Laryssa Wirstiuk 0:00
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.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 0:34
In today’s Episode #254, we’re going to be talking about how to review the current state of your email marketing and decide what could be improved upon, so you can better connect with your audience – and get consistent ROI from your email marketing efforts. I’ll spotlight Hilary Finck Jewelry, the winner of the Joy Joya Jewelry Marketing Grant. Our conversation today will revolve around how she started with email marketing for her jewelry brand, how it benefits her business, what she’d like to achieve, and what my recommendations are. If you’re just tuning into this new season of the podcast for the first time, I recommend pausing here and starting with Episode #252. That way, you can get to know Hilary and embark on this journey from the beginning. Before diving into today’s interview, I’ll be sharing some takeaways that hopefully you’ll be able to apply to your own email marketing strategy. Join me as we begin to scratch the surface of email marketing, which will be an ongoing discussion with Hilary as we move through this journey together.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 1:48
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.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 2:21
Okay, let’s get into today’s episode, my Sparklers! So this one’s going to be all about setting a strong foundation for email marketing: how to look at the current state of your email strategy, how to set goals, and what to start doing to get the ball rolling. Before we jump into the interview with Hilary, we’ll be looking at these concepts through the lens of Hilary’s brand.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 2:49
Again, go back to Episode 252 to get some background information about what we’re doing with the podcast. So first, I want to talk about the current state of email marketing and what you can do. So how can you look at what is happening right now with your email marketing? Obviously, if you’ve never sent any email campaigns before, then the current state is you have a blank slate, and you’re starting from scratch. That’s pretty straightforward, right? But if you have been dabbling in email marketing, whether it’s just been like every few months, or maybe you tried it before, and you never really got consistent with it, I think you need to set a baseline and see where you are right now. And you definitely want to dive into the data first. So that means if you’ve been sending emails, you want to log into your email marketing platform, and pull open rate and click through rate of email campaigns. Probably for about the past six months, it’s gonna vary, maybe you were doing email marketing, and you took a little bit of a break. So you don’t have a good sample size in the past six months. So you need to decide on a case by case basis where you’re going to get the best like sample of data in your email marketing. But if you have been consistent, then six months is probably a good number to look at. And then just to give you an idea when you’re looking at those open rates, when you’re looking at those click through rates, as an industry benchmark, average open rates are about 35 to 40%. Average click through rates are about 2 to 3%. If you have a really small list, most likely your numbers are going to be higher. That’s just the nature of the beast. The bigger your list is, the more people will likely be disengaged. So yes, you will probably see above average open and click through rates, but that also means you have room to expand on your list and kind line of work to be closer to the average and maintain that average. So get an idea for where you are with open and click through rates. You also want to see and ask yourself and examine, how often are you actually sending campaigns? Do the campaigns look consistent? Or is each one a little bit different? Without any like standardized template? Do you have automations in place? At least the basic ones like the welcome email, the abandoned cart, a post purchase email? How are those performing? What are the average open and click through rates for those automations? And lastly, what are you actually using email for? That seems like a kind of common sense question. But there are different reasons that businesses use email. Some are more aggressively like pushing sales, some it’s just more of like a way to educate customers, to connect with customers to treat them like VIPs. So figure out what are you using it for? And are there other ways you can be using it to add different layers of depth to your approach to email marketing.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 6:19
So what’s going on with the current state of Hilary’s email, and again, I’ll talk more about this with her in the interview that’s coming later in this episode, but let me give you some background information. So we did exactly what I just said, we looked at her data, she’s fairly consistent in sending emails, maybe like two to three per month. So we were able to look at the past six months, actually just went all the way back to January one. So year to date, 2023, she has a really impressive average open rate of 60%. And an average click through rate at 9.67%. If you remember, I just said, average open rate as a benchmark would be 35 to 40, and click through would be two to three. So she is well above those targets. That tells us she could very easily be sending more often and probably expect not to, quote unquote, annoy her subscribers, because they’re already so engaged. And when they do hear from her, they are excited to open and they’re excited to click, so it gives us a green light to send more regularly. And to kind of experiment a little bit more with what we’re doing. Also with Hillary, she tends to use email as a VIP channel. So she’s sharing product and collection drops. And typically those result directly in sales because her subscribers are waiting with bated breath for a new product. The other thing with her current state, is when we began working with her she was using MailChimp, which at least her account, it was not directly integrated with Shopify, which was kind of a challenge to do more sophisticated email marketing, because it wasn’t pulling browsing or purchasing behavior since that integration was lacking with the E commerce. So then in MailChimp, it becomes harder to make segments, it becomes harder to personalize the email. So what we did was migrate her over to Klaviyo, which will integrate much more seamlessly with Shopify. It also just Klaviyo has more sophisticated data that we can pull, there’s more flexibility. It’s just a slightly more advanced email marketing platform. And it will allow us the flexibility to engage with her subscribers in the way that we really want to do. Another thing that we found was, despite the fact that she has a very high open and click through rate, a good percentage, I should have written it down, I believe it was about 40 something percent of her list was no longer engaging with the emails, so they have not recently opened or clicked. That can happen for so many reasons. People change their email addresses. Sometimes people just have a lot of stuff going on. So they’re not necessarily looking at the promotions that come into the inbox. Or maybe they’re just not in a space where they’re buying jewelry so they’re not looking, but that is problematic because the more often that your emails kind of get ignored or even eventually start getting marked as spam – when an email marketing service like Gmail sees that you are not opening a sender’s emails, they might start automatically putting you in spam, that over time can really hurt your sender reputation as a jewelry brand. So despite the fact that it’s really painful to clean up your list and to kind of like archive contacts, it’s something that needs to be done, because the, the opposite of that is perhaps damaging your sender reputation. So we have a plan to send a reengagement campaign to these inactive subscribers to see, are they still interested in being subscribers of the list? We also with Hilary found opportunities to build out the welcome series to lean more into storytelling. Right now, she just has one welcome email that gives a welcome discount to new subscribers. So there’s huge missed opportunity to kind of tell more about the brand. Also, I kind of just touched on this, the emails are only ever really sent when there’s a new collection or product drop. So they’re very selling focused. There’s no education, there’s no storytelling, there’s no engaging with customers just for the sake of building relationships with them. So we have a lot of space and flexibility, flexibility to add to the content calendar. Also, email really helps Hillary understand what’s best resonating with customers. And then from there, she can plan her designs, her merchandising around the feedback she directly gets from customers. So we’re going to lean into that even more as we move forward.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 9:26
So for you if you are considering this question, what do you want email marketing to do for your business? I think the best way to motivate yourself to either get started with email marketing, or to double down on it is really first to realize, truly realize how important email is and how many opportunities you’re missing if you’re not sending emails. I’m not just saying this for fun, I’m saying this because I see it every day working with clients, for pretty much all my clients, the largest portion of their ecommerce revenue can be attributed to email being at least one of the touch points on the customer journey. Without email, you are just completely missing all those opportunities, it gives you direct access to your customers, I think you should rewind those last few seconds and listen to that a few times and let it sink in. Because once you realize how truly valuable email can be, you will make it a priority and start asking yourself, what do you want it to do for your business? And how do you want to connect with your customers? And then think about what your customers may want from you? What are things they ask you? What do you think would inspire or excite them? And how can you use email to provide those things? Do they want a deeper connection with your brand with you? Do they want novelty? Do they want information, education, entertainment? Do they want storytelling, and sometimes you’re just going to need to make a decision about that. Don’t overthink it, you know your customers the best and then go with it and move forward. Be consistent in that decision. And then see if it does resonate with your customers and looking at your open rates and click through rates will help you understand that. With Hilary, she is already doing a really great job of engaging her customers on Instagram especially. But that can be so difficult to sustain. Because all right, let’s say you have a viral post. Now you’re under the pressure to kind of keep up with that to now engage all of those new people who saw your brand. How can you ensure that you’re reaching them consistently? And with Instagram, you don’t actually have that customer data. You can’t communicate with those followers in a reliable way and in the way that you want to communicate with them. And email marketing can help you do that if you’re kind of able to bring those Instagram followers over email. So using Instagram Stories to remind people they can sign up for your email. What are the benefits of signing up for email having a dedicated landing page for people to sign up for email? And also just to do more storytelling for Hilary, she has mentioned to us she believes clients would love to see something new. They love newness, so not just newness and product, but she thinks they would be excited to see a new approach for her. So we are really enthusiastic about offering that. Also, having a cleaner email list and better deliverability will ensure that people are actually seeing and receiving her emails, and building out her welcome flow to be more robust, detailed, have multiple parts that will draw subscribers into the brand, and tell the story and it will set an expectation about what is to come for them, what they can hope to see from the brand.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 11:56
So what are we actually doing to help Hilary and also when I go through this list, these may be some things you want to consider for your own business as well. So we’re, as I mentioned, we’re moving Hilary from MailChimp to Klaviyo, which has better integration with Shopify, more robust data, it’s easier to create more sophisticated automations or flows. We are currently working on a new welcome series with it’s a four parter. So we still have the welcome with discount, we’re going to have an about Hilary email that’s like a letter in her own voice, we’re going to have one that is about her custom jewelry services, and then a fourth one that asks for birthday, because she does offer a birthday discount and just a happy birthday message, we will eventually send that reengagement campaign to clean up her list. We are reworking her email template so that there is a consistent look. And not only that, but then when you’re sending more frequent emails, having one template makes it so you don’t really have to think too much about it, you just fill it in with the content, the photos, the copy that you want to be sharing for that campaign, we’re moving her to a weekly email sending cadence, and not just focusing on product drops, so Hilary’s not gonna have a new product drop every week. Instead, we’re gonna merchandise products that are still available, we’re going to put more focus on her core collection of like everyday essential hand hammered pieces, make the emails more image driven, make the calls to action buttons super clear. We’re also going to do monthly reporting so that we can see, well what’s working, maybe we go in one direction. And it’s not working that way we want to having that monthly reporting ensures that we can change directions or adjust or lean into something without like, going too far off a cliff or like going in the wrong direction. Or maybe we’re just missing opportunities. And then next up on the list. In the future months after we do those things would be revisiting other automations or flows like the birthday flow, the post purchase, abandoned cart, and then continuing to refine the content over time. All right. So that’s everything I wanted to say today. Without further delay, let us chat with Hilary and hear from her.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 18:33
Hey, Hilary, I’m excited to chat with you today.

