For most wineries, the math isn't working — and the wine club itself is partly to blame.

That tension was the starting point for our recent webinar on best-in-class loyalty programs, featuring Patrick Pazos from DRINKS and John from Angle. The case for change is straightforward: the wine industry has historically treated the wine club as its loyalty program. It isn't one. Here's what we covered.

The Wine Club Is a Channel, Not a Strategy

Industry data shared at the DTC Wine Symposium in Monterey tells the story clearly. Overall club growth is down 8.3% year-over-year. Meanwhile, 47% of tasting room visitors leave without sharing any contact information — no email, no phone number, no connection to a CRM.

These are people who've had your most immersive brand experience. And they disappear.

The problem with framing the wine club as a loyalty program is that it excludes everyone who hasn't subscribed. A better-performing winery thinks about loyalty across its entire known customer base — everyone with an email address, a purchase history, or a tasting room visit — and graduates them toward higher tiers of engagement over time.

Repeat customers already drive roughly 60% of winery revenue. The goal is to protect and expand that base, not just defend the club roster.

What Best-in-Class Actually Looks Like

Silver Oak built its Oaks Society with Angle to answer a specific question: how do you reward a customer no matter where they engage with your brand?

The answer required solving an omnichannel problem. A Silver Oak member dining at a restaurant in another city can now photograph their receipt, text it to a concierge number, and have that purchase instantly associated with their Shopify CRM profile. The reward applies whether they bought the bottle online, at the tasting room, or off a restaurant wine list.

That receipt-to-CRM connection is foundational. Without it, a loyalty program only sees a fraction of a customer's real engagement with your brand.

The Oaks Society is tiered by annual spend, but it's also designed to pull wine club members in from day one. Subscribe to the club and you're immediately welcomed into the base tier — benefits begin before you've hit any spend threshold. That dual-entry structure means loyalty and the wine club are reinforcing each other, not competing for the same customer.

Ditch Points. Go Cash.

The webinar's sharpest debate was on loyalty currency. Points-based systems are the industry default. They're also the hardest thing for customers to understand.

Angle's approach at Silver Oak uses Shopify store credit instead — a wallet that lives on the customer's profile and pays out actual cash. Earning $5 for checking into the tasting room is immediately understood. Earning 300 points that might convert into something later is not.

Non-monetary rewards layered on top — priority access to release day events, library pours with the winemaker, exclusive tasting experiences — don't require any currency at all. They require the brand to use its own assets creatively.

At Silver Oak's last release day event, Oaks Society members accessed a private lounge with a Michelin-star tasting experience and sushi from Morimoto Napa. That's not a discount. That's a reason to stay.

Four Mistakes That Kill Retention

The playbook section of the webinar covered what wineries consistently get wrong. The short version:

No onboarding sequence means members hear nothing between signup and their first shipment — sometimes three to six months later. A 30-day sequence starting with a thank-you, followed by founder story, behind-the-scenes content, and educational emails keeps the relationship alive during that gap.

Generic communications means sending the same email to every member. Data from Klaviyo consistently shows that personalized messages — built around purchase history, tasting preferences, and buying patterns — outperform batch-and-blast every time.

No engagement between shipments means members forget about you. A monthly content calendar tied to seasonal moments, winemaker Q&As, food pairings, and exclusive invites keeps frequency high without requiring another sale.

No member control is the fastest path to cancellation. The most common reason members leave is that they have too much wine. Giving members the ability to pause, skip, swap, adjust frequency, or gift their shipment removes the pressure that drives churn.

The Technology Layer

The Shopify ecosystem has matured significantly for wineries. The stack that emerged from the webinar — Shopify as the commerce engine, Angle for loyalty, Klaviyo for email and SMS, Post Pilot for triggered direct mail, DRINKS Assure for compliance, and Atomic for subscriptions — covers most of the retention infrastructure a modern DTC winery needs.

For wineries not yet on Shopify, Klaviyo and Post Pilot both integrate across platforms. The tactics work regardless of your tech stack.

Want the Full Breakdown?

This recap covers the highlights. The complete webinar includes:

• The Silver Oak case study with full program details
• Apple and Google Wallet integration for omnichannel check-in and rewards
• The 30-day onboarding sequence, step by step
• Q&A on loyalty structures, member control, and futureproofing your program
• A retention health scorecard framework for assessing your existing customer base

Access the full webinar recording and get:

• Expert session on building loyalty beyond the wine club
• Live walkthrough of the Oaks Society program architecture
• Tactical playbook applicable to any technology stack

Watch the session, assess where your retention program stands today, and start building your loyalty strategy this quarter.

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