Salt Cellar
An eCommerce Success Story Born in the Height of a Pandemic
About The Client
The Salt Cellar is an acclaimed purveyor of gourmet sea salts, Dead Sea bath and spa products, and home and kitchen products made with the finest Himalayan and Dead Sea salts. The Salt Cellar’s mission is to bring its unique salt collections’ taste, beauty, and natural health benefits to its customers nationwide. Over the last decade, the Salt Cellar has been featured in The New York Times, Boston Globe,
The Atlantic, NH Chronicle, and other national media outlets.
Learn about the Salt Cellar’s start and story here.
The Challenge
In late 2019, the Salt Cellar contacted DARCI Creative for marketing support. Owner Don Tydeman explained that his retail sales were slow and his online sales had stalled. He was looking for new ways to hit the numbers he needed during the holiday months (and little did we know, a pandemic was looming just around the corner!). Don needed a creative and sustainable solution to ramp up his sales.
Our Solution
Focus On Ecommerce!
Our team leveraged critical analysis — strategic audits, observations, and meetings — to conclude that the Salt Cellar’s largest opportunity for improvement and growth existed online. We knew that, done right, digital marketing, and an integrated eCommerce strategy would be more flexible, scalable, and effective to grow his sales.
With eCommerce, purchases can be made from anywhere in the country and at any time of day or night; new product campaigns, promotional offers, and company announcements can be delivered directly to the inboxes, search results, and social feeds of existing buyers and target shoppers; the impact of each campaign compounds to create lasting authority and to lower user acquisition cost; and it takes a lot less overhead to operate most businesses online than it does to staff, decorate, and stock a traditional retail space.
Our assessment uncovered that the Salt Cellar’s website needed upgrading and could be much better optimized for Google Search. We also noted that his most profitable products had no spotlight and that product descriptions and imagery needed a boost. The Salt Cellar’s email marketing and social media marketing were also inconsistent and often dissociated from broader brand and sales objectives, and paid advertising could be enhanced as another way to drive meaningful traffic. Each UX, UI, SEO, and content marketing flaw was hurting the Salt Cellar’s online reach and total company balance sheet.
We explained, however, that ALL of these issues could be remedied with an integrated digital marketing strategy, revamped online store, and dedicated monthly performance reporting and response. Our team knew that when executed with care, eCommerce offers clients like the Salt Cellar a near-limitless return on investment (ROI).
The Results
Since we started collaborating with the Salt Cellar we have proved that online sales can contribute to profitability while evening out the sales cycles that brick and mortar shops are often tethered by. This is how we generated more customers and benefited the Salt Cellar’s bottom line.
Financial Analysis, Sales Strategy,
and Revenue Goal
“We prefer to make informed marketing decisions based on real numbers.”
We reviewed the Salt Cellar’s product inventory, expiration dates, and historical sales data to determine which items had to be sold (and when) and which provided the most profit margin. We also compiled historical website traffic, social media figures, and email demographic data to identify Salt Cellar’s target buyer persona — our ideal “shopper.”
We used all of this information to establish smarter funnels: Web, email, social, and paid ad campaigns that focused on either: A. selling hot (profitable) items to the most qualified leads, or B. used hot items in various promos to sweeten other purchase offers for our shoppers.
Each play had to achieve one of two objectives: A. sell a product at a maximum return or B. help reduce inventory without dipping below a predetermined break-even point. This strategy became the cornerstone of our success and it gave us trackable metrics to create month-over-month and year-over-year revenue goals. With benchmarks, we can really measure our worth!
Here are some highlight months and metrics featuring how the Salt Cellar’s online sales grew!
93%
Online sales growth in
December 2019 vs. 2018
117%
Online sale growth in *January 2020 vs. 2019
*Typically, a difficult time to generate much consumer spending after the holiday rush.
221%
July 2020 vs. 201
144%
The average growth of all online sales attributed to marketing in 2020 vs. 2019
100%
The approximate YTD rate at which online sales attributed to marketing continue to outperform 2020 online sales attributed to marketing
eCommerce Website Design, Web Development, & Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
To sell online, you need a beautiful, functional, and fully integrated eCommerce store.
Unfortunately, the Salt Cellar’s original website held back a lot of the business’s potential for online sales. Notably, it was hard to find using Google Search. It was built using a combination of WordPress and Shopify and the competing content management platforms were poorly tied together with two URLs (extra bad for domain authority). Profitable products also had no spotlight, descriptions needed to be jazzed up, and the quality of product imagery varied from listing to listing.
We decided to convert the Salt Cellar’s site entirely to Shopify. We selected and customized a new Shopify theme for the Salt Cellar and ported over all of its legacy blog posts from WordPress to a Shopify blog to benefit baseline SEO.
We developed a featured product area to display weekly promos on the homepage, streamlined the header aesthetics, simplified the main navigation, and improved the “Collections” dropdown functionality to elevate UX and further showcase select products. We took new product photos for the online store and even repurposed old eBooks to help capture and nurture leads.
Throughout, we paid close attention to SEO. Based on keyword research, all website content and products were optimized with meta descriptions, page titles, and image alt tags. This effort created cohesion and aligned the website experience with the Salt Cellar’s marketing goals.
Today, the Salt Cellar’s website is the company’s most powerful sales tool.
Received > 156,000 online visitors
Received > 50,000 sessions from organic traffic
Expanded geographic reach to include Ontario & London
Average session duration 1:05 per page
Average page visits per session 3.11
Year-over-year web metrics are climbing: organic traffic, sessions, reach, and more!
Learn about our web design & development services — including eCommerce integration — here.
Adding Subscription Services to the Mix
Almost every brick and mortar business deals with seasonal highs and lows when it comes to sales. eCommerce can help add creative revenue streams to bridge the gaps.
This has been particularly true over the years for the Salt Cellar. Foot traffic to its New England storefronts has traditionally surged in summer and trended towards dormancy through the long winter months (except for Christmas).
We determined it would be almost impossible to shift this in-person pattern — commerce on the ground in Portsmouth NH, Portland ME, and Newburyport MA, is historically dependent on the weather — but decided that we could help offset the Salt Cellar’s lulls by creating a recurring online-based revenue stream.
That’s why we created the “SaltScription.” The Saltscription is a subscription box that’s delivered to your door each season (every 3 months)! The items are a surprise until you open them, but you can expect a carefully curated selection of full-sized products from Salt Cellar’s spa line, with a few tasty items from their cooking line. Users can purchase the service for themselves or as a gift and can choose to pay quarterly, bi-annually, or annually (for a discount).
We like to say the SaltScripton is the gift that keeps on giving and the sale that keeps on selling.
Spread brand awareness
Low maintenance to manage
Offload products at risk of expiration
Fun to give!
Bring in steady dollars to offset downtime
Fun to recieve!
Promo Calendar Creation & Execution
Organization is key. No matter the time of year, we have a plan!
We’ve mentioned how a pillar of our strategic e-commerce plan for the Salt Cellar is to promote the most profitable products and products that need to leave the Salt Cellar’s shelves.
To support this effort, our team comes up with weekly promo ideas that will boost sales for specific purposes. We build these campaigns into the website, email, social, and paid ad campaigns — baking in static images, compelling video, fun animation, and other creative services as necessary. Some campaigns center around the holidays, others around the seasons, and some focus on giveaways and special promotions.
We map everything on a master calendar, draw connection points between channels, craft content and messaging that is unique to each portion of the sales cycle so that it will best resonate with the reader/watcher/visitor — our “shopper” — and manage the day-to-day production from start to finish.
Email Marketing Strategy & Execution
Email marketing is one of our most successful campaign channels for the Salt Cellar.
Email marketing supports a large percentage of the Salt Cellar weekly, seasonal, and holiday-based campaign traffic. It leads thousands of qualified buyers back to the website to engage with new product releases, product sales, product giveaways, and other e-commerce initiatives.
Since October 2019, we have:
Created more opt-in space on the website to collect emails
Merged SaltScribers into the company’s main email database
Grown the Salt Cellar’s total email marketing list by nearly 30%
Sent > 70 targeted email campaigns
Earned > 167,000 opens*
Received > 16,000 clicks*
Year-over-year web metrics are climbing: organic traffic, sessions, reach, and more!
