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As a small business owner, you need to be a lot of things to make your business go—but you don't have to be a marketer alone. Join host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, and Kelsi Carter, Brand Production Coordinator, as they explore what it really takes to market your business. Even if marketing's not your thing! You'll hear from small business leaders just like you along with industry experts as they share their stories, challenges, and best advice to get real results. This is the 2x Webby Award Honoree Be A Marketer podcast!
Dave Charest: Today on episode 24 of the Be a Marketer podcast, you'll hear from the owner of a consignment shop that served over a million customers and I'm sharing why setting high standards makes marketing your business easier. This is the Be a Marketer podcast. My name is Dave Charesthe, director of small business success at Constant Contact and I've been helping small business owners like you make sense of online marketing for over 16 years. You can be a marketer and I'm here to help. Well hello friend and thank you for joining me for another episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. As always, I am grateful to have you join me. You know recently my wife and I, we had a binge watch day because season two of the Bear is out. Now if you havent seen the show, add it to your list. Highly recommended. Its about a young chef from the fine dining world who returns to Chicago to run his familys sandwich shop. Theres great writing, great acting and its got tons of high tension that makes for a great dramatic series. Now I dont want to give anything away, but I will say that one of the things I enjoyed most about the second season was really watching each character go on a journey to learn what it means to deliver at a high standard consistently. I'm always enthralled by people discovering what they're good at and then working to master their craft. And then when everyone comes together in their respective roles with these standards in mind, that's really where the magic happens. And it made me think about how businesses that create these great experiences for their customers do so because the team is, one, all on the same page about what the standard is for the business. And two, you know, the team is really permitted to wow customers. So setting these standards and constantly working to achieve these standards really allows your business to stand out. Now this experience that people have with your business becomes a marketing asset for you because it's something that not only brings customers back to you, but it's also something people talk about, allowing word of mouth to bring new people in. So if you haven't done so already, document the standards that you expect everyone in your business to follow. Be clear on the standard and give your team permission to deliver. Because at the end of the day, your business is going to be better for it. Take for example today's guest. She shares how her high standards allow her to consistently move 93% of her store's consignment inventory. Well friend, today's guest, Marianne Murdoch Sullivan is the owner and president of Consignments Limited in Wakefield, Rhode island. This 6400 square foot brick and mortar store sells furniture, lighting, china and everything you can imagine for the home and for good measure, handbags and jewelry. The store has over 6000 registered consignors. And over its 17 years, Marianne and her staff of five has served well over a million customers. Now, as I mentioned earlier, Marianne sells about 93% of the inventory that comes in. And if she could shed wear roller skates all the time because the business is moving so fast, I. Marianne told me why she's so passionate about the business. Let's pick up the conversation there.
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: It was a passion of mine because it's green.
Dave Charest: Oh, okay. Yeah, sure.
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: When you look at how many billions of tons of furniture, just furniture, go into the landfill in America every year, it'll make you sick. And then on top of that, textiles, and then on top of that, you know, home decor items, and then on top of that, and it's just mind boggling. And a lot of the things, it's because they're not made all that well. They end up in there. But better made things can be sold and sold and sold, you know, and my mom was an antique dealer, so I never understood new things. We really never really had new things. We always had, you know, old things. And it just made sense to me.
Dave Charest: So I'm curious, you know, you've been doing this. What? If I'm not mistaken, you started in 2005, is that correct?
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: I. I think 2006. About 17 years.
Dave Charest: Yeah, 2006. Okay, wow. 17 years. So I guess what got you to the point where, so you're in corporate America, you're doing your thing, and then obviously children, and then life happens, and then what got you to the point where, here's what I'm gonna do. Like, how did that come about?
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: I think because my mom was a dealer, you know, she was an antique dealer. She had a little shop in our town. The way that I was raised, Washington, basically reuse, recycle before that was a thing. And I was always, you know, somebody who, as I would say, went sailing and I did not mean in a boat, you know, we went yard sailing, antiquing, all those kind of things. From the time I was a kid. I was going to the Brimfield antique show when I was a teenager, when I didn't own a home or need any furniture, but just sort of an appeal of sort of older things and things. What is this for? What was this used for? Why? Or this is so beautiful. What is it? Or can I make this into something else, you know? So that kind of was part of the appeal. It worked with my life. So my ex husband is an attorney, and it was a lot of, lot of hours for him. So it needed to be a job that was flexible enough that I could pick the kids up at school and bring them somewhere. I'm like, mom's still working. Come on in. You can organize the paper bags, you know, like that kind of thing. And it just. It grew out of that.
Dave Charest: Well, I was going to say, like, how did that all work out just in terms of your schedule? Right. Because it's like, obviously, you know, having two children myself, like, who are now grown, but it's like, it's not like having kids is easier, right? So, like, yeah. How did you manage that? How'd you balance all of that out?
