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Mason & Madison

Meredith Schwartz -- Gifts and Dec, 8/6/2011 6:53:15 AM

“simple” and “informational,” Mason & Madison faced a twofold marketing challenge: to bring its nine-year-old Internet business into the era of social media, and to publicize its brick-and-mortar store, which only opened two years ago.

Learning to Socialize
Whereas Mason & Madison's old website was "simple" and "informational," the new site had to express personality. The store created a blog along with its ecommerce, "to tell a story about our products, events and daily happenings," according to owner Liz White.
But the storytelling didn't stop with the store's own virtual real estate. Mason & Madison redesigned its Facebook landing page as well, with an incentive to "like" the page. The redesign was completed on March 1, and since then, the store has doubled its fanbase. Better yet, users aren't just "liking" once for the incentive; Facebook Insights shows that monthly active users have actually quadrupled, from 200 to 800! The increase is probably due to Mason & Madison's user-friendly philosophy: "We've created and posted richer content about what our customers would expect from someone in our business. We don't view social media sites as a place to simply hawk our wares. It's a place for conversation and making connections." Mason & Madison redesigned its Twitter presence to match its Facebook look as well. Nor has the store ignored the oldest form of online marketing, email. Mason & Madison has started using Constant Contact to send timely, informational emails to its existing database of customers. "using services like Constant Contact provided us with instant, measurable results," White states. Meanwhile, a Mother's Day giveaway tied into a local magazine's blitz email campaign to reach new customers.

In Print, In Person
“simple” and “informational,”      But some of Mason & Madison's most effective marketing has been of a more old-fashioned variety, whether free-standing or done in combination with more high-tech techniques.
     "Using creative print services to provide marketing tools in the store like mailing list sign-up forms and referral business cards to hand out were inexpensive ways to collect the information we needed to market to our customers," says White. Events and charity tie-ins helped build excitement and gave her something to talk about through all these various outlets. “simple” and “informational,”
     The results are easy to see. Referral cards, which give a 10 percent discount to both the referrer and the referred, increased store traffic by 20 percent, and helped grow the mailing list by 25 percent. The in-store mailing list sign up program grew it even more, by about 30 percent. And a thank you email for signing up for the mailing list saw a 10 percent use rate. Sometimes the littlest gestures really do mean a lot.

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