5 Misconceptions About Jewelry Marketing Data

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Welcome to the Joy Joy Podcast, where jewelry is joy and everyone is encouraged to add more polish and sparkle to the world with topics ranging from marketing tips to business development, best practices and beyond. This is the go to podcast for ambitious jewelry industry dreamers like you.

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Hi, I’m your host Laryssa Wirstiuk. Through this podcast I aim to empower and inspire jewelry entrepreneurs and professionals so they can thrive while adding more beauty to the world. I’m passionate about digital marketing for jewelry brands and I’m excited to share my passion with you. As we all know jewelry is joy, and I’ll gladly seize any opportunity to talk about it. This is episode 170 and today I’m going to be sharing five reasons why your jewelry marketing data may be incorrect or even steering you in the wrong direction. Listen in to find out how you can really make your data work for you.

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But before we get to the solid goldof this episode, I’d like to take a moment to remind you that this podcast has both an audio and video component. So you can either listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch on YouTube by searching Joy Joya. I love creating this content as my active service to you my awesome listeners and you can support the podcast for free by taking the time not only to subscribe, but also to leave a rating and review on iTunes, so other jewelry dreamers can find it too.

1:42
If you listened to episode 165 of this podcast with my guests Liz Kantner, you know that we recently opened registration for our collaborative, six part webinar series called Success With Jewelry. Enrollment is still open for a few more days as of this episode going live. Do you want all the details? Visit successwithjewelry.com or follow on Instagram at @successwithjewelry. I can’t wait to see you at the webinar.

2:11
In this segment of the podcast I give out my Sparkle Award for the week. During this segment I highlight a jewelry brand that’s impressing me with their marketing. The Sparkle Award is also interactive so you can visit sparkleaward.com to nominate a jewelry brand that’s inspiring you these days, and I might feature your submission on a future podcast episode.

2:33
This week I’m spotlighting Tiffany and Company which according to an article from Hypebeast recently announced that it will be upgrading their classic robin’s egg blue ring box catering to today’s consumers preference for personalization. They will be offering a box customization service very soon, actually, I think right when this episode drops, it will just have gone live. With this new service, a customer can request an etched message in either silver, gold, or as an embossed engraving on the box. I really liked this and I’m highlighting it because I think it’s a good reminder that the personalization trend in jewelry is number one real. And number two, it extends beyond just jewelry itself. Customers don’t only want to be personalizing their looks, but they also want to be able to personalize the entire experience, especially when their purchase relates to a special milestone. More special occasion like in this case, gifting a Tiffany engagement ring or other important gift. As I mentioned, you can visit sparkleaward.com to nominate a jewelry brand that’s inspiring you these days.

3:51
Let’s just get some recent news related to jewelry or marketing. Each week I share my thoughts about three relevant articles. And you can get those links by visiting JoyJoya.com/signup. Once you’re on the VIP list, you’ll receive our weekly digest filled with new episode announcements. So number one, this comes from the official Google blog. And they did a blog post called the fashion trends that are warming up for spring. So obviously Google being a search engine and having all the data about what people are searching for, specifically on Google Shopping. So Google shared what in this season are people looking for on Google Shopping so that you can take that information and potentially adjust your content, your digital marketing strategy this season and next season, and maybe even your merchandising strategy? So these are some interesting fashion trends and queries from Google Shopping lately. Number one, the decades fashion trend so one quote from this article, the most search fashion trends Over the past 30 days in the US are 80s Fashion followed by 90s fashion, y2k fashion 2000s fashion and 70s fashion so people are really interested in throwing back their style and looking to see how they can be inspired by the fashion of previous decades. Number two, something I like and if you’re watching this on YouTube, you can see my shirt florals. I am a fiend for florals. So I’m excited to see it as a trend in Google Shopping. That’s floral pattern clothing, accessories and nail designs, which are all trending. Things like sunflower bathing suit floral handbag both have been Top Google searches along with nail art search trend with phrases like sunflower, Daisy, summer and spring. And then finally very trending color this season the color green. Not only is it springy, but lime green is definitely like a color trend for this season. According to this article, it was the most searched for nail polish color, not maybe not my preference, but I can see why people like it. And then the second most popular color in searches was black. So maybe you can adjust your merchandising strategy based on these insights.

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The next article comes from the official Klaviyo blog. Sit tight if you want to know how to make your subject lines better. This is a very comprehensive article. It’s called The Ultimate Guide to compelling email subject lines, data driven best practices and 21 examples. I’m going to try to run through some of the highlights because there’s a lot of really great information here. I encourage you to check it out yourself. So I will tell you how to improve your subject lines. One you really want to be paying attention to length. And this is something I talk about all the time, especially since more people are opening and reading emails on their mobile devices. So subject lines get caught cut off on those mobile devices. Subject Lines should be a teaser, enticing your readers to open the email and read more shorter subject lines often tend to perform better. So most screens only display 30 to 40 characters in a subject line clay vo asked answers the question, should your subject line be in all caps? And what about punctuation marks. So they’ve done research on this and it shows that email marketing campaigns without fully capitalized subject lines performed about 12% Better than campaigns with subject lines in all caps with a roughly 2% Higher median open rate. In general, it’s better to stay away from all caps, and not to overuse punctuation marks because that can feel spammy to your subscribers. But again, it really depends on your brand. Every brand is different. Some brands have are really like quote unquote extra in the way they talk to customers. So maybe that might work for you. But in general, most brands should stay away from the capitalization, overuse and the punctuation overload.

8:23
So some best practices for those email subject lines, if you can personalize them. If you have first names of your subscribers to try to include them every once in a while in email subject lines, always try to evoke a sense of curiosity. Of course, you really want to pique that subscribers interest, you can consider asking questions to engage the subscriber and get them to want to know more or to interact with you, you can make your subject lines feel conversational. Also, definitely if there’s some kind of offer discount or promotion involved, make sure that that’s clearly stated in the subject line. If there’s urgency around your promotion, like it ends tomorrow or in the next two days, that’s really important information to include in the subject line. Use numbers when they’re relevant because those stand out from text. They can also be really descriptive and can support things like your discount your promotion, or the urgency involved with with that. You can try testing emojis if it if they feel relevant to your brand to your tone of voice and how you communicate with your customers. And also in addition to subject lines, you want to make sure you’re filling out the preview text as well. So the preview text is the first like sentence that someone sees before they open the email. So then there’s a subject line and like a little snippet of text that someone might see before they even open and that can be another opportunity to add more information. mission and to serve as a teaser for your subscribers.

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And our last article comes from Forbes. And it’s all about the four myths of social media marketing and debunking them. So I’m going to just focus on three because these are common ones that I hear a lot or get asked about a lot. So number one, myth number one, posting on social media at specific times will help engagement. This is what the article had to say. And I agree with it, posting within a particular timeframe definitely does help. But it actually comes down to engagement, the engagement or content gets in the first few hours after it’s live. So considering when your audience is most active will help you reach higher engagement. So it’s actually more about your audience activity than about any like arbitrary arbitrary time. Myth number two, publishing through third party tools, decreases reach. And by third party tools, I mean, things like Later or Planoly. A lot of people say that when they started using these tools, they saw a decrease in their engagement. But the truth is, this was true in 2011, that at that point, third party tools did decrease reach, but today, at least according to research. But today, third party tools do not decrease reach. Various research conducted over the years shows that third party tools do not negatively impact reach. And in the cases where numbers were lower, the data was statistically insignificant, so you can wipe that myth out of your brain. And then myth number three, social media is real time with no planning big myth. The assumption that good social media marketing is always in real time and spontaneous and never pre planned is so far from the truth. All social media strategies should account for real time reaction and should have some planning behind them. If you want to get the links to the articles I mentioned in this segment of the podcast, you can sign up for the Joy Joya VIP newsletter by visiting joyjoya.com/signup.

12:33
Without further delay, let’s talk about five ways that your jewelry marketing data may be steering you wrong, so that you can be aware of it and potentially adapt to the fact that your data may be impacting your marketing decisions in a misinformed or negative way. So number one, and I really want to talk about this because it’s something that is coming up a lot for me lately. It’s something in the past week, I’ve mentioned numerous times to clients and conversations that I’m having. And it relates specifically to email marketing. So you may have noticed, if you’ve been paying attention to open rates of your email campaigns, that they’ve been higher than usual lately, specifically in the last three or 456 months. I don’t want to burst your bubble, but it’s probably not a sign that your subscribers are suddenly more interested and engaged. So this is what’s really happening. On September 20. of last year in 2021, Apple released a new software update called iOS 15. And one of the features of iOS 15 is mail privacy protection, and it does two things. One, it automatically loads all images from emails, whether someone opens the email or not. And two, it hides IP addresses and the location of email recipients. So why does that image loading thing matter? The way that most like email service providers or the way that activity of email opening is tracked is there’s this little like tracking pixel in an email that’s actually an embedded image that we can’t see, but it’s there so that when someone opens an email, that image registers as being loaded. This is getting really technical, and I don’t even fully understand the technology behind it. But basically, with this software update, Apple is automatically loading all images. And what that means is that for people on your subscriber list who view your emails or get your emails on an Apple device, and they’re actively using their email that email, your campaign is going to be tracked as opened whether that person opened it or not. And you’re not going to have any tracking information. If that person is using an Apple device with the iOS 15 updates, it’s kind of a bummer.

15:17
It makes email marketing definitely more complicated, because in the past email marketers were able to segment based on open behaviors, they were able to report accurately and see the engagement of their email campaigns. But now, it’s completely unreliable. So also, scrubbing your email list of inactive subscribers also just got more difficult because it’s hard to see who is actually opening emails a lot. And as I mentioned before, it also makes segmentation based on open behavior a lot more difficult. So what I just said might be like, a little too complicated for some listeners and viewers, I feel like I got a little bit into the marketing weeds there. But the overall takeaway that I want you to know is that data privacy regulations are changing. And Apple and Google are really leading the charge on making those changes. And as a result, digital marketing efforts are getting more difficult, because the tactics that marketers use to rely on to retarget customers to personalized messaging to customers are changing. So that’s really important to know. And keep in mind as you go forward with your email marketing.

16:40
The number two way that your data may be misleading you or steering you in the wrong direction. This is related to Google Analytics. So most jewelry entrepreneurs with ecommerce website have Universal Analytics connected to their website, some may work with someone who manages their website or a marketing partner who advise them that they should upgrade to Google Analytics Four, which is the next version of Google Analytics. So this point that I’m going to make is not necessarily about having wrong or bad data, but it’s more about potentially getting left in the dust, and being outdated in your approach to measuring data. So Google Analytics, Universal Analytics will soon become outdated. And Google Analytics Four will be replacing Universal Analytics. And in fact, on July 1 of next year, 2023, this standard Universal Analytics will no longer be processing data. So you’ll still be able to see your maybe current reports for a period of time. But then the new data will start to flow into this upgraded version of Google Analytics, which Google is releasing because they think that it’s going to more accurately report on kind of the new way that people interact with websites, and apps.

18:10
So the reporting interface is going to be different. And sorry to say, if you just recently got used to to the current Google Analytics, you’re basically going to have to learn a whole new reporting interface. And also the measurement model for data is going to be different. So instead of it being based on sessions and pageviews of a website, it’s going to be based on what Google is calling events, and parameters. Overall, this is like a pretty complex thing to explain. Again, I’m sorry, if you like just started getting used to Google Analytics Universal, which is kind of complex in itself. But if you do want to get ahead of the curve, you have a little bit over more than a year to do that to kind of understand Google Analytics Four. And I do have to say YouTube has some really amazing tutorials that really go through Google Analytics Four in depth, and it’s something that you can transition over to now while still maintaining the old version of Google Analytics. So you can take that baby step to make the transition without fully just like jumping into the deep end. So really important to be aware of in terms of where marketing and reporting for marketing data is headed in the near future.

19:34
Number three way that your jewelry marketing data may be steering you wrong. It’s actually that you may be paying attention to the wrong data. There are so many things you can track when it comes to marketing. In fact, I find many times it can just be as I like to say TMI way too much information. If you tried to track every metric related to marketing in your business, you would drive yourself completely crazy because you would be overwhelmed with numbers and information, and not have a clue about how to really utilize it and make that data work for you. So when it comes to data, you really have to know your business and marketing goals. Is it that you want to increase your eCommerce revenue? Is it that you wish you could increase your average order value? Do you want to be selling more products per transaction, whatever it may be a specific goal, and also set a measurable amount to that goal. So don’t just say, for example, that you want to increase your ecommerce revenue, say that you want to increase it by 15%, or whatever number makes sense and feels relevant and realistic. Then once you know the specific goals that you have, you can kind of look at what is possible to leverage in your business? Like what levers can you be pulling, what changes can you be making, making, even if they’re very small, to move you toward that goal, and then the data relevant to those levers that you’re pulling are the things that you’re going to want to be tracking only to ensure that you’re on the right track to meeting your goals. So you almost have to put blinders on. And only pay attention to those things that are going to matter to make sure that you can get from point A to point B, the other data might make you feel good. It might be as what we call like vanity metrics. But if it’s not helping you achieve your goals, then it’s not really relevant.