Hilary Finck 18:36
Hi, Laryssa. Good to see you.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 18:38
Yeah, we’re gonna be talking mostly about email marketing, since that’s kind of where we’re at in our plan right now.

Hilary Finck 18:46
Sounds great.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 18:47
So the first thing I want to ask you since you started your business, what has email marketing kind of meant to you? And what role has it played in like communicating with your customers?

Hilary Finck 19:00
It’s been a huge part of my business. It was the first thing I did when I relaunched my business was I went through, you know, I relaunched, so I had my business before. So I went through and found a lot of my old client contact info. And then I found new friends and family and I send everyone an email through just my Gmail saying, Hey, everybody, I’m relaunching my business. If you would like to be part of my newsletter list, please click here. And then I added everyone to my newsletter list. So since then, I mean, since day one, you know, that is how I relaunched my business was through email marketing. And since then, you know, I’ve used it to launch collections. Occasionally I use it to, you know, tell people about myself and the brand and where the pieces come from, but it’s been it’s been a huge part.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 19:52
I’m glad you did the right thing, like asking people to opt in and also using like an actual email provider, it’s really not okay to send email marketing through like a personal Gmail or something like that. So good work doing it like the best practice way.

Hilary Finck 20:12
Thanks.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 20:14
So, I’m sure you had to teach yourself email marketing at some point, what was that? Like? And how did you learn how to use MailChimp?

Hilary Finck 20:25
Well, when I was thinking about relaunching my business, I, you know, everything had changed in 10 years since I was making jewelry before. And so I actually hired a creative coach. So it was someone that helps people who are creatives, you know, launch their businesses. And so she was the one who said, Okay, you need to do Instagram, you need to have a website, you need to be on some sort of newsletter, you know, platform. And so she kind of helped me get set up everything, just super bare bones. And so then, but I was designing everything from the beginning. And it was just, I was just kind of like, well, I’m just gonna wing it and just write in there, what I feel like people might want to know, but then I started subscribing, you know, to other brands that I really enjoy. And, you know, brands that I admire, and just kind of seeing the way that they set things up. And I think that’s a great way to just see how people structure things. And I’ve also joined groups like Liz’s Kantner’s Stay Gold Collective. And so she’ll have, you know, entire sessions about email marketing and best practices and things like that. And then I’ve also hired people in the past to help me help me write them. And so you kind of just get a full picture of, of the different ways that emails should be written.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 21:45
I think it’s great that you did just jump in, though. I mean, you had guidance, you weren’t like going totally blind. But I find that especially with email, these like a solopreneurs, they feel kind of paralyzed, and then they won’t send emails for like six months, because they’re overthinking it, or they’re not really sure what they’re doing. Do you have any like tips or suggestions for someone like that?

