#316 7 Irresistible Holiday Sales Strategies (No Discount Required)

1:32AM Sep 23, 2021

Speakers:

Tracy Matthews

Keywords:

people

email

sales

strategy

brands

trunk

jewelry

products

friends

ambassadors

thrive

audience

flourish

business

grow

holiday season

sell

email list

events

customers

Email Marketing is known to help brands grow. In fact, last year some of the the main reason why many of the brands in our community had such phenomenal sales for holiday was because they got really consistent with their email marketing.

Welcome to thrive by design, the podcast for ambitious independent jewelry brands, looking to profit from their products, get ready to make more and sell more doing what you love, without spending every single waking minute doing it. Hey, and if you are a creative fashion or product based business, I want to welcome you to the show. I'll be dropping big tips on launching growing and scaling your business so you can spend more of your precious time using your creativity to make money. You ready? All right, let's do this.

Welcome to the Thrive by Design podcast episode 316. Hey there, it's Tracy Matthews, Chief visionary Officer of flourish and thrive Academy and today I'm going to be talking about seven irresistible holiday sales strategies that require no discount. This is a good one you definitely want to tune in.

Today's episode is brought to you by Flourish and Thrive Academy. Now last week we had an amazing free masterclass last week as I'm recording this, called How to end the year strong with marketing that matters the holiday sales edition. And on that masterclass, I talked about some of the key strategies and takeaways that you should be leaning into for holiday season. And to talk a little bit more about some of those today. But at the end of that episode, or at the end of that masterclass, I talked a little bit more about getting support from flourish and thrive Academy for your holiday season. And that's why I would love to invite you to apply for free strategy audit.

Now on that strategy audit, we're going to take a look at what's going on in your business now and help you cast a three year vision for your business and a holiday sales vision for your business. And the reason why this is really important is because at the end of the day, we want to be able to support you in reaching your goals. And if you don't know where you're going, it's really hard to get there, then we're going to take a look at those goals and dig into what's going on to your business. Now. We're going to identify things that you're doing well, we're going to kind of point out some opportunities for growth. And then we're going to help you uncover any challenges or roadblocks that might be standing in your way.

Now, at the end of the strategy audit, you are going to walk away with some key takeaways and things that you can actually implement in your business now. And then if it makes sense, we'll invite you to join one of our programs. Now one of the things that we mentioned on this masterclass was that for anyone who applies and is accepted into one of our programs before September 30/30, and they join a program, we're going to help you create a 90 day strategic holiday sales plan that you can follow and implement so that you are moving a lot faster. Now we have noticed in our community that people who get this kind of support, do amazing things like Kajol Nina, she's a fine jeweler, who really had a big dream of selling more jewelry online. The problem is that she had this mental belief that you can't sell fine jewelry online. So what ended up happening is that she kept showing up and it was difficult for her to kind of reach those customers until we worked with her.

And then everything changed. We gave her the strategy, we helped her with mindset tools. And she started having 10k days and when her collection started launching, within that first 10 days of launching the collection, she would do sometimes upwards of 50 to $60,000 per collection drop. So if you want to have results like that, and you're ready to really dive in for the holiday season, I love to invite you to apply for a free strategy audit, you can head on over to flourish, thrive academy.com forward slash strategy, fill out the application. And we should take about seven to 10 minutes, you will know within seven to 10 minutes if you're accepted. And then you can book a call in with our strategists. Natasha, which is awesome. And I'm going to mention some additional resources on the show throughout the episode. So let's dive in.

So today's episode is all about creating an irresistible holiday season with sales strategies that work and that require no discounting, which I think is the big thing here. Right? Because, you know, I know sometimes when we're thinking about the holiday season, we think that the reason people buy is because we're giving discounts and that that culture has been ingrained in us over the years because of the cyber weekend Black Friday through Cyber Monday. So that is an important weekend if you want to partake in it. But it's not the only way that you can actually build a successful and grow successful holiday season just requires you being a little bit more strategic, right.

So the first step in having a successful holiday sales season is really to build your audience now. And I'm going to keep talking about this on the podcast and everything that we do over the coming weeks. Because when you build your audience now you actually have people to sell to now there's couple of ways that I always recommend for people to use to build their audience. But one of the most important things to do, not much of a trend person. But there is a trend that is happening right now on social media that is super important, and is working for makers. In fact, I shared a case study on that masterclass of a company called Love and Lux Co. And this, this woman makes clay, metal clay earrings or something like that. And she grew her Instagram following from three to 18,000 followers in three months. Using reels now reels, I get it, some of you might be thinking like this is a lot of work, I don't have time for this or whatever. I used to think the same thing, I felt like I had to dance and point in funny directions in order to make them work. But what I realized is if you can make make it fun and lean into trending music, then it is so much easier.

Plus, you can keep them short. And the reason why keeping them short, is so important is because the videos start to loop, and it increases your views. And so what we're trying to do is to show up in people's real speed to get discovered and to eventually get more followers and get more customers. So what I'd really encourage you to do is start making reels now show the behind the scenes of making your products, follow some of the real trends that makers are using, I would focus on featuring your products and yourself do a combination of things, so that you're getting in front of the camera, so people get to know who you are, while also showing the beautiful products or jewelry that you make.

And just continue testing it out and see how it happens for you and see how it grows. There's a lot of real estate coaches out there, you can just I feel like you can get a lot of value just by what they're sharing on Instagram, you don't even necessarily have to join one of their programs. But there's a lot that you can do to get exposure plus TikTok, very similar, same kind of concept, you can use your TikTok and reels. What I'd recommend doing first is use the TikTok and rails, post them across both platforms. But make sure that you post them on either platform, if you're doing one on Tick Tock and one on rails without the watermark. So you want to make sure that it's a clean video, because then it will show up better in on those platforms.

Now, the other thing that will help you build your audience is to start creating an ask on social media. So as you're growing your social media following, that you're actually posting your opt in or inviting people to join your VIP email list and so much more that you're consistently sharing what you're doing with people maybe handing out opportunities to get onto your VIP list when you're meeting people in person on a little business card or something like that, and so much more. So that's one way to you start to build your audience using social media. So just posted everywhere, at least once a week encouraged people to sign up for your email list. Give them a reason to sign up. People do not want to sign up for our newsletter, what they want to sign up for is actually something valuable that they can use. So maybe that's a VIP insiders that maybe you're giving them a lead magnet or a download that encourages them to opt in to your list. And plus when you have lead magnets and things like things like that thoseare great opportunities to share on platforms like Pinterest.

Now another way to build your audience is through grassroots and referral marketing. So I love grassroots efforts. This is just really leaning into your personal professional networks, and sharing what you're up to you to other people that you know. And some people are going to be takers, and some aren't. But the key here is that people who already know like and trust you and love you want to support you so you can enlist them to share to help you build your email list or share what you're doing. You can grow your email list by incentivizing your friends and family network to actually invite their friends to things like virtual trunk shows or other events that you might be having on your website, you can give them an incentive for all the people that they refer. So let's say someone refers 10 people, for every 10 people they refer maybe you give them like loyalty points in your store that they can use for product.

There's a lot of different ways that you can focus this I go deep into strategies for this and a script for this on several of their podcast episodes, you can go to the our podcast and type in grassroots marketing, and you can see different episodes there, and strategies to use to grow your grassroots marketing efforts. And listen to those episodes to give you some inspiration. And the reason why this works so well and I share this story a lot is there's two really compelling case studies of why this works.

Number one, john Davis, the founder of books, built his business in the first year to $1.7 million with no market cap, no investors, and no advertising budget. He had to use grassroots marketing to do this. So he reached out she sent out 1700 personalized messages through social media and email to his friends and family network to grow that audience and basically what he was doing was just sharing what he was up to I've just doing a simple ask if you know anyone who might be interested, I'd love it if you'd share with a friend, or whatever it is. And it wasn't pushy, it wasn't saying buy my stuff, although people probably did buy their stuff, because who doesn't love flowers and who does also who doesn't love jewelry and other beautiful products that you guys make.

