You’re likely reading this because you’ve heard you should be using email marketing for your jewelry business. You might be wondering, “Is email really worth it?” or “How do I even start?” This guide will cover both of those topics—and we’re going to make it quick and easy to read. Because we know you’re busy, and we believe that email marketing can and should feel like an accessible tool for everyone.
Investing in a marketing channel only makes sense if it will deliver results. Email marketing has the power to deliver Hope Diamond results on a one-carat diamond budget. From increasing customer engagement to building buzz for Valentine’s Day to building customer awareness and brand loyalty, email has the power to do it all. Here are the top five reasons every jewelry store and jewelry brand should invest in email marketing.
Social media ads, Google ads, billboards, print advertising—they’re all great ways to market your jewelry business, and they come with the same challenge: they’re controlled by someone else. You don’t own your audience on Instagram. Companies that sell ad placement can change their rates whenever they want.
Email marketing, on the other hand, is something that stays in your control. You own your list, which means it’s a form of digital marketing with more predictable costs. Once you build a list of email addresses, you have a direct channel to customers that you can use to push promotions, drive sales, and build customer loyalty.
Most jewelry isn’t an everyday purchase. It is, by its very nature, something special. So, your customers might not make purchases in short increments. Loyal customers may go years between fine jewelry purchases. Email marketing can help jewelers stay in the minds of their customers, so when they’re ready to purchase again, you’re the first jeweler they think of.
You don’t need us to tell you how much business the holidays can generate for a jeweler. Email marketing can help you maximize increased demand while minimizing effort—because you can build the strategy for your holiday email campaign in advance. You can design emails for Christmas and Hanukkah, Valentine’s Day, and Mother’s Day during your slower times and schedule them to send during the holiday rush. That way, you can hit record sales numbers without having to send real-time emails.
Brick-and-mortar retailers, like jewelry stores, are often reliant on foot traffic. When the sun is shining, that’s great. When the city finally decides to tear up the sidewalk for an infrastructure project, on the other hand, foot traffic can evaporate…for months. Email marketing allows you to take back control, create demand for your products, and drive jewelry sales.
46% of consumers say that they prefer to be contacted via email by businesses. This number is even higher for Millennial and Gen Z shoppers. Contact people the way they want to be contacted, and they’ll be more likely to: 1. Like your business and 2. Make a purchase.
Follow these pro tips to use email like a marketing veteran. These are the email strategies that give you the biggest bang for your buck, from marketing campaigns to promotional emails to the housekeeping work that’s worth its weight in gold.
Holiday emails carry with them a sense of urgency, ideal for motivating potential customers to make a purchase. To get the most out of your holiday email campaigns, make sure to plan ahead—make a calendar of major holidays, segment your audience, and set goals for your email campaign. While special holiday deals and exclusive discounts always drive sales, you can also use content marketing to drive sales. For example, gift guides that deliver real value for your audience (you might try including non-jewelry items or partnering with other businesses to cross-promote your products) can be an effective way to win business.
New necklace, new rings, let’s market that bling. Increase buyer awareness and drive demand with product launch email campaigns. When building a product launch campaign, you can start by teasing that “something special” is coming, then, closer to the release date, send an email with (stunning) product photography, minimal design, and interest-piquing copy. Day of the product launch? That’s time for another email. The more you heighten anticipation, the stronger your sales will be.
Special event emails can help increase attendance for events (like trunk shows). These emails can also build customer loyalty and build brand trust because they make customers feel special. Those exclusive VIP opportunities elevate your brand and strengthen relationships with potential buyers and existing customers.
Personalized emails allow you to provide a white-glove, customer-focused experience. From birthday and anniversary emails to including a customer in segmented email campaigns that align with their interests, buying behaviors, or demographics, there are so many ways to craft emails that deliver a personalized experience.
Nothing helps increase your email open rate like a subject line with the words “Jewelry Sale.”. Discounts, sales, exclusive deals, and special offers all typically perform really well in email marketing. You can use promotions to manage some of the seasonality of the business and/or to drive email sign-ups (sending a special offer as part of the welcome email is a perennial favorite).
Email hygiene is on of the least glam (and most essential) aspects of email marketing. Make sure you have a double opt-in when new subscribers sign up, and regularly update your lists to ensure you’re weeding out inactive subscribers. Both of these practices will help keep your sender reputation, the metric internet service providers (ISPs) use to decide whether your email should go to the inbox or spam, in tip-top shape.
We’ve reached the how-to portion of the guide. It’s time to get down to brass tacks and outline exactly how you can build a business-boosting email marketing program for your business. Here’s what you need to know:
If you don’t have an email list, start working on it. Slow and steady wins the race here. You want your email list to be filled with current customers, along with potential customers. There are several ways to grow your email marketing list. The “best” one is the one that works most effectively for your jewelry business, and the only way to figure that out is through experimentation.
Here are some tried-and-tested ways to grow your email list: create a compelling welcome offer, make email collection part of your CRM process (if you haven’t already), and launch a contest on social media to new subscribers.
Email marketing software can make all the difference. The right software takes care of all the technical, back-end parts of email marketing, like your email deliverability rate, while delivering email templates and easy-to-use tools that make it easy to design, schedule, and send emails.
You want to adjust your email messaging to the customer like you’d size a ring to a customer’s finger. You can do that with segmentation. Segmentation breaks your full list of email addresses into smaller lists, divided by factors like demographics, customer preferences, and shopping behavior.
Segmentation helps boost engagement and can also help with important things like your sender reputation (aka how internet service providers (ISPs) decide whether to send your marketing emails to the recipient's inbox or spam folder). For the basics, as well as advanced tips, check out The Essential Guide to Email Segmentation.
Email scheduling and automation can help you ensure that your marketing emails reach the right people at the exact right time without needing someone to sit there and press send. When it comes to campaign scheduling, some times work better than others. You’ll want to test different days of the week and times of day for each email type to determine which one has the best performance for your jewelry brand, but as a general rule, Tuesdays tend to have higher open rates than other days of the week and 11AM (EST) seems to be a sweet spot. To learn more about the absolute best time to send marketing emails, check out the guide.
Track key email marketing metrics like open rate, click-through rate, and deliverability rate to determine how effective your campaigns are. You probably won’t hit it out of the park the first time. That’s okay. Successful email marketing is really a process of making small changes based on the data until you find a formula that works for your business. The most important thing here is that you do it consistently. Set regular reviews on a monthly or quarterly basis to watch the way email performance is trending.
Twilio SendGrid Marketing Campaigns has all the tools you need, and then some—an industry-leading deliverability rate, email templates, segmentation and scheduling tools. Create emails that wow customers and deliver real results.
