How Jewelry Brands Can Level-Up Their Email Marketing

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Ready to break free from algorithms, vanity PR, and money-sucking ads? My name’s Laryssa Wirstiuk, and I’ve learned in 7 years of jewelry marketing that content is the crown jewel. My agency Joy Joya takes a holistic approach, leading with laser-focused storytelling, impactful content creation, and strategic content distribution. This method has worked for the solopreneur as well as the multi-million-dollar company, and now I’m sharing these systems and tactics with you. Here’s to standing out in the Sea of Sparkle.

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Welcome to Episode #246. Today we’re going to be building upon our email marketing mini series and diving into some advanced tactics that will skyrocket your email campaigns and take your jewelry business to new heights! Now, even if you’re new to the world of email marketing and feel like you’re still finding your footing, don’t worry! This episode is for you too. We’re going to explore the possibilities of what email marketing can do for your jewelry brand. Trust me, it’s going to be eye-opening! By the end of this episode, you’ll be equipped with powerful tools like automation, segmentation, and A/B testing. We’ll discuss how these tactics can supercharge your email campaigns, bringing in more leads, boosting engagement, and ultimately driving sales. But that’s not all! We’ll also tackle an important aspect of email marketing: measuring success. We’ll explore the key metrics you should be tracking to gauge the effectiveness of your email campaigns. It’s time to separate the winners from the not-so-winners! I’ll be covering: My personal favorite advanced email marketing tactics that will make your campaigns shine as well as the benefits of using them What can you expect when you implement these tactics? Essential metrics to track for measuring email marketing success If you’re new to this podcast, you should know: from now through July of this year, I’m offering a free (yes FREE) six-month, podcast-guided program called “Jewelry Marketing Jumpstart” which involves weekly audio and video lessons as well as companion PDF downloads for each new episode. If you haven’t already signed up at joyjoya.com/JUMP, then I highly recommend you stop waiting and sign up now.

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But before we get to the solid gold, I’d like to take a moment to remind you that this podcast has both audio and video – so you can either listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch on YouTube by searching “Joy Joya”. You can support the podcast for free by taking the time not only to subscribe but also to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. If you leave a review, I might read it on a future episode – please let me know what you think about this episode or about any other major takeaways you’ve had recently. Speaking of podcasts, did you know I also co-host another podcast with jewelry marketer Liz Kantner? It’s called Success With Jewelry, and we’ve already released 40 free episodes everywhere you listen to podcasts as well as on YouTube. We also have an Insider community, where we share extended episodes, hands-on guidance, and a plethora of resources. Visit successwithjewelry.com to learn more.

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Okay, my Sparklers! Let’s get into the next installment of Jewelry Marketing Jumpstart all about advanced email marketing tactics and the metrics to measure your success. Again, if you’re more of a beginner to email marketing, I still recommend checking out this episode because it will help you understand where you can really go as you move forward with your email marketing journey for your jewelry brand.

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So first, let us tackle my personal favorite advanced email marketing tactics that I think will make your campaigns shine. So I’m going to be talking about automation, segmentation, and AB testing, which I really think are game changers in the world of email marketing. And by mastering them it will really give your campaigns that competitive edge that they need. So let’s explore each one in detail starting with automation, which is sometimes known as flows. And I Klaviyo uses that language of flows. So what does automation mean? Basically an automated email or flow triggers or sends based on specific actions or events. So, like when a new subscriber joins your email list, or a customer makes a purchase, then an email automatically gets sent to that person by using automated emails or flows. You can also nurture your customers throughout the customer journey. So from when they first learn about you through when they make their first purchase and beyond, it really helps guide them through the experience that you want them to have with your brand. And again, that’s through emails that are sent automatically at specific times, and that are relevant to them and their needs. And you can really streamline your marketing efforts by automating tasks that are pretty repetitive for your business. Again, I mentioned welcome emails. So you know, you don’t want to be manually sending an email every time someone joins your email list. As you become bigger and more successful, that is just not going to be a scalable thing to do with your email. Then you have abandoned cart reminders, post purchase follow ups, there are so many actions that happen in your business that can really be accommodated with an automated email. It helps create a seamless and personalized experience for your subscribers, for your customers. And it increases engagement, and also what we all love, the likelihood that they will convert and be a customer for life.

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The next advanced email marketing tactic that I want to talk about is segmentation. So this really gives you the opportunity to craft personalized content that speaks directly to each segment’s interests, needs, and preferences. So what is the segment mean? Well, when you have a list of subscribers in your email, you can likely put those people into different buckets. And that can be based on a lot of different things like where they live. So like East Coast, West Coast, what state they’re in, like what month their birthday is in, what their purchase history is, whether or not they’ve bought from you before, how often they engage with your email. And that’s really an individualized thing that you need to decide as a brand, how you want to break up that list. But the benefits of doing so and having different segments is so that you can increase engagement and again, be much more personalized, speaking directly to the needs of that segment, and to where they are in their journey with your brand. It delivers super tailored messages so that you can resonate with the different people in these buckets. And ultimately, you’ll boost customer loyalty, you’ll boost satisfaction, because those people will get relevant offers and recommendations at the right time so that when they’re ready to buy, they’ll be seeing the message that motivates them to do so.

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And then the third advanced email marketing tactic that I’m going to cover today is AB testing. Basically, in a nutshell, what that means is you have a version A of something, you have a version B of something, and then you test the two with your email to see which performs better, and with email marketing, that a and that b can be a lot of different things, subject lines, copy calls to action, the visuals, so that way you can identify what is most effective and what actually gets people to click to go to your website and to make a purchase. When you’re doing AB testing, you really want to not change everything in your email and then test you know all the changes, you want to just isolate it to one specific thing. If you remember, back in high school, if you were in science class, and you did experiments, you will you’ll remember that there’s like one variable, because when you isolate it to the one thing that you want to test, whether it’s like the color of the button, or the call to action, then you will know which performs better. And you could perform multiple different kinds of AB tests over time. But again, it’s so important to isolate to one thing that you want to understand how to improve in your email marketing. So to do the actual AB testing, once you have a version A of something and a version B of something, then you split your audience into two segments, and send each segment the different version of your email. From there, you can measure and compare the performance of the variation by tracking the metric that makes the most sense for the thing that you’ve tested. And based on those insights, you’ll really be able to optimize your email campaigns moving forward, so that you’re continuously improving, you’re working toward higher engagement. But you’re not just like guessing about these things, which is so super important. And now that I’ve shared those three, I actually want to share a bonus tactic. So in the past few episodes where I’ve talked about email marketing, I mentioned a few times that it’s so important to maintain the health of your email list. So every six months or so you really want to be creating a segment of subscribers who haven’t opened or clicked any of your emails that you’ve sent during that period of time. And then send them what’s called a reengagement campaign. So that’s basically an email that’s like, “Hey, you haven’t interacted with us in a while, do you still want to be subscribed to this list?” And then they have a chance to confirm and/or update their information. And if they don’t take any action after a few days or a week, then you really need to be archiving those people because if they’re going to continue to be disengaged, that could potentially hurt the health of your sender reputation. If more and more people on your list are just not engaging with your emails, then your emails may end up getting marked as spam. And you don’t want those people on your list anyway, because they obviously don’t care. So you kind of have to get over the vanity of archiving people on your list, which can be kind of painful sometimes can hurt your ego. But ultimately, in the long run, that is the best strategy.

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So what can you really expect for your email marketing when you start implementing these tactics? Well, for automation, when you start implementing automated emails or flows, you’ll definitely start to see a significant increase in customer engagement. And in the best case scenario, better conversions, because you’re delivering timely, more personalized messages to subscribers, kind of meeting them where they are at their customer journey. And that way, you’re nurturing them more effectively, guiding them toward making a purchase. And in addition, having those automations for those repetitive tasks, like the welcome emails, the abandoned cart emails, it saves you so much time while ensuring that you’re communicating consistently. So that just all around leads to better customer satisfaction. So what can you expect with segmentation? So again, when you’re segmenting your list based on different factors, whether it’s demographics, purchase history, engagement levels, this, just like automation helps you deliver targeted and personalize content, you’ll likely see better open rates, better click through rates, and ultimately better conversions. Because those customers will really be getting the personalized offers and recommendations that resonate just with them. And then finally, with AB testing, you can expect super valuable insights that will help you optimize your campaigns, so that you’re not guessing about how to make things better. When you’re testing things like subject lines, copy, colors, visuals, then you’ll be able to identify the most effective elements. And it helps you work on continuous improvement, higher engagement rates, increased conversions.

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So now that you’re more familiar with some of these more advanced tactics, we really need to talk about the most essential metrics to track so that you can measure email marketing success, and I’ll walk you through four of them. So the first one is open rate. And as you can probably guess, from what it’s called, this measures the percentage of recipients who open your email and it indicates the effectiveness of your subject lines, your sender name, your sender reputation, and the overall appeal of your brand. When you see a higher open rate, it really signifies that your emails, especially the subject lines, because that’s the first thing they see in their inbox, are grabbing attention and enticing your subscribers to continue engaging with you. But I do wanna share a very important caveat about open rates. So in September 2021, Apple released iOS 15. And one of the new features of iOS 15 was called, or is called mail privacy protection. And it does two things. It automatically loads all images from emails, and it hides IP addresses, and the location of email recipients. So okay, great. What does that mean for you and for open rate? To put that in a nutshell, it means that since September 2021, open rates are very inaccurate, because you can’t truly measure who is actually opening your emails or not. Because again, Apple is almost like artificially creating an open by having those images loaded, and then obscuring the information from your subscribers. So even though open rate is inaccurate, and since 2021, you’ve probably seen inflated numbers for your open rate in your email marketing platform, I still think it’s important, because you can see general patterns and notice if your open rates are going up or down. And that’s an important thing to pay attention to, you do just have to keep this caveat in mind.

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The next metric I want to talk about is click through rate, or CTR. CTR measures the percentage of recipients who click on links or buttons within your email. So this is really indicating the level of engagement and interest generated by your email content. It’s one thing to get someone to open your email. And it’s a whole other thing to get someone to actually take action and like, interrupt what they’re doing and open a new tab or new window to go to your website or wherever you send you send them. So a higher click through rate, I would say an average one for the industry would be like between 2 and 3%. If you can exceed that, then it means you’re doing a really good job to successfully motivate your subscribers to take action and explore what you have to offer. The next one is conversion rate. So conversion rate tracks the percentage of recipients who complete a desired action, whether that’s making a purchase, filling out a form, scheduling an appointment visiting your store, there’s a lot of things that can be considered conversion. And not as it relates to email marketing is it means that’s happening after someone clicks through your email. So that is directly reflecting the effectiveness of your email campaign in driving actual results and revenue or some kind of lead generation.

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And then finally, let’s talk about unsubscribe rate. So that indicates the percentage of recipients who unsubscribe from your email list after they receive your emails. And I would say, a few unsubscribes here or there, it’s gonna happen to everyone, it’s like very impossible to have a 0% unsubscribe rate. So you shouldn’t be afraid of it because there are so many reasons why people unsubscribe from emails, and a lot of them have nothing to do with you. But if you have a really high unsubscribe rate, or you’ve noticed that your unsubscribe rate has been increasing, that may indicate issues with your email content, the frequency, or the relevancy. So really keep this in check to ensure you retain an engaged subscriber base. And I’d recommend checking in with these metrics at least on a monthly basis. Okay, that’s it for now on our email marketing series of Jewelry Marketing Jumpstart. Much more to come though in future episodes. So go to joyjoya.com/jump to get additional information, action items and further resources in the free worksheet. Before we get into The Gold Mine as well as my jewelry marketing news roundup, I want to share a case study of a jewelry brand that I think embodies what I talk about on this podcast.

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So these are my thoughts about how I’d apply my marketing approach and philosophies to a jewelry brand in the wild. Disclaimer, this brand is not my client, so I don’t have inside information. I’m just sharing my observations, but I did also see them at JCK, and I saw how they launched what I’ll be talking about. So I saw this article in Glossy, and it’s called “Anna Zuckerman wants to make non-precious jewelry the future of celebrity styling”. Anna Zuckerman launched her demi-fine jewelry brand in 2020 but at that time, questioned the future of the industry, which was moving toward acceptance of lab-grown diamonds. Just recently for JCK, the company launched a rebrand, focusing on Diamond Crystalline, a man-made gem that takes the highest-grade cubic zirconia and coating it with tiny particles of lab-grown diamonds. The rebrand aims to position the jewelry as suitable for everyday wear and encourages women to indulge in self-purchases. “We recognized our brand’s potential in servicing clients as a lifestyle brand, and not one to be saved for occasions,” Zuckerman said. The brand has successfully collaborated with celebrities and influencers, expanding its reach beyond the red carpet. “A strong part of our growth strategy is in partnering with organic, like-minded brand ambassadors who partner with us in our mission to bring glamour and luxury to the everyday,” Zuckerman said. For PR agencies and stylists, working with non-precious jewels like Anna Zuckerman’s offers the glamour of diamonds without the insurance and security concerns. For Zuckerman and her team, growing consumer interest in lab-grown diamonds presents an opportunity. “Technology has become a driver of how we’re able to play with glamour, to offer the look without the barriers of entry that you have with borrowing diamonds. … There’s more opportunity for celebrities, influencers and stylists to have more fun with glamour. It is truly worry-free wardrobing.” I just thought this was a super-interesting way to tell a story and position a brand. Please put aside your own personal thoughts about feelings about lab-grown diamonds and this new material Diamond Crystalline that Anna Zuckerman has branded. From their work with stylists and PR agencies, they saw a challenge and a need in the market, and they’ve decided to address it by producing a product that creates a tangible outcome – worry-free wear. This is more than just selling pretty products. This is thinking through the target customer’s needs and then pivoting accordingly. What do you think? Let me know in a podcast review or YouTube comment. Okay, let’s get into THE GOLD MINE!

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If you’ve been following this podcast, you know that I launched THE GOLD MINE in August as a secondary episode every week. Moving forward, I’ll be doing THE GOLD MINE as a segment in my weekly Sunday podcast. This week’s GOLD MINE is all about reminding yourself to be patient and remain hopeful. Ever since I moved into my current office, I had a dream to see goldfinches outside my window. I noticed that some of my neighbors had really active bird feeders, and I thought it would be so cool to be able to see birds all day and hear their songs. I didn’t know much about birds, but I did some research and bought a bird feeder and seeds. I set it up according to the instructions and patiently waited, even though I knew it might take a few weeks for them to feel comfortable enough to come to the feeder. As time went by, more than a month passed without any activity. Insecurities started playing with my mind. Again, since I don’t know very much about birds. I questioned my decision and felt like I had wasted my money on the feeder. I also felt ashamed of how quickly I had given up, realizing it hadn’t been that long to be patient and hopeful. In my mind, it was just less painful to not get my hopes up anymore. But then, one day, more than a month later, I saw a single bird land on the feeder. I was overjoyed to see that one bird! It reminded me not to lose hope so easily. And you know what? The very next day, there were dozens of birds flocking to the feeder. A frenzy of wildlife surrounded it every day, all attracted by the feeding activity. I know this probably sounds like a silly little moment, but it really moved me deeply. And since that happened, this experience became a constant reminder for me. It taught me the importance of patience in both business and life. We’re so accustomed to expecting immediate gratification from everything. But sometimes, we need to be patient and trust that we’ve done the right things with our heart and mind in the right place. Even when we can’t see the outcome, we have to believe it will come to fruition. And to add to that, I now feel so much more grateful and appreciative for the birds, and I always make sure the feeder has seeds in it because I don’t want them to leave. So my takeaway for you today is: don’t give up too quickly. Stay patient, maintain hope, and know that good things will come when the time is right. Dreams do come true if we hold onto them and give them the time they need to flourish. What do you think about that? Does it resonate with you? Tell me in a YouTube comment or podcast review. I’d love to know your thoughts.

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Okay, let’s get into the news roundup, where I share three relevant articles related to jewelry or marketing. The first one comes from NeilsNewsletter.com. And it’s called “Why you buy sh*t you don’t need”. Marketer Neal Grady recently published a newsletter with tips about how to sell your customers things they don’t need, and I thought well that feels appropriate because AHEM pretty much everyone listening to this podcast is selling someone that no one needs He gave the analogy of painkillers vs vitamins “If you have a splitting headache, and you’re in the desert, and someone has a painkiller—you’d be willing to pay an irrational amount for it.” On the other hand, you don’t need the vitamin, and when you take one you may not even feel the benefits. Jewelry is like the vitamin. So what are the tactics for selling a vitamin? Time pressure: There are plenty of products that people might need, but just not right now. Or they don’t need them, but they think they might. Time pressure helps move that along FOMO: Here they convince you to take action because doing so will cause you to miss something exciting or important. Social proof: someone they love and respect is using the product and sharing their positive experience Fear: this actually relates directly to selling diamonds and DeBeers 2 month’s salary: the larger the diamond, the more you love them. If you don’t get a big diamond, then you’ll lose that person, and they’ll doubt your love and commitment. You’ve been sold a dream: Rolex is an example – has positioned itself as the watch people wear when they’ve “made it.” MAIN TAKEAWAY: I think pretty much every jewelry brand could adopt one or more of these tactics in some way or another. Which one most applies to you?

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The next article comes from Social Media Today. And it’s called “Elon Musk Says Creators Will Be Able to Download Email Info of Subscribers, Points to New Video Push”. Twitter is trying to address one of the biggest issues with social media for businesses: they don’t have access to first-party data of their followers, like email addresses for example Soon, content creators on Twitter will have the ability to download a list of their subscriber information for off-platform communication. This move towards data portability aims to attract creators and brands by allowing them to expand their connections and build business both on and off the platform. Musk supports the idea of ensuring Twitter’s algorithm does not limit content reach in the Following tab, aligning with his belief in free speech. Linda Yaccarino, a former NBC ad exec, has joined Twitter to help lead the platform’s efforts in utilizing first-party data for improved user experiences. MAIN TAKEAWAY: This is very, very interesting to me and honestly I think it’s something that could benefit a lot of businesses. But right now, that doesn’t really help for businesses on Instagram – will Instagram follow suit and release a similar feature? That would be pretty amazing.

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And then the last article comes from Pyments.com. And it’s called “Can AR Reduce Returns for Jewelry Brands?”. Companies like Perfect Corp. have introduced virtual hand-sizing technology to help jewelry brands reduce return rates. The technology allows users to visualize and try on accessories like rings and bracelets, improving the shopping experience. Other retailers, including Kendra Scott and Sally Hansen, have also utilized Perfect Corp.’s tools for virtual try-on. The utilization of virtual try-on technology and AI-powered tools has shown significant positive effects on sales uplift for brands. For example, Goodr observed a remarkable 67% increase in conversion rates among mobile users who engaged with the AR Try-On feature, while Princess Polly experienced a notable 24% decrease in return rates for customers who utilized the Fit & Sizing recommendation tool. Research indicates that AR experiences have a strong impact on customer behavior and preferences. Approximately 56% of shoppers express enhanced confidence in the quality of a product when utilizing AR, and a significant 61% of shoppers prefer retailers that provide AR experiences during their shopping journey, highlighting the potential for increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. MAIN TAKEAWAY: How are you being forward thinking with your jewelry brand? Are you considering how new technologies can boost the customer experience?

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I’m signing off. Did you have any questions about Jewelry Marketing Jumpstart? You can always email me Laryssa 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 Apple Podcasts. And if you’re completely new to digital marketing, then you’ll want to purchase and read a copy of my book Jewelry Marketing Joy, visit joyjoya.com/book for more information.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai