How wineries use location data to boost DTC sales

According to a 2024 Wine Industry Network survey, wineries that leverage customer geo-location insights in their marketing see up to 25% higher repeat purchase rates and a 40% lift in event attendance. These numbers illustrate what many modern winemakers are learning: understanding where customers are – and how place influences their behavior – is now as critical to success as what’s grown in the vineyard.

Geo-location data, enriched with product and payment insights, provides wineries with a clearer picture of their customers’ journeys, both in person and online. It transforms data into action, helping wineries attract, engage, and retain customers more effectively.

Solutions such as Cobuyr, the first AI-powered predictive data intelligence platform, are helping the industry reinvent direct-to-consumer sales by giving wineries the tools and intelligence to understand their customers in ways never before possible.

Here are six ways you can use location in your DTC to boost sales, increase marketing return on investment and reduce costs.

1. Understanding and engaging customers by location
Wine has always been about place (providence) – and so are wine consumers. Knowing where customers live, travel, and buy allows wineries to create more personal and relevant connections.

For example, a Sonoma winery might discover that a large portion of its tasting room visitors come from Los Angeles. With that insight, the winery could target those customers with event invitations, region-specific ads, or local delivery offers. Geo-targeted engagement creates familiarity and relevance, turning occasional buyers into loyal ambassadors.

2. Optimizing production, distribution and logistics
By analyzing where orders originate, wineries can optimize production forecasts and shipping logistics. If a surge of online sales is coming from Texas, the winery might adjust inventory allocations, ship from a closer fulfillment partner, or promote varieties that resonate with local tastes.

This alignment between customer geography and winery operations reduces costs, improves delivery speed, and ensures that wine lovers in every region can access the bottles they love most.

3. Strengthening Direct-to-Consumer relationships
Geo-location insights deepen DTC connections by showing wineries not only who their customers are, but where they’re coming from. If a winery sees a strong base of visitors from Seattle, Denver or London, it can host pop-up tastings or regional wine dinners or events to maintain engagement between visits.

Understanding the geographic spread of club members also helps tailor communications and shipping schedules – making the customer experience smoother and more personalized.

4. Enriching geo-location with product and payment insights
The power of geo-location data multiplies when combined with purchase and payment information. Together, these data points reveal what customers buy, where they buy, and how they buy.

For example, a winery might find that customers from San Francisco purchase premium Pinot Noir, often during weekend visits, and tend to buy together in small groups. This blend of location, product, and payment data opens up new marketing possibilities such as a “Bay Area Pinot Circle” club tier or curated group tasting experiences.

5. Use cases: How wineries can apply geo-location intelligence

• Targeted regional campaigns: Create location-specific offers and event invitations, like “Join us in San Diego for a Winemaker Dinner” or “Free delivery for Northern California members.”
• Customer concentration & local partnerships: Identify customer clusters and collaborate with nearby wine shops, restaurants, or tourism partners to offer local access or co-hosted events.
• Event planning and pop-ups: Use customer location data to decide where to host roadshows, wine dinners, or exclusive member tastings in high-demand regions.
• Optimized shipping and fulfillment: Streamline logistics by mapping shipping density and using regional fulfillment centers to lower costs and carbon footprint.
• Product mix by region: Promote wines suited to local climates and tastes such as light, chilled wines for coastal regions and bold reds for mountain or northern customers.
• Tourism and visitor targeting: Analyze visitor origin data to focus advertising in key travel markets, partnering with hotels or tour operators to attract more guests.
• Social buying network insights:  Group or “social buying” features (where friends purchase wine together online) reveal not only shared preferences but also the relationships and proximity between customers. These insights help wineries understand how social networks influence buying behavior and design offers that encourage social wine buying or referral-driven growth.

6. Driving growth with predictive data intelligence
As wineries embrace digital transformation, the next frontier lies in predictive intelligence – understanding not only where customers are now, but where demand will grow next. Cobuyr is leading this shift by providing wineries with unified insights that connect geo-location, product data, and payment behavior.

This holistic understanding empowers wineries to anticipate customer needs, personalize engagement, and improve DTC performance, turning data into deeper customer relationships and revenue.

Final thoughts
Geo-location intelligence is redefining how wineries understand and connect with their customers. When combined with purchase and payment insights, it gives wineries the ability to see the full picture: who their customers are, where they are, and how they buy.

By leveraging data, analytics and AI, wineries can move beyond traditional marketing and into a future of precision engagement, predictive insights, and meaningful connections. In a business built on passion, place, and people, knowing where your customers are, and how they connect, is the key to growing both loyalty and sales. 

So, if you’re not using geo-location data in your DTC strategy, you’re missing out on reaching more customers and, at the same time, losing revenue.