Naked Wines delivers the highest amount of engaging content to its customers across social platforms, according to new research. Berry Bros. & Rudd came second, followed by Virgin Wines in third place.
The study, from retail marketing agency Leapfrogg, analysed 10 UK online wine sellers and clubs, looking at content across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. It also gauged how well audiences interacted with social activity.
Engagement levels across key purchase-influencing social channels were scored using analytics tools and qualitative testing. Retailers received 0 to 5 for each platform, with 5 being the highest.
The report showed that Naked Wines, scoring 19 out of a possible 25, employs an inclusive nature with ‘energetic’ social channels. It harnesses relationships with members of its customer base, including them in social activity as if they were an extension of the brand’s team. Naked Wines frequently features behind-the-scenes content and talks directly to consumers, humanising its social department rather than presenting a faceless company.
Berry Bros. & Rudd, with 16 points, focuses most of its attention on Instagram. The retailer uses stylish photography, reflecting its brand image and appealing to followers of artisan crafts and high-end products. The company’s in-depth blog posts also feature heavily across its social sites, making up a large proportion of its content. The research notes that Berry Bros. & Rudd could improve on other platforms by sharing more user-generated content, helping it to increase posting frequency without the need to generate large volumes of content.
“Wine retailers have historically had an image problem – higher quality brands are often seen as stuffy and inaccessible, while mass-market names fight to be most affordable,” said Rosie Freshwater, MD of Leapfrogg. “Social media content offers an opportunity to break out of these boxes, create a personality and demonstrate quality, value for money and convenience. Our study found that smaller wine sellers and clubs fared better with social engagement than traditional high street stores.”
Third-placed Virgin Wines adopts a playful and intimate tone of voice, and coupled with regularly sharing user-generated content it’s allowed the retailer to treat followers more as friends than customers. According to the findings, which scored Virgin Wines 15 out of 25, a big advantage for the brand is access to larger budgets and innovative content. However, its imagery could be perceived as corporate.
Although the top three brands are very different to each other, Leapfrogg’s research found that the common thread of social engagement success was having a strong understanding of audiences, and highly tailored identities specifically created to appeal directly to those audiences.
Leapfrogg’s engagement rate scorecard covered user actions such as likes, comments and shares, which were then divided by the number of fans to ensure retailers with different sized audiences could be compared, producing unbiased results.