*Those open rates and click-thru rates (CTRs) are higher than the industry average, by a lot!
Learn about our suite of digital marketing services — including email marketing — here.
Social Media Strategy & Execution
What’s a successful content marketing strategy without cohesive social media marketing?
Social media often gets swept aside by small business owners. This is understandable. Social media takes time to manage and its impact isn’t always as immediately measurable. But rest assured, it does produce ROI.
Social media is necessary if you want your products or services to organically reach as many eyes and ears as possible. Each platform can reach a different demographic, and it offers a unique avenue to give your brand a human touch and an approachable feel. It helps coax the sales cycle to build consumer awareness, delight, and ultimately — conversion.
We helped the Salt Cellar hone its social media strategy and growth by managing tasks like:
Campaign concepts & ideas
Content creation & language
Account posting & management
User engagement reporting
Month-over-month the Salt Cellar’s Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest have organically grown more than 10%. We’ve found the Salt Cellar audience particularly enjoys the video and animation content we create. It has translated to positive user engagement including likes, shares, comments, and most importantly clicks back to the website and email sign-ups.
Learn about our suite of digital marketing services — including social media marketing — here.
Paid Advertising Strategy & Execution
It’s critical to spend money to make money.
Paid digital advertising is an excellent way to achieve growth…but it can be an intimidating, frustrating, confounding, and time-consuming experience for many small business owners to manage, measure, and pivot.
Part of our annual marketing strategy with the Salt Cellar is to build a budget to create, place, and review paid ad campaigns on Google, Facebook, and Instagram. We identify which campaigns from our content calendar will benefit the most from this kind of exposure and we set spend limits to not exceed a product’s break-even point. This effort drives traffic back to products and offerings on the Salt Cellar’s website. That traffic helps close sales and also improves organic rankings — it all “ads” up, we like to joke! We tweak each future campaign based on what we learn from the rich data so we can improve each subsequent campaign to meet our KPI goals.
Learn about our suite of digital marketing services — including search engine marketing — here.
Video, Animation, and Photography Strategy & Production
Eye-catching and professional photos and videos are absolutely necessary for eCommerce.
We are constantly flooded with product imagery online. You have to stand out somehow.
Dynamic media demonstrates creativity and authenticity. Branded videos, animations, and photography offer users eye-catching, shareable content that can explain or sell a product, service, or idea faster than words alone. These assets tend to pay dividends too — helping boost website traffic and website page stay to benefit SEO. Win-win!
At Darci Creative, our in-house video crew produced 10 video campaigns for the Salt Cellar, featuring custom animations, product photography, and after-effects. Each video was also sliced up to give the client multiple cut-lengths and aspect ratio options for the best performance for the intended destination. For instance, the same 60-second horizontal video best for email was repurposed as a 30-second vertical video for social media. Both videos pitched the same product or promotion, but in a format suited to satisfy the platform restrictions and audience expectations.
One cool example is the video the team did for Salt Cellar’s Himalayan salt shot glasses. It was originally going to be a simple tutorial on how to make oyster shooters. We put a different spin on it with the faux social media live overlay. It made it feel relatable and it was an entertaining/unique way to show off the product. Here is the vertical version for social.
Learn about our video production services here, or check out our YouTube Channel or Vimeo.
Selling and Celebrating Salt — eCommerce for the Win!
Today, with our agency’s help, the Salt Cellar operates a highly profitable online store alongside three brick-and-mortar shops in Portsmouth NH, Portland ME, and Newburyport MA. This year, thousands of tourists will visit the Salt Cellar’s physical locations and tens of thousands more will shop the Salt Cellar web store for its flavored finishing salts, bath and spa products, home decor, and more.
We continue to work with Don on a weekly and monthly basis to manage his online shop, craft and distribute campaign content, and develop new and bold digital marketing ideas. This partnership has helped the Salt Cellar through a pandemic and economic downturn. It is more than Don could have hoped and exactly as we expected. When you commit to a solid marketing strategy and put in the work you give yourself the best opportunity to reap the rewards.
Do you have a retail presence or an online store that needs improvement?