5 Out-of-the-Box Tips for Holiday Jewelry Sales Success

0:08
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.

0:31
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”, so I’ll gladly seize any opportunity to talk about it. This is episode 193. And today I’m going to be sharing my five out-of-the-box tips for your best holiday ever. I have a few other episodes about holiday planning and marketing. That’s number 97 and 138. If you’d like to check those out as well, Episode 97 gives a month-by-month breakdown of what you should be doing every month from now through January. Yes, January of next year. And episode 138 talks about what you could be doing in August to prepare, but I know it’s not August anymore. Many of those tips can be tackled in September. So I’ll link to those two episodes in the show notes. I won’t be repeating any of that content in this episode. So I suggest you review those as a primer first. Here’s a summary of the five out-of-the-box tips I’ll be covering.

2:00
One, create a proprietary holiday or special event. Two, think about giftable bundles like upsells and crosssells. Three, forget discounting for Black Friday, Cyber Monday; surprise and delight your customers instead. Four, add direct mail to your mix. And five, update and add to your top-of-funnel content. But before we get to the solid gold of 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 act of service to you, my awesome listeners and viewers. And you can always support the podcast for free by taking the time not only to subscribe, but also to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, which helps other jewelry dreamers find it too. I want to read my favorite review of the week, Melissa, owner of Vintage Magnality, says “This is a must listen in the jewelry industry, and any new entrepreneur even if you’re not in the jewelry industry. Laryssa is regularly publishing new podcasts. So there’s always something new to listen and learn from. She touches on all aspects of marketing. And I have an ongoing list of things I need to incorporate into my jewelry retail business. Her guests are knowledgeable, and I love her thoughtful approach. Thank you for contributing to the jewelry and entrepreneur community.” Wow. Thank you, Melissa. That’s awesome. I love that you have an ongoing list, and I hope that you’re able to tackle all of those things. I really appreciate your support and kind words. And if you listener or viewer, leave a review. I might read it on a future episode. Please let me know what you think about this episode, or any other major takeaways you’ve had recently.

4:12
I am so excited to announce that the Joy Joya Podcast has its very first sponsor after self funding this podcast since 2018. Can you believe it? When I first launched. I have now decided to seek outside sponsors to help me build the resources that I’ll need to keep improving upon this podcast and making it better for you. I have big ideas for this podcast, and those of course require funds and support. If you’re interested in perhaps seeing the Joy Joya Podcast Sales Kit, and learning more about how sponsorship can help you and your business reach a dedicated niche audience of jewelry business owners and leaders, please email me Laryssa@joyjoya.com.

5:05
This episode is sponsored by Chrysmela, maker of the most secure earring back in the world. If you’re not already watching on YouTube, I encourage you to visit the Joy Joya channel to see me wear and show the only earring back that automatically fits, locks, and lifts all types of earrings. I’m currently wearing them with my emerald cut studs right now, and I love wearing them with studs because I am notoriously just wearing jewelry in situations that I probably should not be wearing fine jewelry like working out what have you. And I can feel certain that my earrings won’t get pulled out or fall out. And I love that sense of security. So if you’re a retailer or an independent designer and you’ve been seeking unique gift with purchase ideas for your jewelry business, especially with the upcoming holidays, if you’re hoping to increase your average order value and you sell post earrings, Chrysmela is a high-quality solution that enables you to provide a better customer experience while instilling confidence in your clientele. I just want to show you the really beautiful packaging setup here. You can see it looks very luxe and high end, and I also want to show you what they look like a little more clearly on a pair of studs here that I have on a display. So you can see just like how beautifully and seamlessly they work with these like honker of some sparkly studs. And I can like pull and yank on them like really be terrible about about abusing these earrings and these are not coming off. Mayumi Ishii, the exclusive US distributor of Chrysmela, was even a past guest on the Joy Joya podcast in Episode 71. If you’d like to check out her interview and I’ll link that in the show notes. Joy Joya listeners and viewers who are interested in learning more about partnering with Chrysmela can email info@chrysme.la. So that’s CHRYSME dot LA. Chrysmela offers white labeling as well as wholesale opportunities. That’s info@chrysme.la. And please make sure to mention that you learned about Chrysmela through the Joy Joya Podcast.

7:37
In this segment of the podcast I give out my Sparkle Award for the week. During this segment I highlight a jewelry brand that is impressing me with their marketing. This 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. So this I learned about from an article in The New York Times, which all of a sudden in the past week had like a dump of articles about jewelry, which I find very exciting and interesting. And the article that I saw is called “Your next necklace may have gold from an old phone”, and I’ll link to that article in the show notes as well. So the Sparkle Award goes to Lylie, and I found out about this brand through the article. 12 years ago Lylie founder Eliza Walter was learning design at high school in England when she first heard about e-mining, which is the process of recovering precious metals from electronic waste. She and her classmates took a field trip to a local foundry, and the owner explained to the students that gold was mined from the earth, but that people could also obtain it from landfills. In the New York Times article Eliza says “You just remember things don’t use some times when something is very, very memorable.” Well that memory of the field trip and the class definitely impacted her future decisions about business. So she ended up pursuing learning more about electronic waste and then even completed a course about it at Holt’s Academy, which is now the British Academy of Jewellery. And then she opened her online business in 2017. Currently, she designs pieces crafted by about 30 freelance goldsmiths, and they use gold recovered from electronics, as well as dental waste like gold fillings. I honestly had no idea that jewelers were using recycled gold from places besides using old jewelry or like vintage or unwanted jewelry or scrap. It never occurred to me. Um, maybe I’m just I just never heard this before. That you could use e-waste or dental waste, like old fillings to make jewelry. But it makes so much sense to me. And I want to thank the New York Times for bringing this topic to light and educating me about it. And I also want to thank Lylie for finding new innovative ways to use this type of material and to educate customers about it. It is all super interesting to me. As I mentioned, 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.

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Let’s discuss some recent news related to jewelry or marketing. Each week I share my thoughts about three relevant articles. And you can get the links to these articles by checking out the show notes. The first article comes from TechCrunch. And it’s called “Instagrams latest feature test is about being BeReal”. Have you heard about the newest social media platform BeReal? I’ve been hearing a lot more about it lately. I guess it’s really popular among high school and college students. So I downloaded it, I signed up, I created an account, I wanted to experience and know what it’s about. And basically, it is like the antithesis, antithesis to Instagram. So on Instagram, you have highly like staged and curated content, and on BeReal, it gives you a random push notification, at a random time of day. And you as a user have two minutes to take a picture of yourself and whatever you’re doing. And it actually uses the front facing, and like selfie-facing cameras to take that picture. So you can’t really like hide what you’re doing or really have like a polished look. And that’s kind of the point of the platform. I think brands are already starting to take advantage of it. Like I was listening to this, this episode of the Glossy Podcast. And they were talking about how brands who are early adopters of BeReal literally have their social media people like pre-prepare a setup that they want to do for BeReal. And then I guess the moment that social media person gets the notification, they have everything set up and staged, which probably defeats the purpose of the app. Anyway, no surprise here. Instagram is being a copy cat again. The Meta owned social network is testing a BeReal clone feature that challenges people to post candid photos within two minutes. Here’s a quote from the TechCrunch article that it kind of gives some perspective about Instagram versus BeReal and how the user base is different. “So while BeReal is the center of a lot of tech discussions right now, data from Apptopia suggests that the app has only just over 43 million lifetime downloads. For comparison, Instagram reportedly has more than 2 billion monthly active users not downloads.” So there’s no direct competition here between the two apps, but I’m just like, wow, Instagram, you are truly a copycat. And I guess as they say, I can’t even remember the quote right now. Copying is a form of flattery, I’m saying totally wrong. But kudos to BeReal for like creating, like an approach and a feature that Meta and Instagram actually want to copy. And I’ll be interested to see how this all plays out and how users respond to all of these changes.

13:54
This second article comes from Wall Street Journal, and it’s called “Companies used to announce products now they drop them”. The Wall Street Journal apparently just now learned about a thing called product drops. I’m like really, guys? Um, so they define in this article a drop as “anytime a company announces a limited edition product either without preamble sometimes called a shock drop, or else announces in advance that something is coming and lets users know exactly when they should open a social media app or the company’s own app or website to purchase it”. So there’s really been a shift in the past few years in how brands release new product instead of investing a lot of time and money into like a big built up advertising campaign with a lot of lead up. Companies from a number of different verticals just drop products instead without a lot of like leading up to it or as Wall Street Journal says “preamble”. There might be a little bit of a teaser, or like an initial announcement. But it’s more of like a spontaneous kind of thing. And many times the actual drop happens on social media. So especially people who are in the millennial and Gen Z demographics, they’re now very used to this model. And it’s how they kind of like to consume products. I actually didn’t know that the concept of a product drop is not new, or is not from the past few years. It originated in streetwear shops in Tokyo in the 1980s. And then was popularized in the late 1990s, by lifestyle brands like Supreme. And now of course, thanks to social media and technology, people don’t have to stand in big lines outside of a brick and mortar store to get a drop. They simply need to be following their favorite brands on social media and email, and kind of be ready for those announcements. Definitely the most successful drops have lots of creative content around them. So it’s not just like, hey, we have a new product, there’s a ton of thought, creativity and intention put behind the content that’s actually promoting these drops. And the businesses that tend to do the best with drops on social media actually see their content go viral. And that’s the way these brands are driving brand awareness, and new customers share their drops. So it’s not just about like, we have new product, but the actual content is inspiring people to come check it out, be curious about it, follow the brand. It’s like highly shareable. So the existing customers are putting it out to new customers. And I think that with a shift to like, physical digital goods phygital, I can’t say that word or, or even just virtual goods, for example, NFTs, I think this product drop model will just continue becoming more and more common. So it’s important to consider how it may work for your jewelry brand.

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And then the last article comes from The Verge. And it’s called “Instagram is enlisting celebrities and influencers to make your shopping cart in case that’s helpful”. So I recently saw this article. And I thought it is a case study for a really interesting way to utilize influencers. So beginning at the day that I saw this article Instacart is, which is a grocery delivery app. It’s rolling out product collections curated by public figures, influencers and retailers for customers to shop from the new feature is called carts. And it displays lists of grocery items themed around events. So like maybe they’ll have a sports influencer, who has like a game day cart, and they fill their cart with all the products that they would want for like their tailgating or or whatever game day snacks, or maybe self care Sunday, like what are all the things you’d want to buy for your your day of rest. And again, these are picked by celebrities. And then customers can just kind of like copy the cart, or like cherry pick the things from the cart that they want. I thought this was a really interesting way to approach influencer marketing, almost like if you were to go to a brick and mortar store, and you really needed guidance from a salesperson and have that more like curated, tailored experience that salesperson can like quote, unquote, help you fill your cart and the influencers are kind of doing this approach in a digital way. And I liked the idea a lot. For more information about any of these articles, check out the links provided in the show notes. Without further delay, let’s get to my five out-of-the-box tips for holiday success.

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Tip number one, create a proprietary holiday or special event. So actually, in Episode 191, I shared in my news roundup, a podcast episode that I listened to you from Retail TouchPoints about how more brands are kind of jumping on this like Prime Day precedent and not relying so much on the traditional holiday calendar and maybe building in their own proprietary events and celebrations into the calendar and also so that they’re not competing with the noise of like Black Friday, Cyber Monday and all those things. So instead of being super reliant on the traditional holiday calendar, think about out what special days or events you can build in from now through the end of the year? What would make sense for your brand? And how can you do something unique, maybe you’re celebrating a business anniversary, maybe you’re celebrating like a new product or collection, or a new feature or service that you want to launch for your business. Or maybe you just want to pick a random day and appreciate your customers. Whatever that is, I think it’s important these days to put your own spin on the traditional holiday calendar. Again, to really help your brand stand out.

20:38
Tip number two, brainstorm perhaps how you can include giftable bundles, upsells, and crosssells. You definitely want to use the holidays as an opportunity to experiment with various ways to increase your average order value, so that you’re not so reliant on percentage or dollar amount discounts, which basically are a dime a dozen on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. So instead of like encouraging people to take money off, maybe encourage them to purchase something else. But you can only do that by making it easier for them. So like at the beginning of this episode, for example, I talked about Chrysmela and how it’s a really easy add on for people who sell stud earrings. And you can encourage people and show the value that if you’re going to buy these stud earrings as a gift, you may as well buy that person the security of like having a secure, elegant, beautiful earring back. So with these giftable bundles, crosssells and upsells it’s all about showing the value and making it super easy for your customer to purchase the best gift possible. So what are some ways that you can really create that value, and in turn, get that person to purchase more? Not just because it’s beneficial to you as a business. But because you are actually making your customer’s life easier and more convenient.

22:13
Tip number three, maybe it’s time to forget about discounting for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. And think about because again, as I said the discounts are kind of a dime a dozen. Think about how you can surprise and delight your customer. Instead, what are some ways that you can still make their Black Friday and Cyber Monday fun, interesting and exciting and inspiring them to shop? But maybe not necessarily with a discount, which is something they are just seeing constantly. You could do a gift card promo, for example. So if they spend a certain dollar amount thresholds, maybe they get a gift card for a certain dollar amount for themselves. And you know, who knows who they’re buying for, whether it’s themselves or someone else. But that’s how you can spin it. So that then after the holiday, that person is motivated to come back and purchase something else because they have a gift card. So it kind of keeps the excitement and fun of the shopping experience going and going. You can do a giveaway for something cool and interesting. So again, instead of a discount, maybe whoever purchases on Black Friday, or Cyber Monday automatically just get something cool in their package. And it can be a small thing. But something that really makes an impact and an impression. And that’s related to your brand. I think those little surprises add ons are always nice and delight the customer. Maybe you upgrade for interesting free gift wrap or limited edition packaging that’s only available at a certain time of year. Or you can offer free upgraded shipping that you wouldn’t normally offer unless someone was like paying a certain rate. So there are other things that you could really be doing besides a discount.

24:09
Tip number four, think about adding direct mail to the mix at this time of year. And I would really recommend that you do this in advance of Christmas because at that time of year your customers might be getting holiday cards, a lot of other promotions in the mail. Perhaps for Thanksgiving you send out thank you cards to people who have purchased from you in the past and show and express that gratitude to them. Or maybe you have a postcard or some other like trifold mailer campaign with your favorite giftable items for the season. Make it really visible, visual and something that they can save and beautiful so that they’re inspired to like keep it on the counter where they keep mail, and it’s a great way to stand out at this busy time of year because if you’re only reliant on email marketing, you are definitely going to get lost in a sea of noise. I remember last year, I was so frustrated by all the emails I got. I am on like every single jewelry list there is. But I was just like mass deleting things, because it was too much. And it was also a lot of the same same.

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Tip number five, now’s a great time, especially in September, I wouldn’t wait too long to do this is look at your top of funnel content. Hopefully, if you’ve listened to my podcasts, you’ve built some of that out. I’m talking about blog posts, gift guides, other helpful educational content on your website, any kind of value driven content that you have on your site that could potentially drive traffic. Look at it and see what can I add to it to create additional value for this holiday season. So if you have gift guides from last year, update that content, say it’s been updated for 2022 and make it a permanent feature on your website. Or if there’s other information that you think people would really like to know, like how to give a gift from your brand at the holidays, gift packaging ideas, tips for shopping for like, I don’t know, diamond stud earrings, insert product here. Anything that you think would be like an FAQ or something that your customer would really need to know for the holidays. Go and update that content if you have it already, make sure it’s solid and as value driven as possible. And if you don’t have that top of funnel content, that funnel that is educational, creates brand awareness. September is the time to start building out that content so that you have it ready to share. And so that next year, you won’t have to start from scratch. So please, please get started. You’ll only have to update the content that you already have. So I really encourage you to kind of do an audit of the content and then update what you have to make your website searchable, to have things to link in your email and on social, and to provide value to your customer.

27:34
What did you think? You can always email me Larissa that’s 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 review on iTunes to purchase a signed copy of my book Jewelry Marketing Joy. Visit joyjoya.com/book for more information. Thanks for listening. Remember to subscribe so you never miss an episode. For more information about working with Joy Joya where you can sign up to download our free eBooks about various topics in jewelry marketing.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai