Minneapolis Craft Market
Harnessing the spirit of live events to drive digital sales.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Minneapolis Craft Market relied on income from vendor registrations and attracted customers via destination shopping events and foot traffic. After cancelling all live shopping events, Minneapolis Craft Market launched a new online marketplace to earn revenue through a percentage of all online sales, as well as online vendor registration fees.
In August 2020, Minneapolis Craft Market hired c.e.galles digital to lead and execute an email marketing strategy to increase customer loyalty, retention, and sales.
The results:
Average monthly sales increased by 127%. Sales increased an additional 338% during holiday shopping months.
The number of vendors selling on Minneapolis Craft Market’s multi-vendor marketplace increased by 72%.
The average number of sessions (visits) to Minneapolis Craft Market increased by 28%. Sessions increased by an additional 99% during holiday shopping months.
c.e.galles digital was originally hired for three months. Minneapolis Craft Market renewed the contract – twice!
Camille brought creativity and consideration to our email strategy. What had previously been an afterthought in our marketing plan became an integral and proactive component of our marketing strategy, generating sales and engaging our customers.
-Hayley Matthews-Jones, Minneapolis Craft Market CEO
My work:
Email Strategy, Design, and Execution
Minneapolis Craft Market sells cute gifts, but the real reason customers buy is to support local business. I developed email campaigns that showcased the people and stories behind the crafts.
“Meet Your Maker” campaign to share vendor stories and create personal connections. (featured here)
“Note from Our Founder” campaign to target engaged subscribers who had yet to purchase.
“Five Fave Fridays” themed product round-ups
PopShop Live campaign emails to educate customers about our shows on an invite-only virtual live shopping app.
I created dynamic email segments to ensure that customers were motivated to convert and re-convert at every stage of the customer journey.
I built and optimized email automations including Abandoned Cart emails, Thank you emails, and a Welcome series.
I established digital benchmarks and tracked weekly metrics to gauge success.
Black Friday/Cyber Monday
Strategy, Design, and Execution
To capture customer attention and engagement during the busiest shopping weekend of the year, I launched a “Merry Mystery Picks” campaign.
Despite sending quadruple our normal email frequency, open rates remained consistently high (30-40%) and our click rate held steady at ~4%.
Very merry, indeed!