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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, so I’ll gladly seize any opportunity to talk about it.

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This is episode #152, and today I’m going to share five tips for retaining all the new customers you get from your amazing holiday marketing efforts. The holiday season is really an excellent time to focus on customer acquisition efforts because consumers are in a mindset to shop. And they’re often looking for unique gift ideas from brands they may not have known before, so you’ll hopefully attract a lot of new customers throughout the holidays. However, the trick is to keep these customers and inspire them to return again and again. In general, it can cost five times as much to acquire a new customer than to retain a new customer. If you want to make the most of your marketing spend this holiday season and just in general year round, then retaining customers is the key to success. Keep listening or watching for my five top tips.

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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 you can support the podcast for free by taking time not only to subscribe, but also to leave a rating and review on iTunes which helps other jewelry dreamers find it too.

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Also, side note, listen up, I’m giving away six Amazon gift cards: four $25 ones, one $50 one, and one $100 one. To enter to win one of these gift cards just visit joyjoya.com/survey. And please complete a 10-question survey about this podcast. That’s it. Visit joyjoya.com/survey and tell me your thoughts about your listening or viewing experience, then you’ll be in the running. I really appreciate your insights and feedback, which will make this podcast better in 2022 and beyond.

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So 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 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.

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First, if you spend any time listening to the news or even shopping for yourself or for loved ones, then you’ve probably heard about or experienced firsthand the supply and logistics issues impacting the availability of holiday gifts this year. According to shipping and logistics companies, an abundance of setbacks along the supply chain have led to delays of up to five weeks on orders. But this is actually an opportunity for you people out there in the jewelry industry. Electronics, toys, computers, sporting goods, and appliances are among the most popular gifts for the holidays, and are the items that are facing the longest delays. As a result, shoppers are shifting to other in-stock products which will open the door for jewelry and luxury gifts, especially since shoppers are less price sensitive than they were before. Demand for jewelry remains strong and it looks like things are going to be better than many expect for jewelry. The most important factor of course, is whether jewelry brands have the inventory to meet that demand when it comes. Jewelry has an advantage over other gifts like toys, electronics, etc because smaller high value items travel by air freight rather than by sea and a large portion portion of jewelry. Hopefully, your jewelry comes from US based manufacturers making it easy to get to your customers for the holidays.

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Next, here’s a story from futurism.com that may sound like your worst nightmare. I know when I read it I was like what I haven’t even heard this before. This is totally new to me, but I love when something keeps me on my toes. So researchers and sleep experts warn that marketers are trying to inject advertisements into your dreams. Hmm, okay, maybe they’ve discovered my secret ulterior motive for hosting this podcast every week. Just kidding. According to a recent survey, 77% of marketers plan to use dream tech advertising in the next three years. A trio of researchers at Harvard, MIT, and the University of Montreal, published an essay on dreamhacking, writing that, “multiple marketing studies are openly testing new ways to alter and drive purchasing behavior through sleep, and dream hacking”. This is way beyond my knowledge and capabilities, I have to admit, but the dream scientists believe it’s only a matter of time before tech companies that make watches, wearables, apps and other technology that monitor our sleep, start to sell that data for profit or use those tools to hack our dreams while we sleep. I think this is also relevant for the jewelry industry because as technology continues to evolve, we’re going to probably be seeing more wearable technology incorporated into jewelry. Of course, it already is in watches.

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And last an article from Practical Ecommerce is all about the email marketing trends of holiday 2021. And you may have noticed some of these if you subscribe to different brands and you’ve been getting all the Black Friday Cyber Monday holiday promotions in your inbox. As you can probably tell from that busting at the seams inbox of yours. The holiday season is the busiest time for email marketing. So this article from Practical Ecommerce highlights leading retailers that use proven tried and true email tactics in their campaigns. And two examples that they listed that I really liked and that I think you listeners can learn from are two clothing brands one Eddie Bauer and LOFT. So with Eddie Bauer, they use this tactic in their email marketing called a cart starter. And it’s meant to initiate the purchase process by using the subject line “Here’s $10 to start your holiday shopping”. Not only does it give that $10 savings coupon, but it’s also a reminder to get started and has that clear call to action. So it’s serving a dual purpose just with that subject line. The brand has also upped their email frequency, another proven email marketing practice at this time of year. So Eddie Bauer has gone from sending a few weekly emails to daily to most recently, twice a day. Emails from Eddie Bauer have unique subject lines, body copy, and offers. If you want to be inspired, I definitely recommend signing up to get emails from this brand that’s thinking outside the box with email marketing.

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And then LOFT is taking another approach where they’re really emphasizing their rewards program in their holiday emails. So rewards is another proven email marketing strategy used to encourage loyalty and repeat purchases. LOFT lets their shoppers decide when they shop and on what channel again, sign up for those emails from LOFT if you want to be inspired and get some specific real life examples of brands doing email marketing. Well, what have you done to up your game on email marketing this holiday season? I’d love to know what is and isn’t working for you and how you’ve been experimenting to reach your customers. As I mentioned, if you want the links to the articles I share in this segment of the podcast you can become a Joy Joya VIP by visiting joyjoya.com/signup.

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So now let’s get to the central focus of this episode, I’m going to share my five top tips for retaining all the new customers that you acquire throughout the holiday season. Tip number one, adopt a communication calendar and implement those email marketing automations. So the goal of this overall is to manage your customer engagements and create opportunities to upsell and cross sell. What’s a communication calendar? So a communication calendar or, I mean there are lots of other words for this. I’m just gonna call it a communication calendar in this episode. It’s a facet of your marketing plan that helps you decide and plan how often to reach out to those past customers and what to say and/or offer them, so you’re basically like mapping out when you are going to make that follow up contact with your past customers because you don’t want them to forget about you, or go away. For example, if someone hasn’t shopped with you in six months or so, maybe they get an email notification that it’s been a while. And here are some product recommendations, or maybe even some new products since the last time you shopped with us, or maybe it’s a one year anniversary of a purchase, or maybe it’s their birthday, if you have access to that information. On those days, they might get a special VIP coupon code, and some expression of gratitude, celebration, etc. So the communication calendar is really planning out when those touch points are going to happen. Because if you don’t have a plan, you’re not going to be able to actually implement the emails. So from there, once you kind of know when and how and what you want to do to reach out to those past customers, you can then go into your email marketing strategy, and implement the email marketing automations that get triggered whenever your chosen event occurs like that birthday like that six months like that one year. This will make it really easy for you to launch promotional offers and offer proactive customer service features that remove roadblocks to purchase. I think that brands keeping communication calendar usually find it really easy to engage with customers because again, they’ve planned it out they thought about it, and they don’t let time go by without maintaining that regular contact with customers.

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Number two, a customer loyalty and/or VIP program. So 58.7% of Internet users believe earning rewards and loyalty points is one of the most valued aspects of the shopping experience, according to data from Emarketer. Are you offering that as part of your customer experience online or even in store, or both? Having a customer loyalty and/or VIP program in place can really motivate your customers to continue buying from you, instead of a competitor. Even better, according to research from Annex Cloud, consumers spend 67% more if they are part of a company’s loyalty program. And it’s because of those incentives. They’re motivated to kind of keep up with their points or get those rewards or discounts, whatever it may be part of your loyalty program. Now when it comes to this, there’s really no one-size-fits-all formula for an effective rewards program page. But at the end of the day, it should excite potential members by creating a feeling of exclusivity, it should clearly explain the benefits of joining the program. And it should really answer questions in customers minds before they sign up or even as they’re going through the program. So some of the most common models for customer loyalty programs include a points-based system, a tier-based program. So one really well known example of that one is Sephora’s Beauty Insider, if you shop with Sephora, you’re probably aware that based on the number of points you have, or the amount of money that you spend, you get into certain VIP categories. And then at different times of year when they have their discounts, the people that are higher up in those tiers get a better discount. So there are more perks associated with that. And then lastly, a paid VIP loyalty program. So this would involve a one-time or annual fee that lets customers bypass common purchase barriers that can be both that can be beneficial for them. The most obvious example that everyone knows about is Amazon Prime. So you pay that annual membership fee and then you get the Prime shipping and all of those other benefits that come with being a Prime member.

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Number three, refer a friend program. So this is kind of an offshoot of a customer loyalty program, like more specific version of it, but I think it deserves its own mention because it can be its own program in itself if you’re really investing in it. According to Nielsen, 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family. No surprise they’re happy customers refer others to your business and hey, they really should be rewarded for their efforts. This strategy has the potential to continue building on itself for as long as the referral program is in place. For one of these types of programs to be successful, the terms really need to be easy to understand and clearly communicated. And the awards need to be easy to redeem. Be really straightforward when you outline your policy and indicate who’s eligible to receive the bonus, how the referral is to be made, and how the referral bonus will be received. To use this refer a friend program as a tactic to boost customer retention, it should really motivate the customer to come back for more and of course, refer even more friends over time.

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Number four, personalized outreach. You can leverage personalization across multiple channels of communication. And this could mean a lot of different things, it could look different for different brands. If you’re a really small brand, or you’re just starting growth, it will be easier for you to actually, personally reach out to your past customers, whether that’s by email, whether that’s sending them a handwritten note, whether that’s DMing them. However, that’s pretty tough to scale as you grow. And in that case, you would use technology different tools available to still bring personalization into the customer experience. So for example, oh, also side note, you can learn more about the topic of personalization, which is a pretty big one, by going and listening to Episode 114 of this podcast, which is all about personalization. But let me just give you a brief overview. So when it comes to email marketing, you can create personalized headlines, subject lines and copy based on the information you do have about customers in your database. And this form of personalization can yield higher, higher open rates and click through rates. You can as I mentioned, before, sending a handwritten note, I know that that can be really difficult to scale because no one wants to sit around writing notes all the time. I know that firsthand, because I just wrote a whole bunch of holiday cards, and my hand hurts from writing. So I have lived this nightmare. Just kidding. It’s not a nightmare. But you can listen to episode 135 with my guest, David, who is the founder and CEO of Handwrytten, which is a card that automates that handwritten note process. So there are alternatives to you know, sitting there and personally writing notes to people, you can also send product recommendation emails, so based on like past purchases that someone has made, you can recommend them products from a new collection, or other things they would like. Personalization can also come into your social media. So if it’s not you having a dedicated person on your team, who’s really treating social media as a customer care channel, who’s responding in a personal way to all comments, and DMs, and really helping people who follow you feel like they’re a part of a community.

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Number five, blogging or, and or content creation and distribution that goes beyond social media. So if you have a blog regularly posting content on that blog, or if you have a YouTube channel, or a podcast or some kind of other outlet for creative content, whatever that is, and I’m not just talking about Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest, but posting content on these channels can be a really powerful tactic to boost customer satisfaction, and help you forge long term relationships with your customers. It shows that you are interested in really providing value just beyond your product or service. It keeps your customers informed, it can keep them entertained, it can keep them engaged, it can make the interaction with the brand really fun and fresh. And a blog is also a great place to repost all your customer testimonials and success stories. So that can help your customers feel really involved in the brand and feel like they’re part of the whole experience. Those are my five tips for customer retention after the holidays.

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What did you think? You can always email me laryssa@joyjoya.com. If you loved 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 all the information.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai