Over the last 6 years, I've subscribed to more jewelry email lists than I can remember. Whenever I do a website review, I look for the newsletter signup and add myself to their list. Most of the time, I never hear from those retail jewelers because they don't follow through with their email list.
Amidon Jewelers, in New Hampshire, is one of the few independent retail jewelers that I know that has consistently sent me emails since I signed up to their list way back in 2012. Years ago, they were sendi... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Back when jWAG was formed in 2010, the common mantra touted by many online marketers was that "the money is in the list." The list, at the time, was a reference to the number of people on your email list. Since then, we now have the ability to reach customers through many other list methods, including Facebook retargeting lists, Google AdWords remarketing lists, and even push notifications through custom apps that people download. So many online marketing opportunities exist now tha... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
When it comes to social media photographs, it's easy to forget that every person has a legal right to prevent you from posting a photo of their face online. Paid photographers and media companies are very aware of your legal rights, and they require people to sign a model release form.
Those release forms grant ownership and permission to use the photos for any purpose, even to sell the photos or use in promotions to sell a product. A quick Google search for "sample mode... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
The last seven days have been quite interesting, and fulfilling for me. In addition to the photography demo booth at MJSA Expo in New York City, I also presented three seminars/training classes, one of which was at MJSA this past Monday.
An interesting topic about marketing budgets and social media organically emerged during my training sessions last week, which I then added to my MJSA seminar at the last minute, and I want to share with y... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
It seems like only yesterday when it was thought that email addresses would become more important than telephone numbers, and now a website address is more important than both a telephone number and a physical address. A website is the most important representation of your business, yet most jewelers don't treat it that way, and many still view it as an online brochure that needs to be made once, and then forgotten about.
The local retail jeweler is losing a lot of business to the internet. The younger gen... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
I enjoy all the feedback and questions I receive from my readers. Last week, I received a question about RSS feeds which I'll address today. This is a higher level topic that I last mentioned in my Nugget from December 16, 2010, but have never explained in full detail. The detail I'll cover today might be of some interest to those of you who blog on a regular basis, and... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Do you have a specific question about your website or want more details about something I've previously written about? Don't be afraid to write in and ask; you might just see your question in an upcoming Daily Golden Nugget.
This is Part 8 of my annual special Daily Golden Nugget "Holiday Run-Up" series packed with tactics to help you during November and December this year. I started this series with an overview of the marketing strategies that have worked over the last 12 months and have been expanding on each idea every day since.
This is Part 2 of a multi-day Daily Golden Nugget series packed with tactics to help you in your 2015 holiday marketing. The series started yesterday with the overview of 2015 holiday marketing strategies. I'm breaking down each section of that overview into a more detailed Daily Nugget.
The holiday season is quickly approaching and you need to consider how you will be spending your advertising dollars. Will you hold an event promoted with post cards and phone calls? Will you have a Black Friday sale promoted in the local newspaper? What medium will you use for your weekly ads for the holiday season?
There are a lot more choices now than just newspapers, post cards, billboards, TV, and radio. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back 4 years to August 9, 2011 to my topic of conversion rate optimization.
What's A Conversion?
A "conversion" refers to some type of customer interaction that results in the capture of the customer's identity, usually their email address. E-commerce sites also measure conversions according to the number of online sales they have. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
The term Big Data is one of the internet's latest buzz words that everyone is talking about but no one seems to know what it is, why they should care about it, how to collect it, or how to use it.
Put simply, Big Data is the collection of massive amounts of demographic and tracking information you gather about your customers. Once gathered, you then churn that information into reports that help you better plan future marketing and provide interesting insights ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Jennifer Shaheen, President of Technology Therapy Group was among those speakers chosen to present at the 2015 JCK Las Vegas show. Jennifer and I are industry colleagues and we share 99% of the same point of view about the internet and how retail jewelers should be using it for their marketing.
I was at a social media marketing meeting in New York City last month when someone asked if they should be posting the same photos and status update to every social network.
That was a good question, and there's no real straightforward answer. In reality, it depends if you have the same audience following you on all the social networks. If the same audience follows you on all networks, then they will get very bored very ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
After last week's Nuggets about marketing funnels and determining a funnel cost, I received an email from a reader wanting to know my current recommendations for a marketing funnel.
Here are my recommendations for monthly online marketing, in this o... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget, I explained how to analyze the cost of your marketing funnel. Today, I'll follow up with some specific funnel ideas to help you formulate your own plan.
Understanding Previous Marketing
Here's a tricky question to think about... Do you measure ad success by the number of people it brought... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
The truth of the matter is that your business will never survive without some type of marketing. Word of mouth marketing is not enough anymore to support your business. Simple posts to social media and meager ads in community newspapers won't support your overhead, or even put food on your table.
According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, you should VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Diamonds are supposed to be forever and a girl's best friend, but lately they are a tough sell. While many of my retail jewelry store customers are still looking for ways to increase their wedding and engagement ring sales, there are plenty of other opportunities for with designer lines of jewelry that could attract a new audience to your store.
I'm one of those people. I admit it... I don't turn my cell phone off in a movie theater.
It's not that I want to be rude; I do put it on silent; but I have to keep the vibrate setting on. The nature of my job is such that I'm always on call to monitor a few very important websites for a few of my clients. So I can't be out of touch from those computers and servers. In fact, the only times I'm unplugged is when I'm at 38,000 over the Atlantic. WiFi isn't available on the transatlantic f... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
I remember back in the late 1990s when I was helping people set up their first email addresses and told them that email would eventually be more important than their telephone number. Since then, the internet evolved in ways we never imagined and, although email didn't cause telephone obsolescence, some say that both methods of communication are going away.
Using a contest to promote your company and build awareness is a viable method of marketing for any business.
During the past month, in preparation for Mother's Day, many retail jewelers held jewelry design contests. Typically this type of contest required a sketch of a pendant to be submitted to the jeweler through some method. The winner would have their pendant turned into reality by Mother's Day.
A jeweler wrote to me the other day asking for help with their Mother's Day contest promotion. The promotion is being advertised through the local papers but the contest takes place through their website. To enter the contest you need to fill out the online form and agree to sign up for their newsletter.
Because the contest is centered around creating a custom design, this jeweler wants to send out a series of additional custom design em... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
The 2014 Holiday Season has come to a close and it's time to review your marketing strategies and record the results for next year's season.
I've compiled some email details that you can use as a benchmark for your own strategies.
I've subscribed to hundreds of email newsletters from retail jewelry stores, large and small e-commerce jewelry sites, and a few chain stores. This is a graph showing the quantity of emails I received from all those senders from November 1, 2014 through December 26, 2014: ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
You probably already know that Christmas is the most popular day of the year for a marriage proposal. No doubt you've been helping with the selection process for the past few months leading up to tomorrow's inevitable day of celebration for many couples.
It's time to kick off my yearly report of email subject lines throughout the holiday season. This is my breakdown of "Black Friday" emails throughout November 2014.
As part of my email tracking, I'm subscribed to hundreds of different email lists. Every month, I monitor trends and techniques to see how email marketing is evolving. During the month of November, I received almost 1000 emails building towards the launch of the holiday season.VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
As the internet and online shopping have become more popular over the last few years, today, the first Monday after Thanksgiving and Black Friday, has earned the designation as Cyber Monday. This is the day when many e-commerce websites have 24 hour sales to lure shoppers to spend their money online instead of shopping in local stores.
Every year comScore.com reports the sales figures for different shopping days through the holiday season. Although the calendar date of Cyber Monday changes ever... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Throughout all of last week, I've been laying the groundwork for a complete holiday 2014 marketing plan that you can use to promote a chosen suite of items.
This is the third part of my Daily Golden Nugget series outlining a potential marketing plan for the upcoming holiday season. The first part explained how to select the items to promote during the holidays. The second part detailed how to set up your newspa... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the second part of my Daily Golden Nugget series outlining a potential marketing plan for the upcoming holiday season. The first part I began yesterday explained how you should select a specific set of jewelry items and then write blogs, take photography, and make videos for those items.
Over the next 4 months, you'll have several opportunities for social media and email marketing campaigns that can be associated with special calendar events.