But the reason why it was so compelling is because it was just like, here's what I'm up to. And it gave people an opportunity to say yes or no. And even if just like 5% of those people take action, that's a huge percentage to grow your business. So keep in mind, that is an awesome way to do this.

Now the next case study is from our community, we did this at one of our momentum retreats momentum is our high ticket coaching program. Over here, or high touch I said should say it's the program that's a little bit more of an investment than some of our other programs here. Because we do a lot of hand holding, we have two levels in that accelerate, and elevate. Accelerate is a group coaching program. And elevate is a hybrid group and one on one coaching program. But we have these events. And the events are the amazing part, one of the amazing things of this program, because we get to bring in guest speakers and all those things. And so at one of the events, it was actually when we were in real life, people were feeling really weird about reaching out to their customers and asking for the sale.

So we did a challenge, we told people to send an email or text message to a customer friend or friends or family member. And we gave them a short script to use or framework to use. And within a few minutes, we had made like $5,000, within 12 hours, we'd made something like $24,000. And within 48 hours, we made $36,235 it was insane. The sales were coming in so fast, that are the commitments to making sales that we couldn't even keep track after a period of time. So this really does work. And maybe you have a game or some sort of accountability pod with friends in the flourish and thrive community or other makers that you're friends with, and challenge each other to do this and celebrate each other as you guys start to get the wins.

Now another way to build your audience, so this is where this is still our bullet number one is to start building relationships with people in direct message on Instagram. And this is really about creating authentic relationships, and talking to people. So the more that you can do that maybe you just reach out to a couple people a day, the more they're going to remember your brand later when it comes to the holiday season. This is the long game here, we're not looking for fast flash in the pan staff. We're really looking to grow your business for the long term.

Alright, so my second irresistible holiday sales strategy is one of my favorites from last year, which is virtual trunk shows. Now virtual trunk shows are still going strong. I think that we're still in these weird uncertain times with mandates across the board and people kind of freaking out on all in all ways about some people who feel really confident being a person, which I probably fall more into that camp,other people who don't. So I feel like virtual trunk shows are still going to be a huge hit this holiday season. If you haven't grabbed it yet, I would definitely grab our virtual trunk show bundle, you can grab it over at flourish thrive academy.com forward slash VTS is one of our best selling bundles and it's helped designers make anywhere from two to 38 $36,000 and a two hour trunk show 36 was the most that we've heard I actually had Shauna on our podcast to talk about that event was pretty awesome.

But the virtual trunk shows work. You can also do you can do them solo to your audience for one of a kind collection drops to do sample sales to get rid of extra inventory to just feature new products or do you a virtual trunk show about best sellers come up with a theme or an idea. There are great opportunities. But you can also do these collaboratively. Now we've seen people in the art world like Ana Maria Andre can one of our coaches and momentum who have come together with peers and that used to do art shows together so they have like an artist, maybe a ceramicist and a jeweler all together, and then they leverage each other's audiences and host the event together. So these are amazing opportunities for you to think outside of the box and grow and, you know, help help another maker out, you know, you guys are helping each other out.

Another idea for this is that I think it's one strategy that can work really well is to do a combination of in real life events and virtual trunk shows together. So you could livestream an in person event and sell using a virtual trunk show app that in person event so where people are actually shopping and selling and you can feature products and get and get helpers to kind of help you kind of leverage those in person events even bigger, that's a little bit more complicated. So if you're still kind of overwhelmed by the virtual trunk show idea, keep it simple in the beginning, and remember if you'd like some support, we have a complete system for this and our virtual trunk show bundle which is super helpful.

Now My third irresistible holiday sales strategy is to do virtual styling sessions or in person styling sessions. Now, there's a designer in our momentum program. Her name is Heather polis, she is in Newport Beach, California, or Costa Mesa, California. They're kind of the same city just on different sides of the bay, I'll put that's where I grew up. So that's why I'm saying that, and we were talking and she was like, you know, I'm really having a hard time transferring my in person customers to online buyers, and we realized that she was only promoting her in person styling sessions. So I wanted she's trying to move these people more online. And, but I do think that there's an opportunity for people who are online to go in person with the styling session, so you can offer styling sessions to people in your local community, where you can do appointments. If it makes sense, and you have a customer base already, there could be like a minimum order to book one of these styling sessions. But it's an amazing way to get people on to upsell them.

And virtual science styling sessions are great for people who don't live in your city and or just are busy. Now. Kareena Harris did a super share about this in our most of our momentum retreats before her brands waffles and honeys. And she would sell these virtual styling sessions as a package. For a set amount it was either like 300, or $500. And her her medium price point or average order value is about $100. So that means they had to buy three pieces on the virtual styling session. And Kareena would spend an hour of her time showing all the different products. She did this very strategically though, because she knew that if she got people on a virtual styling session, for this minimum buy in of like three or $500, whatever it was that they typically spent an average of $1,000. So it's not every single customer is going to do this. But I think all of us would really welcome you know, making a couple $100 for an hour of our time or even $1,000 for an hour of our time. So think about strategically about how you can use this.

And then you can use these videos of the styling sessions. You know, you can strip the audio or whatever it might be as B roll to kind of show and use on social media later. So your you can use this for your reels. You can use this for video content on social, you can use it for ads, you're going to be doing advertising, they're great ways that you can kind of leverage both in person offline events does this is that like kind of hitting home with you if you're listening to this. So if you're listening to the podcast, give me a guess. And for those of you don't know, I'm actually streaming this episode live on Instagram right now, which is super fun doesn't come out till next week. So if you have any friends who might be interested in this, ping them, but you're getting a head up on this all you instagramers. And remember, if you have any questions about what I'm talking about today, you can just shoot us a direct message or an email.

Now my fourth strategy for this is something that I talk about all the time. And this is an own marketing strategy called email marketing. And that's exactly why we're building our email list. And our text messaging list and all the things because email marketing is known to help brands grow. In fact, last year, some of the the main reason why many of the brands in our community had such phenomenal sales for holiday was because they got really consistent with their email marketing, they were emailing 123 times a week, sometimes more and stayed consistent with it. And they made them feel really awkward, because they weren't used to it, but it does work. And the reason why I mentioned this is like think about all the brands that you love all the brands that you're on their email list, many people and you can raise your hand right now if this is you get worried because they're worried about people unsubscribing from their email list by emailing too much.

Now, if that's the case for you, then what I want to tell you is that, sure, that is a scare, but the people who unsubscribe from your email list don't really want to be there anyway. And this is we always pose this question to people for the brands that you actually love. Do you care if they're sending you a lot of emails, like you probably don't even notice because it's probably going into a folder or you have a special email inbox. That's just for promotions. Meaning what I mean by that is like, I have like, a separate email that I do my shopping on. And that's where all of the emails for like things that I buy go to.

And I don't mind like I actually enjoy it because it helps me learn about how I can market better. And as a marketer, I like that. So I think it's really important that you start thinking through that lens because if it doesn't bother you that brands that you love or emailing a lot. Do you think it bothers the people who are on your list that you email a lot either so either way, get your email marketing going, and if you need some ideas, you know one of the biggest hurdles with email marketing, there's three steps to this you need to get your emails opened. You need to get your content inside the emails concise with a strong call to action, so focused. So it needs to be a beautiful design. You need to keep the copy short and tight and you need a strong call to action that gets people to click on the button. Or whatever you're offering in that website, because the purpose of sending emails out is to get people shopping from your brand, or on your website. That's key.And then the final step of that is to get people converting to sales on your website.

So there's, there's really strategic, but the first step of this is actually getting your emails opened. And that's why having compelling subject lines are really powerful. We also have a bundle that we released last year for this, it's called the emails that sell done for you bundle. And we give you over 600 or more subject line and email hooks that you can use for yourself, so that you can copy and paste, edit them for yourself and not have to think about what you're going to write in the emails. So if you want to learn more about that you can head on over to flourish, thrive academy.com, forward slash ETS and grab the bundle right there. It's only 37 bucks. It's a super steal. And it will totally help you with email marketing, this holiday season.

All right. My next strategy strategy number five is direct mail. So this has been something you know, like there was a time when people were moving from off direct mail onto email. And that was the only strategy that they did. But direct mail never actually went away. It's actually making a comeback. I have a really funny story. I was hiring a marketing person last fall or whatever was interviewing around this time. And the person I was interviewing, said to me, like, Oh my gosh, my boss is so antiquated and old. She's like in her 50s. And she just turned 50. And she basically said, wanted to do a direct mail campaign. I just couldn't believe how like dinosaur ish that was. And I was laughing so hard, she obviously didn't get the job, because direct mail has made a huge comeback. And it's actually working, if you use it strategically.

And I'm not talking about sending out a flyer that's with a printed out address. And like bulk mail looking stuff. What I'm talking about is sending personalized notes to small audience inside an envelope. So it looks like real mail that gets opened. So this strategy can work really well. If you want to thank people for shopping and giving them an incentive to buy again, you can insert a gift card in there, thanking them for being one of your best customers, you can send a ride along offer with your current packaging where you send something inside a package or partner with another brand on a direct mail piece. You can have a pay it forward campaign, there's so many opportunities, you can send gifts for birthdays, or like just a mass mailing to your previous customers as a holiday gift, but you want to position this not as a discount, you want to definitely position this as a incentive to buy.

Ana Maria Andrew can who I mentioned before, he's during the collaborative events, he's one of our momentum coaches over here had a 38% conversion rate from her direct mail campaign. So now 100, no cards cost less than $100. To pull off, she made 1000s of dollars, her average price point is $300. So we could do the math 38%. That's 38 sales. Let's see that's about Yeah, pretty good about my doing this right about $10,000 or so in revenue pretty good for less than $100 it that it costs to pull off.

Now my next strategy for you is text and SMS marketing. I've done several episodes about this. And you can look up on the podcast some ideas, there are plenty of applications that you can use the integrate with your email CRM, like Klaviyo or Omnisend. And then there's also other apps like SMS bump, which is what a lot of the marketers like for e commerce right now, instead of using the integrations with the email CRM, so it probably costs a little bit more, but it might be have more functionality, I think is the best way to do it.

So in addition to building your email list audience, you need to be building your SMS or text marketing audience. So you can do that on the website, you can have different ways for people to opt in for text messaging for another type of incentive. So the reason why text and SMS marketing works so well is that whenever you send out a strategy, think about it, 98% of the messages will get opened, and 95% of them will be read. So as long as someone is opting in, to be in an SMS campaign, these can be really powerful and effective. Plus, if you use the right tool and functionality you can include imagery, gifts, pictures, and other types of visual representations that inspire people to take that next step. They work really well some top ecommerce marketers are saying that SMS is overcoming email these days. So it might be something you want to explore or consider if you have the budget to lean into it and you can start building your audience now.

All right, strategy number seven we are winding down is to enlist ambassadors now what I mean by this is that a lot of us have people who already are loyal fans of ours who are want to promote our products. It is not forever Everyone, so not everyone's going to lean into an ambassador program, where people they're going out and referring your business to other people. But for the types of brands that it does work for, which typically, I would say in most cases are probably a little bit lower price point, price point or shareable brands, less personal realization, and I'll get to what I mean by that. There are less personal high touch maybes what I'm trying to say, this can work really well.

And a few examples. Chelsea Farmer have horsefeathers gifts, Wendy Hively of Charlie Madison originals, blooming Lotus jewelry, these are all very giftable. And reasonable price point jewelry for people who are developing jewelry that has meaning, I guess, is the best way to put it. And all these designers are very, they're very different in their messaging and market, but their design aesthetic and the sheer ability of the products are the same. So if you have a brand like this, it can be super helpful. So you would want to create an ambassador program first. And that ambassador program would have rules for how you're going to set this up. Typically, you would give the ambassador some sort of code or discount code to share or some sort of code where you can track it.

You can also use apps like Go app Pro, or reversion they both work great for Shopify, there's other referral campaign apps that you can use where people can have affiliate and tracking links, you want to have rules to for sharing. So the thing that is going to make your ambassador program successful is to create a standards that people had to follow by like they have to share a certain amount of times a month, they have to be promoting it on a regular basis. And they have to keep their sales up. Or else it's not really worth having them do it. So the more you can create that container for success, the better it's going to be. And then maybe you have contests for your ambassadors over time. So the more the ambassadors sell, maybe they can win free jewelry, or they can earn points towards additional product. So you want to have those incentives in place. We also have an episode on Ambassador programs with Chelsea farmer, and also creating community around ambassadors, you definitely want to look up that episode, it is a great one.

So other ways to look at ambassadors are this. You know, one of the ways that I grew my business when I had a production line was to get my friends and family enlisted in selling for me. So I had friends bringing my jewelry around their offices, I had my sister, and cousins hosting trunk shows in the cities that they lived in. Or people that were friends who had a whole different friend group than I did, who were willing to host parties for me to expand my audience. So my sales would grow. And so this is a really great strategy, if you want to use it. And you can pay those ambassadors, a commission on the products that they sell or give them like for a certain amount of sales, they get X amount of jewelry, or whatever it might be.

So I love doing this to host in other cities, to network with people who are outside your comfort zone, or to go into people's offices, if they'll let you do that if people are going back to work, or maybe even enlist your local businesses in your area who can who want to support small business and do it that way. So there's a lot of ways that you can partner with other people and collaborate to get great results. The key here is that you want to have rules, guidelines and incentives for people to so they have something a framework to kind of work through. Does that make sense?

All right, thank you so much for listening to the show. Today, I had a blast doing this. I was also live streaming this on Instagram, which was super fun.I've also mentioned a lot of resources. In today's episode, this is an I'm gonna have some additional resources over on our blog content and in the show notes wherever you're listening to this.

So if you like to listen to the podcast on our blog, you can head on over to flourish, thrive academy.com/316. And we'll have links for everything I mentioned on the show right there today. Or if you're just click on the show notes for this episode, and you should see links for all of the products that I mentioned, the reason I wanted to bring this up is because I mentioned our strategy audit for people who are looking for a little bit more hand holding and growth this holiday season. So we'll definitely have a link for that in the show notes.

But I know some people just want like a quick and dirty program or something that's going to teach them about all the things that I talked about today. And we have this mini course called sold out shop. And it's designed to help ecommerce brands who are selling jewelry and other handmade products, grow their sales using and train their customers to buy from them online using their branded website as a tool. So if you'd like to learn a little bit more about that you can head on over to flourish thrive academy.com/shop. It is an amazing mini course I walk you through the details of doing many of the things that we spoke about in today's episode just expanded so you have a step by step guide. So definitely check that out.

And then we also for those of you who want to do Black Friday promotion, we released this last year it's called the ultimate holiday sales machine. It's an amazing product we call it a bundle that's designed to help you plan and promote an execute an epic cyber weekend sale you can use this strategy pretty much for anytime you're doing like a one day flash sale to a four day event where you're trying to get a bunch of sales in a short period of time. We call it that holiday sales machine because you know it's the holiday season and whatever but it's has longevity well beyond that because we're teaching you our urgency strategy that is helping designers insane money so if you want to check that out, you can head on over to flourish thrive Academy comm forward slash sales machine and pick your bundle up today.

You're gonna love it. Alright, this is Tracy Matthews signing off. Until next time.

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. It's my mission to help 1000s of creative businesses inside and outside the jewelry space use their creativity to make money. Make sure that you're subscribed to thrive by design on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and wherever podcasts are played. And we'd love to hear what you think. Please rate and review the show and if you're inspired, please share this with your friends. Cheers to seeing you flourish and thrive.