21:46
If you’ve talked to me lately, you’ve likely heard me use the doctor’s visit metaphor to describe what I mean by this, I’ve been like using this metaphor a lot lately. So for example, you go to a doctor with fatigue, let’s say, and the doctor is most likely not going to take an Xray of your foot, okay, if you’re fatigued, the doctor is going to figure out what are the things that they need to measure to see why you’re fatigued, and how you can stop being fatigued. So you’d probably get your vitals checked, you’d probably get some blood work for maybe like your vitamin D and iron levels. And then from there, the doctor would be able to decide how to advise and treat you. But knowing that the cost of healthcare is so high, the doctor is not just going to randomly order everything to get every kind of number and like metric about you under the sun, it’s really going to be focused on what are the things we need to know to figure out why you have fatigue and how we can start making you feel more energetic again, is the same thing with your business. You figure out what the problem is, then in order to diagnose it, you have to focus on the tests or the data or the information that’s going to help you understand this really isolated thing so that you can grow and be better.

23:18
The number four way that your jewelry marketing data may be misleading you or failing you, you may be looking at your marketing data from a bunch of different sources. Actually, you probably are, but not keeping a marketing dashboard with your measures of health all in one consolidated place. So typically, today, the average small business owner is going to have data in their email marketing platform. They’re going to have data on Instagram, on Facebook, they’re going to have their Google Analytics data, maybe they have their sales data in like a POS system or somewhere else. Maybe they have data related to like direct mail campaigns, if they do anything like that, there’s gonna be all these different sources of data.

24:09
But in order to really make it work for you, as I mentioned, in the last point, you have to kind of keep it in one consolidated place. So once you decide on those measures that are the most relevant for you now, and the most relevant to help you reach your goals, they should be in one central dashboard. This could be something you can easily create an Excel, which could just be like columns and rows that on a monthly basis measure change month over month, change year over year, you can decide on the time time period, but it pulls together all of these things, your email marketing, your social media marketing, your Google Analytics and lets us see it in one unified place. There are also some different tools available out there in the world. If you search for like a marketing dashboard, it’s a paid service where you sync up, like, say, your MailChimp, and whatever your social media and your Google Analytics, and it automatically pulls all of these things for you. But if you are a small business owner, something like that isn’t necessary, it could be a manual thing that you update every month on the last day of the month, just to make sure that you’re looking at all of this stuff as a whole, and seeing how it all works together. So you’re not focused on all these, like siloed efforts and losing track of the big picture digital marketing strategy.

25:42
And then the number five way that your jewelry marketing data may be misleading you is that you have to remember that at the end of the day, as powerful as data is and as much as we live in a big data world, data is just data. In order for it to have an impact on your business and in order for it to really make sense to you and to your goals, it needs storytelling, it needs context, it needs perspective. And it also needs the expertise of someone who knows things like the industry benchmarks, the industry trends, because you can look at numbers all day long, you can even see the change the percentage change in numbers, you can be tracking the numbers, you can have your marketing dashboard. But if you don’t really understand how that fits into the big picture of the world, how the market is impacting things, how consumer behavior is impacting things, how industry trends are impacting things, whatever that may be, it’s not really going to mean anything mean you’ll have all this amazing data. And then how are you supposed to interpret it? What stories can you tell about it? How can you present that to your team members to freelancers who work with you? How can you make decisions based on that? So you really want to be able to not only know which numbers are valuable to you, but also to be able to look at them in the context of the bigger world. And that I admit can be very difficult to do if you don’t work with this kind of data on a daily basis. But in this case, if if I would recommend a marketing partner for anything, I think really working with someone who can kind of look at your data with you and helping you understand not only what it means now, but what it means for your future and how you can kind of pull different level levers in your business to really achieve your goals.

27:53
What did you think? You can always email me laryssa@joyjoya.com. If you love this podcast, please share it with a friend who’d appreciate it. And don’t forget to subscribe as well as leave a rating and review on iTunes. To purchase a signed copy of my book Jewelry Marketing Joy visit joyjoya.com/book for more information.

28:16
Thanks for listening. Remember to subscribe so you never miss an episode. For more information about working with joy Joya visit joy joya.com where you can sign up to download our free eBooks about various topics in jewelry marketing.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai