Modernizing Wine Collecting Productivity w/ Eric LeVine, CellarTracker

With ~1M registered users, CellarTracker (“CT”) is one of the core consumer apps for wine lovers.  When Eric LeVine, Founder & CEO of CT, was last on XChateau in late 2021, they had just taken on investment to expand the business.  Eric gives us a rundown of what has happened since, like launching a new mobile app and adding AI features, as well as what is coming down the pipe.  Detailed Show Notes: CT now at 1M registered users, with monthly active users +40-50% since 2021Team has grown from ~10 employees during Covid to ~25Launched new mobile app 1.5 years ago (2023)~10k reviews in Apple App Store / Google Play with a 4.9* ratingMore modern, visualFor subscribers: enhanced drinking windows, tasting notes, AI features (chatbot for wines you like, pairings, etc…)3x users registering on monthly basis vs 2021Continue to support old app to be more customer centric and work out bugs in the new appImproved data analytics; overhauled drinking windows, valuation of wines, “what’s poppin” identifying when people are opening winesWinery analytics: trialed with a couple wineriesNo obvious product market fitWineries interested in what other wineries were in cellars with theirsOne CA winery had 40% of their mailing list on CTHistorically did no marketingDoing more social media, email engagementSome paid search, App Store optimization is the biggest driverGet feedback on what improve with Frill, users can vote on improvements needed and pair it with product usage and usage flowsNew features on the horizonStarting in-app notificationsDeveloping research tool to identify what wines to buy and how much to pay (aggregates price data from reports and ~50% of users report price paid)Making AI embedded natively in the applicationAdd via receipt feature automatically adds (using AI) wines to cellar if you email [email protected] pricingWas early adopter of “freemium” modelPeople were confused by historic “voluntary payment,” only 1/1000 users could say what features are paidAdded more value to paying users (e.g. - drinking windows, AI features; including some things that used to be free), doubled user pay rateSuggesting what to pay is more hidden nowCan get an annual subscription on website, monthly on Apple App Store w/ 2 week free trial (Apple takes a cut and must cancel through Apple)Consumer trendsPeople looking for values (e.g. - they ask “what’s a cheaper version of x?”) and diversity of winesNot seeing a lot of changes in user patterns (e.g. - consumption) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.