A quick look at my own wall calendar and I see these jumping out at me as important US dates that can tie into your marketing campaigns:
September 7, 2014: Grandparents Day October 13, 2014: Columbus Day October 31, 2014: Halloween November 2, 2014: Daylight Savings Time Ends November 11, 2014: Veterans' D... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Do a Google search for the phrase "there are no original ideas anymore" and you will find 57 million results explaining how the world has run out of ideas.
Can it be true? Has the world truly run dry of new concepts and ideas?
Although I've heard a few people make such statements, I never gave it much real thought until the summer of 2013. There were a lot of big changes that inspired me to write a Nugget detailing how SEO... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In today's Daily Golden Nugget, I'm reviewing website traffic and email headlines leading up to Mother's Day in the USA, which was May 11 this year.
Every year, during the three weeks leading up to Mother's Day, the organic customer acquisition patterns repeat themselves. This year that pattern started on Monday April 21, 2014 with a slight rise of traffic. The increase in traffic occured from Monday through Friday followed by the typical dip in traffic over the weekends.
The 2013 Holiday Season is off to a running start with many large and small retailers starting their advertising already. I've heard many different news outlets say that the holiday season is shorter this year, but it's still the same number of days between today and Christmas.
Actually, it's really only the US market that is looking at this year as a "shorter" season because we have a self inflicted border on the calendar (Thanksgiving) that sends everyone into a shopping frenzy the next day.
I've been tracking email marketing campaigns for the last 3 years and every year I'm seeing "holiday" emails earlier and earlier. This year the "holiday super sales" and "doorbuster" emails were already hitting my inbox at 4:24 AM on November 1st.
WHEW, I'm pretty sure some people were just getting home from Halloween parties ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
For those of us working in retail, or those of us who provide services to retail businesses, we know the day after tomorrow is when we can official start promoting the Holiday Season. True, we will still get flack for "skipping Thanksgiving," or for beating the first snowfall (maybe!) to the punch, but after Halloween, it's finally fair game. Holiday movies start playing on TV, and new holiday albums came out today is the US, which will start to affect the iTunes charts this weekend.
The USA is one of the few countries that celebrates Halloween in such a big way, and that day now represents the dividing date between "Fall" advertising and Holiday advertising. Not too long ago, that dividing date was Thanksgiving.
Of course, I'm only referring to the USA. Other countries that don't celebrate or commercialize Halloween in... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Last week I gave you a list of Halloween themed headlines that you could use in your marketing messages for this week. Today I'm going to give you a list of headlines that you could use throughout November 2012. These headlines were recorded during November 2011 as part of one of my long term continuing research projects on email marketing and website headlines.
November is a very robust month with more opportunities to broadcast a marketing message than you may realize. The general th... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Headlong into the holiday season already and you are either hoping for better or already happily surprised.
We're already hearing it both ways. Depending on the location, some jewelers have higher sales, some are the same as last year, and we've even heard from one that didn't have a single phone call or walk-in at all last week!
We're pretty sure that no matter what situation you are in you would be happy to get a few more quick sales this season so here are two fast tips to fish for some extra customers today.
1. Send an email to your list.
Alright, so we published that entire Holiday Run-Up and many days of email examples, but have you used those ideas? A few months ago we signed up for email newsletters from several dozen large and small jewelry stores. We're monitoring the messages and intensity of ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Every year your mail boxes are filled with holiday cards from friends, family, and sometimes even business relations who want to simply say how important you are to them. The typical "Happy Holidays and a Prosperous New Year" are among the common phrases inside holiday greeting cards.
Your Facebook Likes, email subscribers, Twitter followers, and Google+ Circles are supporting your business, and are very important to you as well. A message of holiday cheer and heartfelt warmth can make their holiday a little happier.
Sending messages to Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ are easy and you shouldn't feel worried about message overload during the last days of the season. On the other hand your email subscribers might be getting tired of hearing from you by the time December 20th comes around.
It's crunch time! Well, maybe not really, not yet, but that's the mindset we want you to be in today. Imagine it's the last few days before the holiday. This year the major holidays of Hanukkah, Yule, Christmas, and Kwanzaa are all within the 7 days of one another, and last minute reminders on December 19th could really boost your season end sales.
All of our Daily Golden Nuggets so far have concentrated on selling new merchandise, but one of the easiest last minute reminders should be about jewelry cleanings, prong checking, and watch battery replacements.
You have to admit that most of us will want to look our best when entertaining family and friends over the holidays. Not only do people dress to impress but they also want their jewelry to impress. What good are those 2ctw., IF, D earring studs if they are so dirty t... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Marketing campaigns in early December each year shift from talk of Black Friday and Cyber Monday to campaigns mentioning the "12 Days of Christmas." Many of these marketing campaigns will align themselves with the 12 items in the popular song in hopes to create memory retention.
If you are looking for ways to create memory retention, you don't have to limit yourself to the overly popularized use of those 12 days and items; instead, you should try to be a little more creative. Let's look at some ideas that might spark your own.
The Holiday Season comes jam-packed with many religious traditions, cultural traditions, and popularized TV/movie/theatre traditions. Any one of these can be adapted to help your own brand or specific product positioning.
Creating branding or product positioning for your store or jewelry shoul... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
It's the season of giving. Combine that with the social web and you could come up with some creative ideas to weave through your website, email, Facebook, and Twitter marketing. If all your holiday marketing is simply attempting to sell, you will quickly lose your audience, so how can we spice up your website and email messages?
A good place to start is to think about what people do during the holidays other than buy gifts. They get together with family, catch up with friends, decorate their homes inside and out, watch seasonal movies and TV shows, bake, sing carols, and anything else you can think of. What are your traditions during the Holiday Season?
Actually that's a good question to ask on your Facebook Page: What are your Holiday Traditions? You could even make it a contest and have every shared story entered int... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
We've spent each day this week reviewing important marketing tips and SEO ideas as they relate to key shopping days in the holiday season. Today's topic is Cyber Monday, the heyday for those of you that have e-commerce websites.
This year Cyber Monday falls on November 28, 2011. Cyber Monday of 2010 was reported to have 1,028M in online sales according to comScore, but according to our own data it wasn't the highest day for online visitors to jewelry store websites. The biggest traffic day award goes to December 20, 2010, the Monday before Christmas.
The philosophy behind Cyber Monday is that disappointed shoppers from Black Friday and the weekend are still trying to complete holiday shopping but ran out of time over the weekend. Many e-commerce websites will announce Cyber Monday specials to capture the online sales.VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Advertising in the days leading up to Black Friday will be flooded with "Door Buster Deals" that entice those potential shoppers looking for the best deals of the Holiday Season and you can easily participate in that advertising strategy with minimum, last minute investments.
Hopefully with our Lookbook suggestion yesterday, you have a clearly defined strategy of which products you will be pushing for the holiday season, but if you haven't yet selected a line of jewelry with retail prices of under $200 and under $100 then we've got some ideas for you. It's these price points that consumers will be attracted to on Black Friday, and it's these items that you need to announce in your Thanksgiving Day email.
Yes, we're actually suggesting you send a Thanksgiving Day email this year. According to Responsys.com there was a 46% ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
We assume many of you are doing last minute post card printing or are just about to mail out the invitations for November's pre-holiday store events. There are lots of last minute media buys being offered for strategic newspaper and local magazine and advertising.
What's happening with your online stuff? Have you planned your website content yet? Website theme? Email marketing strategies? Suffice it to say we've thrown a lot of ideas at you in the past 35 days, but if you've not taken any action yet you will miss the season.
Today we're going to throw more actionable email marketing ideas at you. As usual, these ideas are based off successful campaigns from previous years.
Let's start with emails focusing on upcoming events. You might have a few important events i... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
There's a tactic we commonly use when creating AdWords campaigns that allows us to target online ads to appear to people who have already visited your website. The idea is that if someone took the time to browse through your website, they were probably interested in your jewelry, but weren't interested enough to purchase at that moment; so we keep showing them ads to make them remember the jewelry store.
This is a very successful strategy that Google AdWords has enhanced greatly in the last 12 months or so. Google explains the effectiveness in the fact that people are targeted with specific offers. These offers were not, and will never be, visible on the regular website, making the person feel like they found a special deal or even say to themselves "wow, thankfully I didn't buy that a day ago."
Officially we have closed the last chapter on our Holiday 2011 Run-Up. The book was getting to be too long and we wanted you guys to read it instead of being frightened to death by its magnitude. If you haven't downloaded it yet, you can still do so from our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/JewelerWebsiteAG.
We still have a lot of important research data that will help you make the most of your marketing dollars during the most important part of your year. Although not included in the Run-Up book, it makes sense for us to continue presenting our findings.
A few weeks ago, and on page 32 of the Run-Up, we gave you several days of subject line examples for your holiday email marketing. They were straight forward examples to get you thinking, but we didn't present ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Cyber Monday is the Monday immediately following Thanksgiving Day in the USA. Last year the company comScore tracked $1,028M (that's a Billion) in online sales that day. Sales were up 16% from 2009.
Cyber Monday got its name from the idea that holiday shoppers who were discouraged by their in-person weekend shopping experience would continue their shopping on-line that Monday morning.
This year Cyber Monday is November 28, 2011. Your strategy, should you decide to accept it, is to remind your customers early that morning about your jewelry store and what you have to offer. Even if you don't have an e-commerce jewelry website, you still need to get their attention.
According to our research we expect that on Cyber Monday morning, your customers will be tempted by emails from Macy's, Kay, Tiffany, David Yurman, Jar... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Today's Daily Golden nugget is a continuation of the holiday email research from the website Responsys. During the Holiday 2010 Season, Responsys tracked emails from more than 100 large retailers and published a report of holiday email trends.
We've taken their generic retail research data and reworked it for the retail jewelry store. The ideas presented here come directly from Responsys, with a little jWAG tweaking.
Let's turn our attention to the flurry of emails sent to consumers on the morning of Black Friday. For 2011, Black Friday in the USA is November 25th.
Any emails for Black Friday should be sent out during overnight hours, perhaps about 3am or 4am, so customers can find them waiting on their Smartphone first thing in the morning. Remember that many shopping malls and large department stores will open a... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Many large retailers and department stores have started a new trend of promoting online sales on Thanksgiving day and even opening their retail stores late in the evening on Thanksgiving Day. Responsys.com tracked a 32% increase on Thanksgiving day email traffic in 2010 and according to comScore, online sales for Thanksgiving Day 2010 jumped 28% to $407 million.
With this data it's obvious to us that that people are reading emails from their smartphones after their Thanksgiving dinner. They might be relaxing on the couch with the family, even watching the big game on TV, but secretly they are planning their holiday purchases.
You don't need an e-commerce website to benefit from a Thanksgiving Day email blast. You could use the email to plant an early thought and/or direct the person to your mobile website so they can view... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
During the months of November and December, email marketing experiences a huge spike in usage as the entire retail industry seems to remember that they can contact consumers through this "old fashion" communication method.
We have been monitoring emails from a handful of jewelry stores over the years, but we know that some of the best holiday email research comes from the website Responsys. For this Daily Golden Nugget and for this part of our Holiday Run-Up 2011, we're going to directly reference their research.
During the Holiday 2010 Season, Responsys tracked emails from more than 100 large retailers and found that every holiday related message contained one of the following types of messages somewhere in the body of the email. As usual, we've modified these where appropriate to make your job easier.
"...articles are easy to follow and seem to have information one can use right away." -Ann, Gallery 4, Hamden CT
"...serious kudos to you. We love your straight talk, pertinent information and plain language. I don't know how many industries have something of jWAG's caliber available, but I learn from the emails every day. Really, really nice work, and very appreciated." -Cheryl Herrick, Global Pathways Jewelry
It seems like only yesterday when it was thought that email addresses would become more important than telephone numbers, and now a website address is more important than both a telephone number and a physical address. A website is the most important representation of your business, yet most jewelers don't treat it that way, and many still view it as an online brochure that needs to be made once, and then forgotten about.
I remember back in the late 1990s when I was helping people set up their first email addresses and told them that email would eventually be more important than their telephone number. Since then, the internet evolved in ways we never imagined and, although email didn't cause telephone obsolescence, some say that both methods of communication are going away.
Last week I gave you a list of Halloween themed headlines that you could use in your marketing messages for this week. Today I'm going to give you a list of headlines that you could use throughout November 2012. These headlines were recorded during November 2011 as part of one of my long term continuing research projects on email marketing and website headlines.
