Or:
The hack an established jewelry brand in the offline world used to boost its online growth. Hint? A combo of its data and attentivity.
As marketers and salespeople, once we’ve caught our audience’s attention and penetrated their minds, we move to hunt for compelling events that would lead to an actual sale.
When it comes to e-commerce, we particularly want to focus on converting leads through low touch engagements. Meaning: without a personal touch. That’s the only way to really scale. We hunt for tricks and hacks that got other brands to move the needle and hope they will work for us in the exact same way. Yet, that’s not always how the cookie crumbles.
To find your hack it is important to tune into case studies that cracked the funnels. But moreover, to understand how they found their hack. In most cases these companies mapped their customer journey. Then with attention to details (like touch points, audiences, time of day and monthly cycles), and systematic assumption process they hit the desired creative hack.
How Karnicraft unlocked the sequence that help focus marketing efforts on where they matter most
For the past couple of months I’ve been very lucky to work with an amazing self-made craftswoman named Karni. She’s a phenomenal artist and a jeweler. A whole line of celebrities have been seen stacking up their Karni necklaces, bracelets, and earrings.
Karni’s amazing warm, yet wild and playful personality, comes out in every piece she introduces to the world. Customers share that once you put on a Karni, it reflects a different part of your personality. Her customers words align with their actions. We see it in her returning customers data as well as sales that are derived through referrals and word of mouth.
Identifying sales patterns
It’s been several years since Karni expanded her one-woman show. Her partner leads the business operations side while she leads the studio and the creative side of the company. While we worked on Karni’s brand I asked Gal, her partner, to dig into their data regarding customer journey. No agenda, no guide lines, just look and see if anything pops up. Within just a few days we revealed an important pattern that eventually increased bottom-line sales.
Some purchases peak right around the time that people get paid their salary
There are impulse sales, which are driven by triggers like TV appearances and social media influencer mentions. Yet, month over month we identified peaks in online sales at a specific time of the month.
When digging in deeper Gal made an amazing connection. The peak days were similar to the days before and mainly after pay checks are cashed. Makes sense, right?
Jewelry is not really a must have. Visitors on the web site may think they like an item. Their words come across by adding items to ‘my favorites’ and into the shopping cart.
Only when customers believe they can afford their Karni, do they act. That’s when the 4th Element of alignment, belief, comes together and closes the deal. And for whoever has engaged with the Growthanomics method the 4-elements of alignment must meet to convert customers to sales.
For Karni’s audience, who’s buying a her jewlery for their personal indulgence or as a gift, these elements come together at this part of the month – when their bank account is topped.
What kind of an alignment pattern do we see here?
- Thoughts: This is beautiful; it’s a ‘must have’.
- Words: Social engagement, conversations about the merchandise (online and offline), as well as inquiries at the company.
- Beliefs: I can afford this.
- Actions: Purchase.
What can businesses learn from the Karni case study?
With this significant insight in mind, the team adjusted its media strategy and messages alongside the engagement frequence. Also, it decreased costly media campaigns and focused them to a third of the time they used to before.
This insight has lessons for other e-commerce, SaaS companies and regular businesses too:
- Adjust your email automation to dates when your audience feels a higher ease or a need to purchase.
- Share short-term offers at the point when their thoughts, words, and beliefs align.
- Push extreme sales and reductions at other dates, when the capacity to buy may be lower, but the urge may be sky-rocketing. Identify these moments of higher urge to buy by tracking an increase in returning traffic to your site, social media engagements and inquiries.
- Maintain top-of-mind awareness using low-budget media actions, like retargeting, Google ads on your brand name, owned media strategies like social media posts.
- Adjust your media spend to peaks that prove actions. Start increasing media spend about five days before the predicted peak.
- Consider breaking down payments into installments or offering a SaaS-style model of monthly payments in place of a one-time charge.
What really enabled us to uncover this hack? Seek the points of alignment to grow
In the startup and tech world it may seem complex to identify and generate the touch points in which all four elements align. However, sometimes a simple insight like the one above reminds us techies and marketers to go back to basics and seek the simple connections that generate compelling events.
What did really enable us to uncover this trend and form a breakthrough in sales? Gal, Karni’s partner’s true ability is to truly put himself in his audiences’ shoes and identify the WHY. In this case, why do sales peek at a specific time of the month.
We then added even more depth and found the amount of engagements that the potential buyers had previously had with us to find the highest potential. However, even without that element we could move forward and grow.
The Karni case study shows how data-driven decisions can boost any business, big or small. And, that you don’t have to be the most experienced analyst to identify sweet spots and hacks. You just must pay attention. Wholeheartedly.
It’s always wonderful to see how the system of the 4-elements of alignment is relevant in every business and industry: cyber, health, e-commerce, data, lifestyle, wellness, robotics, you name it.
Most of all, it’s always amazing to see how true growth happens through alignment. Not just Karni’s customers, as shown above. Business growth depends on alignment inside the team and out. The Karni team believes in the product and its ability to help people shine, in the brand, in the business potential. They constantly think about how to move the needle and hack growth, they talk about their quest internally and with customers, and they insert massive action to support their words and dreams.
