In the Loupe
In the Loupe
Beating the Summer Slump: Services to Drive In-Store Traffic
It’s no secret that summer can be a slower season for retail, and the jewelry industry is no exception. After the excitement of spring engagements and before the holiday shopping season ramps up, many jewelers experience a noticeable dip in foot traffic and sales. But a summer slowdown doesn’t have to mean a complete stall in business.
This time of year offers a unique opportunity to refocus on services that deepen customer relationships and encourage visits - without relying solely on high-ticket purchases. If you’re feeling the effects of the seasonal slump, here are a few proven strategies to keep your store top-of-mind and your doors open to more customers.
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Welcome to In the Loop that Hope highlights that jewelers can use to break the summer slump. Right now, when we look at e-commerce trends, we see that summer is definitely when there's the fewest transactions when it comes to e-commerce. There's no real major holidays to kind of push behind, and a lot of times you just got to be creative as a retailer and find ways to market your store. And Hope makes a great point about getting behind things like services, so cleaning your jewelry and incentivizing people to come in, maybe with a discount code or something like that, and get them to come into the store and take a look around. I think it's a really cool talk. It's a little bit quicker, but it also talks about some of the ways that you can get behind marketing those services and kind of see if you can break out of the summer slump. Hopefully you enjoy this quicker episode. We'll be back next week Tuesday with another episode. Cheers.
Speaker 2:This episode is brought to you by Punchmark, the jewelry industry's favorite website platform and digital growth agency. Our mission reaches way beyond technology. With decades of experience and long-lasting industry relationships, punchmark enables jewelry businesses to flourish in any marketplace. We consider our clients our friends, as many of them have been friends way before becoming clients. Punchmark's own success comes from the fact that we have a much deeper need and obligation to help our friends succeed. Whether you're looking for better e-commerce performance, business growth or campaigns that drive traffic and sales, punchmark's website and marketing services were made just for you. It's never too late to transform your business and stitch together your digital and physical worlds in a way that achieves tremendous growth and results. Schedule a guided demo today at punchmarkcom. Slash go.
Speaker 1:And now back to the show. What is up everybody. My name is Michael Burpo. I'm joined by Hope Belair, digital marketing team manager at Punchmark. How are you doing today, hope?
Speaker 3:I'm doing swell. How are you, Mike?
Speaker 1:I'm doing all right. It's the middle of the summer, we just had Fourth of July and I'm feeling a little bit of a summer slump. How do I beat that Hope? If I was a jeweler? How am I beating the summer slump?
Speaker 3:Beating the summer slump is actually a little easier than you would expect. This is a great time for jewelers and everybody to kind of focus on your services. What is bringing people into the store as far as jewelry, cleaning, polishing, appraisals, gold buying all this fun stuff, because at this time you're kind of competing with vacations, obviously, and being outside in the fun summer sun, even if it is hot. So a lot of different things that jewelers can do. As far as beating that summer slump, getting people into the store and maybe getting some low ticket sales associated with it, are sending that six month you know email to your clients that bought an engagement ring in January. It's definitely time for them to get it cleaned, checked up and polished, make sure it looks sparkly for the upcoming season, especially in the holidays, and that's a good time for them to start looking around the store, say, hey, I know quarter four is coming up, the holidays are coming up and why not start your shopping now? Create a little bit of a wishlist and get some people into the store that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, what's really interesting is at the client workshop. I was talking to a lot of our clients and one thing I thought was very interesting is I was talking with Cole at Wares and he was telling me how much business they do through watch, battery repair or swap whatever they call it, replacements. Watch battery replacements.
Speaker 1:There you go, that's the right word. And he was explaining to me just how much money they do just off watch, battery replacements. And he's like, yeah, they're a little pain in the neck, you know, sometimes they're a little finicky. But man, if we cut that out we'd be cutting out a lot of business. And I guess I never really thought about the fact that these repairs are probably a pretty reasonable line item for a lot of these stores. How do you recommend they start actually marketing this? So you said we should start marketing. Is that in the form of emails or just emails? Or how do you recommend that they start reaching out?
Speaker 3:Honestly, it could be as simple as a social media post to start, just because, again, that is the best free, cost-effective way to do it. And then there's diving into your email marketing and saying, hey, send out that email that says we need get your jewelry cleaned. And then, if they didn't open it let's say in two or three days you create a follow-up sequence that says, hey, I noticed, you know you bought this ring or pendant, whatever In the last six months. It is time to get it professionally cleaned. And you know it's funny I was talking to my, my mother the other day and she was wearing her anniversary ring as her engagement ring that my dad got for her, I think 15 years ago at this point, and I looked at her and I said, yeah, did you ever get that professionally cleaned?
Speaker 3:And she said no, and she didn't even know that that was something that needed to be done. So I told her you know, hey, we've got a lot of jewelry stores in the area. Maybe you just pop in. Most of them do free jewelry cleaning and then you can look around to see what you might like for your upcoming anniversary and Christmas.
Speaker 1:That's really interesting. I guess I didn't really think that people wouldn't know about jewelry cleaning. That's a really good point. All right, everybody, we're going to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1:The second set of jewelry shows are back and everyone at Punchmark wants to see you at IGO Indianapolis and RGO Schaumburg. We've got some great deals on the table as well. Retailers get 15% off your design by making an appointment, or save 30% by bundling any of Punchmark's digital marketing plans at the show. Clients cash in on your loyalty and get 5% off your upgrade for every year you've been a Punchmark client. That's up to 80% off the pre-financed price for our most loyal customers. 80% off, that's like pretty much free. Or clients can sign up for one of our more comprehensive digital marketing plans and get their new theme actually for free. Wow, it's a hell of a deal. Anyways, make your appointment at punchmartcom, slash appointments and now back to the show and we're back. One of the things I was thinking about is I've just been really on the vertical videos lately, like reels. They're sucking away my life and I think a really good reel that I think would perform pretty well is something about putting on sunscreen with your hands.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And then talking about how it gunks up and dims your uh, your stones, for example, like taking your your sunscreen and putting it on and then showing like a before and after for, like, what the surface of a stone looks like like if you have a we did a this isn't a sponsorship, but, uh, the gem loop. I think that those are one of those things that could definitely, um, kind of be used. That would be like, hey, here's what your jewelry looks like when it's freshly cleaned and here's what it looks like after you use sunscreen, and like maybe put some sunscreen on your hands and then show it. That's the kind of thing that people know that they should be, you know, cleaning their jewelry. People know that they should be washing their, their hands, but it's when you start to see like on a bacterial or microbacterial level. I feel like it really drives the point home exactly, I agree.
Speaker 3:And you know, the real portion of it can literally just be the store owner putting lotion on her hands or his hands with a bunch of rings on.
Speaker 3:That's easy enough.
Speaker 3:And same thing with, like you know, maybe you're on a vacation and you're wearing your necklace and you're getting sunscreen with your neck Easy enough, it can be as simple as 10 to 15 seconds, maybe even six, who knows. But creating an initial post like that definitely helps and definitely gets to see like, oh, the sparkle isn't as good when it's been applied for, let's say, in my mom's case, 15 years and didn't know that she should get it professionally cleaned. And I mean, but yeah, and then after the reels portion of things, if you wanted to dive deeper and get that email out and then maybe create a small budget ad campaign specifically on Meta that is going to boost that reel that you had just created, now that can go, let's say, to a 10-mile radius if you're in the city, 20, 30-mile radius if you're in a rural area, and really just get people into the store to say, hey, it's summer vacation, everyone has a little bit more time on their hands, generally speaking, and can come and view a jewelry store and get everything ready for the quarter four. Rush hits.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think, just in looking at our e-commerce metric reports, is July is definitely one of the lowest months for e-commerce. August is actually a little bit better, but September and October are both pretty mid, if we're being totally honest. I think that, starting the combination, I think it would just be just plan out like three or four solid posts and put those together. When it comes to the emails, sometimes I'm kind of loathe for us to give advice if it's for clients that they're not going to be able to easily follow on their own. Do most of our clients in your experience, do most of our clients that aren't marketing clients already have like an email list that they can easily reach out to, that's you know, that's already exported, that they're able to kind of have tangibly?
Speaker 3:Absolutely yeah. So in my experience, everybody that has a jewelry store obviously does have a bit of an email list through the edge, generally speaking, and they can export that easily enough to send out. I mean, even if you don't have, let's say, Constant Contact or Claviyo or one of those bigger email providers, if you wanted to just segment those lists or that list to the people that have been in over the last six months and come up with different lists, let's say six months, yes, a year over one year. And then let's say your oldest clients and come up with different messaging for each, Obviously six months. They've been in there in the last six months.
Speaker 3:You can say, hey, we appreciated you stopping by earlier this year just letting you know it is time for a ring cleaning. Or let's say this idea there Over a year, same thing, like hey, it's been a while since we've seen you, Come on in, We'll clean your jewelry for free. And then, when you're getting into the older segments, like over two to five years, say hey, actually maybe we need to appraise some of your jewelry because what you bought it for may not be what it's worth now. It might've increased in value. Or maybe they're looking to remount, resize, custom design something.
Speaker 1:Maybe that's an older piece that you could initially start a project with. Do you find that combining these services into like a landing page is the best route? Because, unfortunately, when it comes to these things, you can't really sell jewelry cleaning in an e-commerce platform. It's not really our strength. However, sometimes I feel like you can convert onto your landing page as a service, bring people into a service and then, just by getting them onto your website, you can retarget. Is that kind of the end goal? Them onto your website you can retarget. Is that kind of the end goal? Just because, look, not all about the money. There is loyalty to be won, but it feels like again with jewelry, it's almost like, yes, you can make some dollars off of the servicing of it, but obviously the main goal is probably going to be to sell it right. So how are you sort of converting that on a digital format?
Speaker 3:So not to toot our own horn, I guess, but Punchmark does have a great jewelry services automatic page that pops up and that's something that we can definitely remarket and retarget based on that specific landing page. But if we're looking to expand on that landing page and, let's say, come up with more of a custom jewelry services landing page that can be tailored more to your experience whether that be, maybe you specialize in, obviously, custom design, but maybe you specialize in redesigning pendants, that sets you apart from your competitors and stuff like that and from there you have a form that you can fill out, or our custom wizard that is embedded in there, and then after that you can say, hey, actually, while you're doing this, let's polish it, etc. Just having like a nice custom landing page that sets you apart from the difference or, excuse me, your competitors, can definitely make the difference. Now, especially if you're running that low budget ad, driving traffic to that page specifically is going to give your audience a bit more of a curated experience and tell them a little bit more about your story. Versus, let's say, okay, we just offer jewelry ring cleaning, why should they come to you for that specifically? Maybe it's. You know, you guys have a different technique than others. You know there's a lot of different ways to differentiate yourself.
Speaker 3:But driving people to that landing page and having a landing page specifically for services while it may seem mundane and definitely isn't the number one aspect of your business, let's say, and something that you don't want to focus on, but it is still an important part of the business and then from there, obviously, if someone new interacts with that, then you can remarket to them with other things as far as like okay, we created this ad. It was a new customer that came to this services landing page, but at least we know that they're interested in jewelry, so that maybe quarter four rolls around and you have a custom design campaign on Meta that's going with it. You can then retarget that person that interacted with your services landing page to then come to your custom design. And maybe they're looking to redesign some old jewelry, maybe they're looking for a custom design for a Christmas gift. And maybe they're looking to redesign some old jewelry. Maybe they're looking for a custom design for a Christmas gift. That's where all of this will interconnect and combine to make a very nice quarter four.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think we always talk about how SEO kind of takes a little while to sort of register and start, I guess, indexing, getting the points. I think that that's one of those things that we should probably do, like here's how you should be prepping for your Q4. You should probably get on that pretty soon. But just to circle back to jewelry cleaning, I just want to tell people jewelers, if you're listening, I really do recommend filming the jewelry cleaning process. I find it very cool. A lot of people find it very therapeutic, very like like I don't want to say ASMR, but like kind of in that realm, like I really like looking at especially watches getting uh, repaired but I know that that's more involved but like just taking it in. Um, what is it called when they, uh they put it into the like the water bath or like the, the bath?
Speaker 2:yes, and it.
Speaker 1:I think it's so cool. It's a great video that's ready to be made. And just talking about and looking at it through a loop before and after, I think that is a winning social post right there. And then repurposing it for some ads, I think, is a slam dunk man. If I worked at a jewelry store I would do that right now. That's a really good one. I'm talking myself into it.
Speaker 3:No, actually. I mean honestly, my Facebook reels have been about the same. I don't know whether it's you know, I will watch that dirty ring get cleaned, because I'm curious, I really want to know, or like the ones where they look at them and they're like, yeah, this stone is loose, and they like wiggle it.
Speaker 1:And then they you know, they re-tip it or do something like that Definitely worth a recording. Just film everything vertically or have your you know someone that's around, if it's a little bit slower getting a chance to kind of film it. Or see what's underneath this ring, that kind of thing, Definitely look into that, yeah. Or see what's underneath this ring, that kind of thing. Definitely look into that, yeah. Hope, anything else that we should be doing for these jewelers should be doing for their to beat the summer slump, Anything else. That's kind of we already talked about sending emails, having a little marketing campaign around services, whether that's cleaning services or repairs or watch batteries. I think those are the kind of things that really get people back into the store and they kind of see it more as a utility, which is unique in the luxury industry. Anything else that these people should be trying out.
Speaker 3:I mean outside of your flash sales and different kinds of incentives to bring people into the store discount wise for the summer Not particularly. I think thinking and focusing on bringing service people into the store and getting planting the seed, if you will, for quarter four is very important. And then, in that same SEO breath that you touched on a little bit earlier, getting all of your products and all of your landing pages ready for Christmas. Now is a really good time to take the time and make sure that all the SEO and meta descriptions, title tags, item title tags, all that fun stuff is ready to go for quarter four, because if you make those changes now, it will take Google at least two months to really kind of see that change and elevate you organically in that space. So now is the time to really, I guess, double down and put in the work services and SEO wise.
Speaker 1:In my opinion, and if you are, this goes a little bit over your head. Make sure you make an appointment with, with Punchmark, and get a chance to meet everybody. We're going to be at, you're going to be at RJO and and ijo just rjo.
Speaker 3:This time I'll have to skip ijo. I'll be in my cousin's wedding, so I can't really say no to that understandable.
Speaker 1:Understandable. So everybody, just make an appointment. You get them, uh, get you set up with with a uh email campaign or get you some landing pages. Those are the kinds of things that we're going to be doing the exact same thing that you would be doing. It's just if you don't want to have to do it yourself. I always laugh about that. That's a funny way for us to phrase it. It makes it so easy sounding. But also I know that some people it's not that they're lazy, they're just busy.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:All right, thanks so much, hope. A little bit of a shorter episode. I appreciate you all listening. We'll be back next week, tuesday, with another episode. Cheers, thanks, bye. All right, everybody. That's the end of the show. Thanks so much for listening. My guest this week was Hope Belair, the digital marketing manager at Punchmark. This episode was brought to you by Punchmark and produced and hosted by me, michael Burpo. This episode was edited by Paul Suarez with music by Ross Cockrum. Don't forget to rate the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and leave us feedback on punchmarkcom slash loop. That's L-O-U-P-E. Thanks. We'll be back next week, tuesday, with another episode. Cheers, bye.
