Snapshots from the Edge: Washington Post's Wine Network Engages, Pays Off

The Washington Post’s TastePost, an online and offline club and network, is engaging members around local passions – wine and food.

"People talk about customer engagement a lot, but this was another way to actually address it because people have in-depth knowledge and interest in this subject, and maybe we could be the fulfillment of that," said Candy Lee, vice president of marketing for The Washington Post.

TastePost is a paid, members-only network with exclusive online content and other valuable features for local wine and food lovers.

The Washington Post ran the first house ad in the newspaper's Food section on January 28, and more than 300 people promptly signed up. The newspaper plans to do some direct mail and e-mail based outreach to further promote the site.

Even in this tough economy, people are willing to pay the small membership fee because the site pays them back in savings and knowledge.

"People actually have to pay $20 per year, but they get those benefits back fairly quickly," Lee said. Of course, members also have to be of legal drinking age.

In addition to a subscription to Conde Nast's Bon Appetit magazine, which is included in a person's membership, TastePost members can take advantage of exclusive discounts and deals at local wine stores and restaurants. The wines that come with discounts or rebates are chosen solely by the editorial staff and have nothing to do with gaining revenue for the site.

Featured wines are chosen, for now, on "affordability and accessibility, but we also want to make sure TastePost users learn about wines they might otherwise not know," said Food Editor Joe Yonan. The site has been focusing on bottles that are $20 or less. Cases of featured wine come with a $24 discount ($2 per bottle), which more-than offsets the cost of TastePost membership by itself.

"I think food and wine and spirits are the kinds of things where – and our research showed this, too – people don't mind spending money on a bottle of wine, but they were very anxious about experimenting when they didn't know if it would be any good," Lee said.

The site also features the Wine Discovery Network, which Washington Post developers created in-house. The Wine Discovery Network is "a continually updated resource of wines selected for you based on your taste profile and those of fellow members with similar taste profiles." My Cellar is a feature allowing TastePost members to keep a list of wines they've tried or would like to try, plus rate and review wines. The site also includes My Bar, a similar feature for non-wine drinks.

TastePost builds on the trusting relationship readers already have with the newspaper's wine and food experts, Lee explained. "The No. 1 advantage of the club for most people was the ability of [club members] to receive a discount, in effect, but also to have the capability to try something that had already been experimented with by someone they already knew and trusted – and they do trust the Washington Post wine writers." Most articles on the site are exclusive and do not run in the newspaper's food section or elsewhere online.

With that trust in mind, TastePost features a regular "Ask the Expert" question-and-answer feature, which Yonan expects "will become one of the most popular aspects of TatstePost." Questions so far have been coming in slowly but steadily. Early questions on the site were about the difficulty of finding Chablis in local stores, choosing which wines to regift and refrigerating champagne. Yonan's goal for that section is to make "Ask the Expert" a frequently updated resource, and he expects that as more questions come in, they will probably have to be more selective about which questions they answer. "We'll look for questions that have the broadest appeal," Yonan said.

TastePost members will also be invited to members-only wine tasting events.

The newspaper conducted customer research in conjunction with the launch of its Post Points program, which rewards readers for subscribing to and engaging with the newspaper and its advertisers and is completely separate from TastePost. That customer research revealed those surveyed are very enthusiastic about food and wine. The Food section of the newspaper has also been very popular with readers.

"Even people who are not currently customers of the paper but who share this passion… maybe we can engage with them in a way that makes them feel a connection with the newspaper," Lee said.

This past summer, newspaper editors and executives started to look at the things that could be included in a set of benefits for readers, and the newspaper tested several of the benefits both online and with customers. The benefits the club includes now are those that rose to the top through market testing.

In addition to the annual membership fee, which is automatically renewed annually, the newspaper is selling ads onto TastePost in a package deal with other advertising options.

The future seems bright for TastePost ad revenue. Paying for access to a site that provides highly valuable, niche information makes people more likely to engage with that site. "So we think there are strong advertising opportunities, but we didn't build the site around advertiser opportunities – we built it around consumer engagement."