Hilary Finck 22:11
Well, I had to make it work. Like I don’t know if anyone on here watches Project Runway, but it was like a make it work moment, because I quit my job. And I was like, This is it, I have to do this. And so I kind of got over pretty quickly. And also with Liz’s help, you know, I kind of got over the like, fear of sending people emails, and I I’ve never sent enough emails from what I understand from a marketing perspective. But I’ve never been afraid to send like at least one or two a month, just because I know without them. Where’s my business? So I just know that you kind of have to.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 22:51
That’s such a good point. There’s nothing like there’s no motivation, like not having another source of income. Yeah. You don’t have a plan B. Yeah. So I mean, maybe I’m sure, you know, there are a lot of listeners and viewers who maybe they’re not 100% dependent on their business, but it could be a good exercise to like, make it almost like this life or death feeling that will force you to figure something out rather than, like overthinking it. So that’s a good tip.

Hilary Finck 23:23
Yeah, it works, you know, and slowly the list is built over time. So it’s yeah, I think the fear of a lot of people think is, you know, oh, I don’t want to jam up people’s inboxes. But people can just have unsubscribe if they don’t want to be on your list. And totally yeah, but I like to think is the people that open my emails, they actually want to actually want to know about my brand.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 23:46
And you don’t want people on there anyway, who don’t like you or don’t like your products. So good riddance.

Hilary Finck 23:52
Yeah, exactly.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 23:56
Over time, when you started to kind of feel more comfortable, you started to grow your list, send emails more regularly, what role would you say email like, emerged in growing your business? Like, how did it, what role did it play in that?

Hilary Finck 24:12
It’s played a huge role. It’s based, it’s just been a huge financial driver for my business because I figured out this system of putting out you know, monthly collections, and so my newsletter subscribers get first dibs on those collections. And so without the newsletters, it’s just I don’t know how else I would do that. I mean, I guess I would do it through Instagram, but there’s something just more private and more special about allowing the smaller group of people to be in on something early. And so I send out a preview email and then when the collection drops, only my newsletter subscribers find out like the moment it drops. So really, it just my business wouldn’t really be where it is today with out it.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 25:00
Yeah, it’s like your primary contact point basically.

Hilary Finck 25:06
Right? Yeah, yeah. And then I can, you know, I flesh things out through Instagram. But generally, you know, that is the newsletter is really like the special point of contact.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 25:16
So what have you found over the years has been the most challenging or like pain point aspect of email marketing.

Hilary Finck 25:25
I mean, it’s really the content. Because, you know, I’m so creative in my daily work in my studio, that it’s hard for me to find the creativity for other things. And so the content creation is you really do need to be creative. And so it’s just been hard for me to think of other ideas. And then perhaps even just, you know, designing the email. Having content other than the collection drops is really has been a struggle.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 26:03
You know, it’s funny, you say that. I am a marketer, and I sometimes forget that what we do is creative, because I’m so focused on like trying to do, the thing that’s gonna get the results are looking at the data. But there is so much like creative brain power involved in just coming up with the ideas and making them feel fresh and new all the time. So I appreciate the honesty and you saying, like, oh, well, I am a creative person. But it’s all like, funneled into this one aspect of my business. So like, how do I have time left over to like, do this other creative thing? That makes a lot of sense?

Hilary Finck 26:38
Yeah, I mean, I barely have time to do like, creative juices, like decorate my house. You know, there’s things where I’m like, oh, I should have done something with that wall by now. But I’m like, Ah, you know, I just put all of my creativity into jewelry design and jewelry making.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 26:53
I feel that so much too. Because like working with clients, then in my personal life, I’m like, wait, but I am a creative person. But I can’t like, I don’t have the space to do this, like interior design project or something, just like you’re saying, so I can very much relate to that.

Hilary Finck 27:09
Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 27:12
So what are some things you’ve always wanted to try with email marketing, but haven’t been able to either because you weren’t sure how, or you just didn’t have the time or the chance to do?

Hilary Finck 27:22
I’ve always known that my welcome email, in the whole welcome, email funnel series of emails needs to be better and more robust, the one that I have for my welcome email I designed I think, almost two years ago, and I kind of forget that it’s there, unfortunately. And so I know that that is, you know, that is the introduction, introduction to my business for a lot of people. Or that part of my business, a lot of people come over from Instagram to join my mailing list. But, um, so definitely, I’ve always wanted a more robust welcome funnel. And then I also, you know, I have this whole other collection, my hand hammered collection. And that’s just, it’s kind of like a permanent collection of a gallery, right? Like, those pieces will always be there. They’re very small production pieces. And I, I also struggle with finding fresh new ways to showcase them. So much of my emails are just focused on like, the new collection that’s dropping. And then, um, you know, I think it’s really a lot of the storytelling. It’s definitely not my best talent is telling stories. So um, you know, just more personal emails, emails to get people to understand more of my brand and myself and the creative process and things like that.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 28:44
Your point about the welcome email is, it’s just so common, I think a lot of people can relate. They made it like two years ago, they forget it’s there. They haven’t looked at it. They don’t even know if it’s actually still working or like linking to the right things. So I guess this is kind of a PSA for to check your welcome email and see if it still actually reflects what you represent as a brand. It’s like one of the most important emails that you can send, but it’s so often ignored.

Hilary Finck 29:14
Mm hmm. Yeah, I think I kind of updated it once at one point. And then I was like, Oh, wow, that doesn’t really reflect where I’m at anymore. And I was like, Oh, no. So yeah, it needs some updating.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 29:28
So one of the things that me and the Joy Joya team worked on for you was the email marketing audit and strategy which kind of looked at where your email is right now as it was in MailChimp. And considering that we’re transitioning to Klaviyo where it can be and like how we’re gonna approach all of that. So I’m curious, like, what were some surprising takeaways from that audit?

Hilary Finck 29:55
The audit was awesome, by the way, is just super thorough. Very clear to understand everything, I love the direction that we’re going. And it was just really interesting to see all the information that you were able to pull about my newsletter marketing, it was great. So I guess I just didn’t really understand what the industry standards were for engagement. And so I was really pleased to see that the engagement is high, and the click rate is high. That made me feel great. And then, you know, we also discovered that even though that is, that is true, the engagement is high, and the click rate is high, we still do have though a large segment that never opened my emails. So that’s something where I’m concerned now that a good amount of my emails are going to spam. And, you know, that’s really worrisome. I found out from a client a couple of weeks ago, who’s been on my newsletter list for years. She’s one of my first Instagram followers, and one of like, a, you know, a semi regular purchaser. She’s never gotten one of my emails. So I was like, Oh, my gosh, so I, I told her Oh, look in your junk box, or look at yesterday, added me to the safe sender list, and now she’s getting my emails. So that is really, really worrisome to me.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 31:11
Yeah, it can be tough to, to hear that. And it can also be a little bit like heartbreaking or disheartening to see when you run like a segment of people who haven’t engaged with your emails, like to see, a good percentage of people haven’t like opened or clicked in the past six months, nine months, it can be super frustrating. It’s like I’m putting in all this work, where Why aren’t these people engaging? Who are they are and have all the questions around that, like, Are my emails going to spam? Did they change their email addresses? So I think it’s important and one thing that we suggest in the strategy is to do a reengagement campaign. And that’s something we’ll be talking about more in future episodes, but it is a thing to regularly do to like clean up your email list.

Hilary Finck 32:01
Mm hmm. Yeah. And I have not been doing anything like that. I know that I should be segmenting. And I’ve never fully understood what parameters you should use to figure out the segments. But that’s another thing I’m really excited about, is to actually, you know, drill down and send out things a little more personalized to the right audience.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 32:25
Yeah. And the one benefit of us moving to Klaviyo, and we talked with Hilary about this is just like, the improved integration that it has with Shopify, so that you can like dynamically create segments of people based on like, what they browsed, what they purchased, what they didn’t purchase, and then finding ways to engage with them in more personal ways, which could also just help the engagement overall. Yeah, I’m very excited. And then we also showed Hilary a brand new email template. And I’m curious to know what you thought about that, and how, like, what you’re excited about for the future of the emails.

Hilary Finck 33:03
I liked it a lot. And I liked it, because it’s just very clean and minimal, which is something that I like to carry through and in my brand, and with my current newsletters, I tried to just keep them very clean and simple, but I liked it’s just laid out differently. And I like, you know, seems like some of the images go all the way to the edges. And I think with my current one, there’s usually a big border. I just think it’s, it’s better. It just seems more user friendly and more appealing to the eye. So and I think it’s about time that my clients see something that’s just a little bit difference.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 33:36
Yeah, yeah, totally. Hilary was very reliant on like the MailChimp email builder, which can be kind of limiting in how you structure it and where you placed images. I think they even toggle it like based on whatever plan you have with MailChimp, but we’re kind of introducing her her new way that’s more image based and has more flexibility in design. So we’re really excited to like refresh her whole, whole email look.

Hilary Finck 34:06
Mm hmm. And it spawned the idea to let me or to have me find an accent color for my brand. Because I do have like one color that I use generally, it’s the color of my boxes and the color of my banners and things like that on my website, but to have like a another color to accent to add to these emails into my website. So I’m excited about that.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 34:26
I’m glad you brought that up. Because it’s funny how sometimes working through this marketing stuff makes you realize that other things about your brand or your business need to be updated. So there’s like always a benefit.

Hilary Finck 34:39
For sure, yeah.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 34:40
Were there any final thoughts you wanted to say about email today?

Hilary Finck 34:44
I just feel very comforted and knowing that a lot of these things that I’ve been wanting to do will start to happen. And I’m just really excited. I think this is one of the things that I’m most excited about is the improvements is the email marketing. So I can’t wait.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 35:01
I get most excited about email too. So we’re on the same page with that. Well, thanks, Hilary. I appreciate all your insights and thoughts today.

Hilary Finck 35:11
You’re welcome.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 35:12
What did you think about the interview? Are you excited to follow Hilary on this journey? I highly encourage you to check out Hilary’s website hilaryfinck.com and follow her on Instagram @hilaryfinckjewelry. Link in the show notes as well. Let me know in a podcast review or YouTube comment what you think about this new journey. Okay, let’s get into THE GOLD MINE.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 35:38
Welcome to another edition of THE GOLD MINE – a segment where I get personal and share insights on entrepreneurship, mindset, success, growth, and all things business. THE GOLD MINE allows me to share topics and insights close to my heart. In this week’s GOLD MINE, I’m diving deep into my NYC trade show experience, underscoring just how vital face-to-face connections are in the jewelry business. Last week, Liz Kantner and I explored NY Now and Melee in New York City. I’ve done Vegas trade shows post-pandemic, but NYC? It was like stepping into a vibrant, colorful universe. I finally met numerous online acquaintances, mostly jewelry designers, in person. What a thrill! Besides the personal interactions, I saw jewelry pieces up-close – pieces I’d only scrolled past on Instagram. Imagine living in a black-and-white movie and then suddenly everything’s in technicolor. That’s how transformative seeing and touching the jewelry, feeling its texture on my skin, and visualizing myself wearing it felt. And the cherry on top? Meeting the designers and hearing their passion-laden stories about their creations. Now, I champion the digital world daily, assisting clients with email marketing, social media, and enhancing their online presence. But, let’s be real: digital marketing alone can’t do justice to jewelry. Jewelry demands touch, sight, and emotion. Pictures? They’re just the trailer, not the full movie. Clients often seek that one “secret” to marketing. There isn’t one. Successful branding blends multiple strategies, with in-person engagement playing a pivotal role. It could be you mingling with customers or retailers showcasing your pieces. Got retail partners? Support them. Help them display your jewelry enticingly, educate their staff, and collaborate on events. Remember, you’re the brand’s heartbeat. Mix the digital with the tangible, and see your brand truly come to life. What did you think? Let me know in an Instagram DM, podcast review or YouTube comment.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 40:24
Did you have any questions about today’s episode? You can always email me Laryssa at 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 Apple Podcasts. 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