I Honestly Love You

SO, we’re just going to come out and say it … sometimes it’s not all about sales, discounts and making money in business.

Sometimes, it’s about building trust with clients and customers. It’s about doing the right thing for the greater good.

It’s about creating a brand that stands for something and adhering to values those customers also hold dear.

And if you tell the world about all the good things you do as a company, greater numbers of people will be persuaded to learn more and perhaps buy from you.

Oh, so it actually is about growing your business and making money…

Ezra calls it “smart social”.

He recommends creating social content and sending it out to your email subscriber list as part of automation sequences (emails that go out to people automatically).

Trust builder emails are one of the main types of emails BOOM! By Cindy Joseph sends out.

These emails aim to build trust between the brand and the consumer or subscriber: “We’re saying, ‘Hey, here’s some good stuff we do. We care about the environment. And here’s why. And here’s how that fits into our brand’.”

Some ideas for trust builder emails are: social proof, customer testimonials, science proof, case studies – anything that talks about what you did, why it was good and how it helps.

Manufacturing process transparency builds trust, for example – here’s how we made this item and why we made it that way.

It’s all about honest communication covering any facet of your business – content that truly speaks to the customer.

“This is what we’re doing, here’s why we’re doing this, what’s going on, here’s who we are, here’s what we care about,” Ezra says.

“That really helps building trust and brand identity affirmations: affirming with the prospect the identity that you have as a brand.

“We think that plastic is not the best thing to put products in. So, we’re not using plastic’… ‘We think that products shouldn’t be tested on animals, so we don’t test on animals’.

“Whatever you think as a brand, whatever your brand identity is, you want to affirm that through content.”

A brand affirmation campaign that has been running this year has proven very successful for BOOM!

Ezra says the concept was “super easy to do and … unbelievably effective”.

“We sent an email about Earth Day. We said, ‘It’s Earth Day. In honour of this gorgeous planet, we call home, I want to take a moment to show you what we’re doing to live in harmony with the earth. We have our products that are handmade by beekeepers, we sustainably source ingredients. We don’t test our products on animals’,” Ezra says.

“There was no discount. This was just talking about how we build our brand in harmony with the earth and it linked over to our products. We posted about it on social media.

 

“Earth Day email: $28,000 in revenue. The un-opens (because we always resend to the un-opens): $10,000 in revenue.

“So we’re like, ‘OK, OK. This part of our brand identity is working well. People like the earth concept, so let’s do more like that’.

“You have to email content … You could just email about sales, which is great, but that’s only half the battle.

“If you want to make as much money as you possibly can from your email list, so that you have more money to invest into paying your people better and creating better products and doing better stuff in the world, you need to also email about content.”

Ezra also has created the BOOM! Cares logo specifically to highlight this type of content: “Here’s who we are and here’s what we care about. We care about the environment and here’s how we’re moving in that direction”.

“And that campaign is working really well,” Ezra says.

“Of course, we post about it on social.

“Sometimes, we will also amplify those. Eco-friendly packaging, eco-friendly beekeeping, 100% cruelty-free.

“Look at this certified organic sustainability: $11,000; un-opens: $10,000.

“There’s no sale event. Nothing is on sale.

“We’re just affirming our identity and we’re telling people, ‘Here’s what we believe in’ and it’s the same thing they believe. “That’s the key. You have to have your brand be in line with the viewpoints of your prospects.”

Another campaign was launched when BOOM! changed its packaging.

“We optimised our packaging, so that we are buying recycled paper,” Ezra says.

 

“We’re buying biodegradable envelopes. We’re buying biodegradable green wrap.

“We changed all of our packaging to be more eco-friendly.

“Here’s how we did that. I made a social post about it. This one made a bunch of money.

“We did the same thing with our BOOM! Bags … They were coming in these weird plastic things that are bad for the ocean. We changed that to organic cotton.”

Another campaign targeted sustainable forestry: “We’re buying our paper from people who are not just cutting down trees, but are doing it in a sustainable fashion and cutting down trees that are either already dead or that are needing to be pulled out for other reasons or were grown to be cut etc.

“It’s manufacturing process transparency. This is about our products and how we’re manufacturing them and what we’re doing in that direction and it’s brand identity affirmation.

“That’s a really effective combination and every brand can do that.”

Blog Post created from Ezra Firestone’s DMDU Connect LIVE 2020 Presentation.

If you would like to watch the full presentation, CLICK HERE and start your

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