JAYME PRETZLOFF
DIRECTOR OF MARKETING
WIXON JEWELERS
BLOOMINGTON, MINNESOTA
“One of the bigger initiatives that we are doing this year is our magazine, which will come out at the beginning of December. It’s been a big undertaking for us; we do it all in-house. It’s an 80-page magazine that we send out to all of our clients and also to the affluent homes within the Twin Cities market, which is our core demographic. [It features] editorial content that is focused on interesting trends about jewelry, lifestyle articles and watch features.
“We have holiday shows every year, we always run those. And we do direct mailings during December, especially to our top clients, not with the goal of offering them a percentage off, but to get back in front of them at that crucial time of year and really promote jewelry as being the quintessential holiday gift.”
GEORGE FRITZ
OWNER
MILLS JEWELERS
LOCKPORT, NEW YORK
“We’ll be doing a lot of Instagram and YouTube videos and some traditional media — local radio and very little newspaper. Direct mail continues to be one of our best tools. If we send mailings to our customers so they see our name, we see an increase in business. We do that on a regular basis throughout the year. This year, we have an artist who is drawing our staff sitting in giant diamonds, holding giant diamonds, and the caption is ‘We’re big with diamonds.’
“We also have a couple of events planned — a ladies’ night the second week of November, and then a couple of weeks later, ‘Shop Like a Man,’ a casual-dress men’s night. We’re in jeans and T-shirts, and we hand out T-shirts. We serve chicken wings, because we’re right near Buffalo, and beer. We have one of the celebrities from the Buffalo Bills attending, and we have a drawing. It’s held in early December, because men usually wait until the last minute to shop.”
MATTHEW ROSENHEIM
PRESIDENT
TINY JEWEL BOX
WASHINGTON, DC
“This holiday, Tiny Jewel Box will promote holiday sales through special events and designer trunk shows, kicking off in November with a grand opening event for our new Patek Philippe boutique. Then, for the first three weekends in December, we will have three can’t-miss trunk shows, starting with a diamonds event. This will be our first-ever showing of the highly coveted and rare Argyle Pink diamonds, as well as diamonds from master diamond cutter Harry Kotlar and hard-to-find antique diamond jewelry. The following two weekend shows feature new Tiny Jewel Box designers and also iconic designers.
“In addition, we will be advertising in the market through newspaper, magazine, digital, outdoor, direct mail, email blasts and social media. Through these, we want to remind our customers that Tiny Jewel Box is the place to visit to find the most unforgettable holiday gifts.”
ERIC SWANSON
SALES ASSOCIATE
NEUSTAEDTER’S FINE JEWELRY
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI
“We are having a ladies’ event — a wine, women, wish-list kind of event — after Thanksgiving. Rather than digital marketing, we are sending out postcards and direct mailers. And we’re going to send out some sort of gift coupon for our established client base. So mostly, we’re doing the promoting ourselves. In the past, we did Facebook and all sorts of other digital stuff, and it did not prove to be very cost effective. Our return on investment was poor. Everyone says digital marketing is the new thing, and we did try it with an established company and spent a lot of time and money on it, but they could never show us an increase in anything. It could just be our location or our particular store. But we seem to have better results when we reach our own client base with our own information.”
Image (left to right): Geroge Fritz, Owner Mills Jewelers; Matthew Rosenheim, President Tiny Jewel Box; Jayme Pretzloff, Director Marketing Wixon Jewelers.Article from the Rapaport Magazine - November 2017. To subscribe click here.