Delivering the right message at the right time is critically important to all jewelry marketers. With sales slanting more towards peak holiday sales periods, more effective marketing communications are now a must. Consumers are bombarded with thousands of advertising messages every day and many have learned how to tune out those messages they perceive to be irrelevant. Here are six tips to improve email marketing effectiveness:

1. Use your point of sale system to prepopulate customer data. Capture gender and note jewelry design style and material preferences and historic category sales. Be sure to note special dates like birthdays and anniversaries. Create individual customer profiles with the intent of sending unique product offerings via email.
2. Turn your wish list into a preference center by recording explicit customer information. Consider offering reminder services to help prompt customers regarding specific jewelry purchases. Let customers request various forms of communication sent by your company. Be in the business of educating customers and not just selling jewelry.
3. Track and record implicit data from customers and prospects. It is important to know if customers are opening your email and what links they are clicking. Learn how to better communicate with customers by studying what messages they pay more attention to through email and your website. Third party vendors offer these services.
4. Be personable. Now with so many jewelry store owners and managers on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, there are lots of stories to be told. Customers want to be educated and entertained through your promotional messages. Use social media to prompt questions and email answers with insightful comments to build rapport. What is more personable than customer testimonials talking about your great jewelry? Ask customers to add photos of themselves wearing your jewelry to your Facebook page. Peer reviews add an element of objectivity and humanize marketing content.
5. Segment messages to targeted audiences using dynamic content very relevant to specific offerings. Not everyone is interested in anniversary rings this month, but a small segment of your total database may be very interested.
6. Develop stronger customer relationships through email marketing. Don’t wait for a customer to walk into the store. Customers may be highly engaged in considering a purchase in a jewelry category they have not purchased from your store. Use email to highlight relevant web pages and SMS messages to prompt customers to build more store foot traffic and to motivate customers to tell you more about themselves and their jewelry preferences. Use email to follow up with “I’ll be back” shoppers and to continue the dialogue to guide them back into the store.

Most consumers demonstrate less tolerance for email that is not perceived as being relevant. Jewelry marketers can use email to differentiate their company and product/service offerings. The key is to listen to customers and prospects to know what offerings and content are most relevant to each targeted audience. Email marketing can deliver very compelling jewelry messages to specific customers’ at the most opportune times.

JCK