Be Less Dependent on Social Media Jewelry Marketing

Laryssa Wirstiuk 0:00
Hi, I’m your host Laryssa Wirstiuk. Through this podcast, I aim to empower and inspire jewelry entrepreneurs and innovators so they can thrive by doing what they love. I’m passionate about digital marketing for jewelry brands, and I’m excited to share my passion with you. This is Episode 136, and today I’m going to discuss how you can be a caretaker of your customer data. I have 10 tips that I’m going to share with you today.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 0:29
So too many brands have gotten to the point where they’re leaning very heavily on their social media channels, to build relationships with their customers, and then to retain and hold on to that customer information. For example, maybe you’re relying a lot on Instagram DMs to manage your customer engagement and communications. Or you’ve been relying on Facebook or Instagram retargeting ads to ensure that you can get back in front of your customers who have shown interest in products. However, as I’ve mentioned on this podcast, Instagram is changing very rapidly. And as a brand, you kind of have to operate with the mindset that what’s here today, when it comes to social media, could be gone tomorrow. I know that might seem kind of shocking, but it’s not far off. If Instagram shut down tomorrow, would you lose valuable customer data? This is a question that you really need to face and ask yourself.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 1:28
And in addition, as I’ll mention also, in just a few moments when I do my article roundup changes to data privacy will really limit marketers abilities to run retargeting ads on Facebook and Instagram. So if you have relied on these types of ads in the past, then you’ll lose your ability to do so in the very near future.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 1:49
But before we get to today’s episode, I want to share some marketing related news and insights from the past week that caught my attention. So according to one article from social media today, all your Instagram users now have the option to save their Instagram stories as drafts within the app. This feature is available for everyone globally, and the option is activated when you exit out of the stories composer mid process. Whenever you choose to save a stories draft, then you’ll see a new alert that will notify you that stories drafts are deleted a week after you save them. This feature will definitely be beneficial for people who are looking to post stories at optimal times. Or if you’re planning stories ahead of time, which you really should be doing as a jewelry brand. And having drafts within the app will allow you to view them as they will appear to users or people who follow you. You’ll also be able to utilize Instagram’s full feature set so GIFs, questions, polls, etc. in your draft creation process, and then post on the go via the app. I think this is a really exciting feature that probably should have been released a long time ago, but I’m glad that it’s here now.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 3:04
So second, I recently listened to this really awesome episode of the Glossy podcast. This was an episode that was posted on July 13. It was an interview with Ippolita Rostagno, who’s the founder of the fine jewelry brand of Ippolita. She recently spoke with the glossy podcast about the brand’s marketing and growth strategy. It was a super interesting episode and I definitely encourage you to listen to it but I’ll give you some highlights and points that I thought were really interesting. So first, she mentioned that the fine jewelry brand actually saw a very steep increase in online sales to 10% on e commerce became 10% of their total sales up from 2% before the COVID pandemic, which I think is really amazing. The timelessness of the politic brand aligns with customers desires, desire for jewelry that can last beyond the pandemic. So the designer really focuses on making things that are quote, relevant at this moment, but that at the same time have a classic enough field that you know at the time of purchase, you’ll love it 10 years from now, Ippolita will continue partnering with retailers like Neiman Marcus and Bloomingdale’s and even aims to own its own retail. They’re really striving for a tangible experience that customers can have with their jewelry. One of the most interesting takeaways for me from this episode and I actually didn’t know this before I listened to it was that the brand opened a brick and mortar store in the middle of the pandemic in Chicago and their motivating factor was to completely redesign the customer experience. So as she mentioned in the episode, she was envisioning a jewelry box in her mind, the felt lining the feeling that when you open the jewelry box you can touch and experience the jewelry and then designed the store around That inspiration. So they’re actually there’s actually felt on the walls and the walls are magnetic and the jewelry is sticking to it. So customers don’t have to like have someone open a case for them, they can literally take the jewelry off the wall and touch it and experience it. If you want to know more about how that works and how that is related to security, you should listen to this episode. But I was just really blown away by that idea and think it’s super smart. And then in regard to their online presence, she mentioned that TikTok has obviously been a popular platform for many brands to spread brand awareness. However, she has not hopped on the TikTok trend with her brand, she doesn’t think TikTok is an appropriate platform to spread brand awareness for a politician because of who they are as a brand and who their target audience is, she doesn’t think that the audience is spending time on that platform. So just a really good reminder that just because I’m there, it’s a marketing trend. If your audience isn’t participating or isn’t there on that platform, then maybe it’s not necessarily right for your brand.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 6:12
And then finally, an article that I saw on Bloomberg News, and that I also posted on my Instagram feed, which kind of gave me the theme for this week’s episode was all about how Apple’s new privacy policy with the release of iOS 14 is negatively impacting the digital advertising industry. So while it is super positive, in that it helps consumers maintain data protection and privacy. It is negative for advertisers for jewelry brands that especially use Facebook and Instagram ads, and that rely on retargeting ads to get back in front of customers. So a majority of users when on the iOS 14, when they’re asked if they want their behavior to be tracked on the apps majority, unsurprisingly said no. In fact, only about 25% of people are allowing apps to track their behavior not super surprised by that tactic. This change has been devastating for the majority of advertisers, but particularly with Facebook advertisers. So media buyers, and advertising agencies that run Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns on behalf of their clients, said Facebook is no longer able to reliably see how many sales clients are making as a result of the ads. So it’s harder to determine which ads are working and harder to track return on investment. Losing this data impacts Facebook’s ability to show a business’s products to potential new customers. And as I said more difficult to retarget Facebook is working on some things to kind of get people back on board with this because it’s a pretty devastating blow, especially for brands that were really used to acquiring new customers this way, now they have to kind of change their mentality and approach. So it’s kind of interesting to see how this will continue to develop over time. And to really hit home that this episode is even more important because you’re gonna have to think outside the box, and how to be a caretaker of your customer data. Even as the world of data privacy is really changing rapidly all around us.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 8:41
So in the intro, you may have noticed that I use the word “caretaker” rather than owner of data, because nobody should have the right to own consumer data, you are a caretaker and that this customer has expressed interest in communicating with you as a brand or as a past customer. So they have given you permission to have communications with them. And you need to respect that relationship and really manage it using best practices for data privacy. I saw a really great quote about this topic from the Harvard Business Review. It said quote, while data may be the new oil businesses can no longer view it as an asset to be extracted and exploited. The reality is that no company owns customer data, rather customers entrust them with it. So it’s kind of like a sacred thing to know that customers are really trusting you with this information. So how are you going to continually earn and maintain that trust over time? What can you do while at the same time ensuring that your customer relationship management platform however you manage customer information However you communicate with customers, however you continue to market to them over time that you can still like have them under your wing in your circle, that they’re not going to go away or get lost. So I’m going to share some tips for how you can really be a good caretaker, while continuing to market effectively, despite all of these changes that are happening to social media with even organic social media marketing, and paid social media advertising.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 10:32
So 10 tips, the first thing I recommend is to on Instagram and Facebook, get your conversations, your correspondence with your customers, out of the DMS and into your customer relationship management system, whether that’s your email database, or whether you maintain a CRM elsewhere, you want to make sure you have all that information in a centralized place. I recently had a few clients that I really encouraged to do this, because they had the customer information just scattered everywhere, some an Instagram dm, some in text messages, some in personal emails, because they had kind of done these one off orders to people. So all this information wasn’t in a centralized place. Of course, you want to ask your customers and confirm that you have permission to email them to text them to send them marketing communications, or you may even want to share a link with them to opt into those things themselves. But make sure that it’s all in one central place. It sounds like kind of a no brainer. But I think this is probably an issue with more brands than not.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 11:45
So number two, you want to with all these changes really lean into your marketing email marketing strategy. So with email marketing, you can be a better caretaker of your customer data, because you kind of have it in one central place. You have it organized, you have people’s first names, last names, email addresses. If you have a long history of relationship with that customer, you may have data about their purchase history, about when they signed up with you where they signed up with you what their shopping preferences are when their birthday is, you should be collecting all of this stuff in one central place. Not for the purposes of evil, but for the purposes of kind of curating a shopping experience for them. So you can really use your email marketing for that. Send more regular email newsletter campaigns, and make sure that your email marketing automation strategy is solid, so that you have a welcome email, abandoned cart, email, post purchase emails, etc, etc.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 12:51
Three, you may even want to regularly regularly reach out to customers personally. So for example, after they make a purchase, you can reach out to a customer personally from your own business account and ask them what do they think about their purchase? What did they think about the shipping? The unboxing? The packaging? How do they feel about it? Do they have any doubts? Are they unsure about the product? Are they super excited about it? Would they be willing to send you a photograph of them wearing it? Would they be willing to write a review. And to add another layer to that you may even want to listen to Episode 135, the previous episode, all about handwritten notes, and maybe incorporating handwritten notes into this same strategy, even just to say, thank you.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 13:47
Number four, if you haven’t already started a content marketing strategy apart from social media, or you do have one but you haven’t really put a lot of effort into it. And by content marketing, I mean a blog or regular video sharing. However, that is that you’re distributing content of value. So if you were to begin a blog on your website, you can offer informative educational, interesting content, then invite readers and users to comment on it to share with their friends. You can also incorporate this strategy with your email marketing. So you can use your email newsletters to share your blog posts. This can also help you boost search engine optimization. So if you’re incorporating the right keywords into these blog posts, if you’re creating informative, valuable content that people might search Google for, they could end up on your website that way. It’s kind of less invasive in general because someone who’s searching for that piece of content or for whatever you have to offer already has that intent in mind that they’re looking for that thing. So you are helping that user in a way by allowing that content to show up in search results by helping them find the answer. For example, maybe someone wants to know how to like travel with their jewelry, or how to clean sterling silver rings. And you happen to have some really great insight into that. When your blog post comes up in search engine results, and you’re helping that person find the answer delivering value and inviting them into your brand, it helps put you in front of people who are already searching for something. So it’s kind of connecting the two dots together.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 15:42
Next, you want to think about potentially using e commerce tools that will allow you to provide a more personalized e commerce experience, like maybe product recommendations, or a live chat tool, you may also want to create some incentive to get a person to sign up for an account with your website. Like maybe you have a wish list feature, or some kind of like rewards program so that once they sign up, you’re able to kind of collect more data about that customer and give even better recommendations, track their shopping, browsing history, reach out to them personally based on their e commerce behavior. So that’s another idea.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 16:25
Next, you may want to think about doing more in person events, especially now that COVID is becoming less of an issue in the world. So that you can actually meet people in person who are interacting with your brand and ask them personally for their information so that you can continue to keep in touch with them. So if you were to do a trunk show, and you gained email addresses from people who visited that show, you can import them to your email subscriber database. And then I would recommend tagging them with a tag that makes sense about how you met them, whether that is in a certain city so that you can do more localized marketing to those people moving forward. Or maybe you know that they would be interested in future trunk shows. So have them segmented somehow so that you know how to continue marketing to them in the future. And definitely, I would send them some kind of welcome email to bridge the gap between that in person and digital experience. So you met them in person, they opt in into your emails, but now you want to kind of like invite them into your digital presence and remind them that this is what they signed up for. rather than waiting like a few weeks to send them like your first email newsletter that they would get. You could also encourage customers to schedule virtual appointments with you. That way you can get to know them better take notes about their style preferences, have more personal things to say to them, if you were to follow up with them later in the future, whether that’s through email, or handwritten note, at the end of the day, it’s just another way to really continue building relationships with these people.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 18:18
Another idea would be to really boost your unboxing and packaging experience. If it’s been a while since you kind of considered these things and you’re wondering, maybe it’s time for a refresh. I think it’s it’s worthwhile to think about how your customers really experience your jewelry outside of the product itself. The shipping speed, what does the packaging look like on the outside even before they open it? What does the packaging look like around the jewelry is there some kind of collateral that’s coming with it, whether it’s a note or some kind of care instructions, or an invitation to take a further action like leave a review or share with a friend or take a photograph and tag it for social media. So even in the wake of these complications with social media marketing, you can still kind of organically take advantage of social media by encouraging your customers to share and taking pictures of their unboxing or packaging experiences and sharing it is like an easy, no brainer way to do that.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 19:28
Next, you might want to think about working with a PR agency or even investigating some DIY PR strategy to find press opportunities. And this would be especially relevant if you had a specific niche in the jewelry field. So you made a very specific kind of jewelry or had a specific kind of target customer where you knew exactly where they would be to position yourself from a public relations team. Point. Or if you were a local jeweler that cater to a specific region, then maybe you could reach out to local or regional publications, and try to get press opportunities that way. And then finally, just getting your existing customers to recommend you to their friends through a referral program. So if you can actually get your customers to do that, and then their friends, at least, like come on board and sign on whether they make a purchase or not, whether they’re browsing, you’re starting to gain or become a caretaker of more customer data, because now you have that referral. So that can be a really great way to grow your own internal customer data list without relying on social media.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 20:48
So those are all my tips for today. I hope you found that helpful, and that you can try to experiment with these tactics as social media and digital advertising are continuing to change in 2021.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai