Polly Hammond

As the Founder and CEO of 5forests, Polly Hammond bridges the gap between strategy and execution in the wine industry, driving innovation through digital marketing solutions. She spends her days not only consulting, writing, and speaking about impactful trends but also rolling up her sleeves to implement effective digital marketing solutions for 5forests' clients.

Dark smoke as background. Text says "Events beyond our control"

Events Beyond our Control, Real Business of Wine Ep. 2

Our first Live Video Podcast – focusing on the wine world in the face of the postponement/cancellation of all of its major Winter/Spring events: Chengdu Wine Fair, Prowein, Vinitaly, Vinexpo Hong Kong, RAW London… We were delighted to welcome: Ian Ford, former CEO of Summergate, one of China’s top importers, and now heading the Nimbility…

A road that runs until the horizon, and says START. Text on top of that picture says "Making a start"

Making A Start, Real Business of Wine Ep. 1

An honest discussion about what led to the Real Business of Wine series, a content initiative by Robert Joseph, aka WineThinker, and Polly Hammond, Founder, 5forests.

We're screwed scene from 10 Things I Hate About You

How do we sell wine to GenZ?

The oldest of Gen Z turned 21 in 2018. It is estimated that by 2020 (that’s only fourteen months away), they will comprise one-third of the population of the U.S. They have never known life without a cell phone or social media … or school shootings. And they are a force to be reckoned with.…

“Hi Virginia” or "Does your personalization suck?"

“Hi Virginia” and the Problem with Personalization in Wine Marketing

Technology, data, and the interwebs gave us an ability to “personalize” content, which many businesses took at face value: add a name here or there, automate emails based on what someone’s bought or visited, remarket elsewhere to the same people; but, for the vast majority, it simply meant adding someone’s first name to an email…

A love letter to old friends: how to revive a dead email list

What the heck do you do with an email database that hasn’t been used in ages? We’ve all been on the receiving end of these emails, the ones where we think, “who IS this?” and immediately unsubscribe. So in typical fashion, I’m going to take the “real human” approach to this conundrum. But first, let’s…

What Wine Marketing Can Learn from Video Game Design

Lately, I’ve been pondering my GenX husband’s secret guilty pleasure: MMORPGs, huge multiplayer online games with complex story plots that often rely on community-building to master. Dear Hubby has been a gamer for as long as we’ve been married, and before life got busy with kids and businesses and mortgages, I spent many an evening…

Creating delight and building connections

I’ve decided to eschew the crappy list-ification that you’ll find littering Google when you search Customer Delight, because while those lists might give you some very middle-of-the-road places to start, they don’t help you shift your thinking. Delight is a way of looking at communication and marketing that needs to be embraced by everyone on…

Kanye West saying "for me, I'm a creative genius"

Kanye & Blind Dates: Tackling the About Us Page

Today, let’s talk about something near and dear to my heart as a wine, beer, and spirits marketer…the single piece of content that sends even the bravest of business people running for the hills: the About Us web copy. I can’t begin to tell you the number of times that I have seen sites stall for lack…

photo of sunset taken through airplane window

30 days of Instagram ideas for wineries

Need a little inspiration for your social media posts? Sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter and get the news and updates you need, straight to your inbox. It’s the best darned news you’ll read all week. 30 days of Instagram ideas

GDPR for Wineries

GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation. It is the new data protection law in the EU, it comes into force in May 2018, it has serious penalties, and it applies to data collected about EU citizens from anywhere in the world. This means that pretty much every winery site anywhere needs to care about…

Designing a Better Customer Experience

In a recent article, we talked about the decision-simplicity index, and I received a few emails asking about clear pathways versus the old-school tactic of upselling via meandering paths. “Isn’t it better to encourage people to look around, so maybe they add more to the cart?” Before I answer, I will lead in with a story:…

Anatomical sketch of naked male by Leonardo da Vinci

Simple truths for better winery websites

Recently, someone (not the client) looked at one of our most thought-out, well-planned, customized sites (with innumerable goal-driven features) and said, “it just looks like a simple site to me.” Honestly, my team was gobsmacked. We had spent months working on discovery and custom development and optimization and testing ….My ego reared its head and…