Wine.com

Driving 140% growth in revenue for the ultimate wine resource

Located in San Francisco, CA, Wine.com is an online wine retailer that offers the largest selection of wines in the world at every price point, from the most highly acclaimed names to small production bottles. The company offers a robust recommendation engine, extensive wine and winery content, professional ratings, easy sort and filter features, a five-star mobile app, and live chat with wine experts, so consumers can easily find their favorite bottles or discover new wines they’ll love.

140%

revenue growth YoY

11%

decrease in CPA

10%

increase in effective revenue share

Increasing site traffic in a competitive vertical

Wine.com was facing large fluctuations in demand throughout 2020. With more people staying home and ordering online during the COVID-19 pandemic, search demand increased sharply. Despite the increase in competition and click prices, DEPT® recognized an opportunity to drive additional site traffic through Wine.com’s SEM program.

Targeting new customers through auction-time bidding

To scale their overall efforts as much as possible with a target ERS of 25%, DEPT® deployed a series of ERS bid strategies that enabled them to bid more aggressively on their top-converting campaigns using brand and head terms. And by scaling through longer-tail and product keywords as well, they could ensure maximum visibility and meet their efficiency targets.

Then, to manage the shifts in demand, we recognized automated bid strategies as a tool to improve efficiency and new customer growth while also simplifying account management. So we partnered with its Search Ads 360 (SA360) team to align campaigns that had similar marketing objectives into bid strategy portfolios geared toward maximizing client revenue and profitability. Through auction-time bidding with data-driven attribution, SA360 analyzed and optimized around various signals for each unique auction to reach the users most likely to convert.

Next, we migrated Wine.com’s Smart Shopping campaigns to SA360 auction-time bidding, which led to strong improvements in efficiency and volume. With the impending Cyber Five (the five-day period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday), the DEPT® team established seasonality adjustments within SA360. This feature ensured sustained growth and unlocked further opportunities during Wine.com’s peak season by allowing for hyper-aggressive auction-time bidding.

People smiling and laughing while pouring a glass of white wine into wine flutes.

Uncorking limitless growth

After the initial warm-up period, the campaigns and bid strategies reached a steady state, driving consistent conversion volume and efficiency as the peak season for Wine.com neared. Due to the influx in demand during the COVID-19 pandemic and the effective use of automated bidding, Wine.com experienced tremendous growth including: