Victoria, Australia
The Challenge
The Rathbone Wine Group approached CRU with a clear mandate: transform their fragmented and outdated direct-to-consumer (DTC) setup across four winery brands into a modern, seamless, and scalable digital ecosystem.
At the time, the Group’s DTC operations were limited by manual processes, lack of CRM integration, and minimal customer engagement beyond a basic newsletter. Their existing wine club had limited reach and no real digital infrastructure behind it.
Key challenges included:
The Group needed more than just a website refresh—they needed a full-scale digital transformation across customer engagement, marketing automation, and online sales.
CRU was engaged to lead the redesign and development of four custom websites for Rathbone Wine Group’s wineries. These websites were designed to:
Alongside website development, CRU implemented a fully integrated wine club platform (CRU Club)—personalised to each winery brand and built to scale with customer growth. Our team ensured the wine club system was tightly connected to the new CRM and marketing workflows. To support the broader transformation, CRU worked with Launchy.io to handle the CRM, automation strategy, and POS integration.
Working with Launchy and KonnectIT, the team implemented a central CRM and automation engine to unify data and personalise communications throughout the customer lifecycle.
Key components of the solution:
These segments were nurtured through automated email and SMS flows, cross-brand campaigns, and tailored promotions. Launchy.io’s strategy also introduced:
After 2.5 years, Rathbone Wine Group experienced a complete transformation of their DTC ecosystem, with measurable results including:
Increase in Revenue
Wine Club Growth
Database Size Growth
Loyalty Members Added (from zero)
Increase in Profit
Weekly Admin Hours Saved
CRU’s expertise in website development and wine club systems—combined with Launchy’s lifecycle marketing and CRM integration—enabled the Rathbone Wine Group to evolve from a manual, disconnected DTC operation to a digitally connected, customer-focused growth engine.
This collaboration is a benchmark example of how aligning customer experience with digital strategy can unlock major long-term value for premium wine brands.CRU - Subscription Focused Agency
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