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: I balanced it with a lot of help. And in terms of the business itself, like, in Rhode island, you are required to pay part time employees for a four hour shift, minimum. So I worked it so that the shifts, and they're still that way to this day, even though my kids kids are all grown, where they come in at a point where then I could leave and having, I mean, an absolutely bang up, fantastic staff. I mean, right now I think we're at the height of our best staff ever, which is such a blessing, given how hard it is to find people. And a lot of people have come through here and gone out the other way just over the course of their lives. And their, what happened with them? It worked for them and then it didn't kind of thing, but it worked for my family. And then even with the staff being so good, then I could travel with my kids when they did sports and I could take them on the college visits and stuff because I had the flexibility because it was my business. And that really helped a lot because I kind of solo parented for a really long time, even when I was parenting with someone else.
Dave Charest: So I'm curious about what you're talking about, just in terms of employees. One, congratulations to you for having a great staff that you have and finding that, I'm wondering, because this is often one of the challenges that we hear from people. It's difficult to hire, difficult to find those people that fit with what you're looking for. And so what are you doing? Are you doing anything special here to find these people? What's your secret sauce?
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: Secret sauce? Sometimes referral, you know, sometimes, like, our last person that we got, we got from a referral, somebody knew somebody who knew somebody kind of thing. And we've used the typical services to find them. One of the things I always say is basically, if you like HGTV, like I like HGTV, you're going to like this job. But you also have to be somebody who can multitask and who doesn't mind being busy. We don't have a down season. We may be slower in January, but we're still busy in the summer because we live in a beach community. We're slammed. We're absolutely slammed. So if you're interested in that kind of thing, and I've also asked, you know, if you're interested in art, for example, because we sell a ton of art, we actually won for the best art in southern Rhode island, and we beat galleries, which was mind boggling to me. I was like, no, that galleries gallery is better than this. But. But I think because it's art at a discount, you know, like, it's off retail. Like, you're not going to pay a gallery price for something here, even if they bought it in a gallery last year. So people that are interested in art, antiques, home decorating, that kind of thing are going to do well here. And I appeal to that. I also pay really well. You have to. I didn't always have to. But you do now. I do. A signing bonus when they are here 30 days. You have to do, do all that stuff. I offer a store discount. They can also sell their own items for a better percentage than the general public. So if you came off the street, you get a 50 50 split with me, they get a 60 40 and they keep the 60. So a lot of them do. Like, one of my gals is really into repurposing furniture, so every week she's sending me pictures. Can I bring this in? I found this the side of the road. I put a new service on it, I painted it, I reupholstered it, blah, blah, blah, blah. What do you think? And she makes good money at it. So it's in addition to her salary. She makes money selling her own items. So that's kind of the combination.
Dave Charest: So I guess I got two things I want to go back to. Just how you go about choosing or getting items into the store, that type of thing. But I also anything, or if you're thinking about another business owner listening today and the hiring process, obviously it sounds like you're doing the right things just in terms of attracting people, in terms of paying them well and giving them good options and things like that. Is there anything that you've learned over the years in terms of like, red flags or, you know, when you have somebody good, like, what's the thing? And I know sometimes this comes down to gut. Right? But, like, what's your process in terms of choosing the people to work with?
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: The woman that I didn't choose told me that she was going to be late for the interview because she was having a pedicure. That was a red flag. And then she came to the interview, and in the flip flops. Okay, so that was a big, like. No, but I also think that if you can have a real conversation with somebody and you can ask them about their challenges in terms of, you know, how have you. And I only take people with good customer service experience already, but, like, how have you dealt with somebody who is just awful and just shut up and see what they say? And what I like, what I tend to gravitate towards are the people who have a strategy for that, but also know when they're in the weeds, they know when they're out of their depth, and they say they things to me like, and if that wouldn't work, I'd go get my manager. You know, if I were working here, I'd go get you. I think the keeping part of the staff is. It's going to sound corny, but it's loving your people. So it's a small staff, but right now, we have a staff of. It is all women that work with me. But these are some of the finest women I know. And they also know that I will not ask them to do something I won't do. You know, I'm not the owner that must, you know, lovey, you know, hold my coffee, you know, so they know that I'll get down right on the floor. Shaheen and I were reorganizing the jewelry the other day, and we bring a new jewelry. I go to the jewelry district in New York, and we buy jewelry, and we sell it, you know, for a markup. But, you know, it makes some people, when they come in looking for a chair, right? But they don't find a chair. They go away with something, you know, they feel like, oh, I got a new pair of earrings. You always clean as you redecorate, you know, and we were cleaning, and I was on. On my hands and knees, picking up little pieces of stuff on the floor, and this woman said to me, what are you doing? I said, I'm praying. And she goes, well. And I said, I'm cleaning my store. And she said, well, I thought the staff should be doing that. And I said, no. And I think they know that about me. They know that, first of all, I'll defend them to the death. I will stand between them and a bullet, and I will also push them to be the best people that they can be. A lot of them like, what they're learning here, you know, because furniture and interior design have their own language, they have their own terms, but a lot of the staff really enjoy learning about all that stuff and learning about furniture, periods and artists and different things that come with the territory. So. Helps their brain.
Dave Charest: Yeah. So I was gonna say. So I'm curious, just what's that process, like, then, of, and even what's the ratio of, like, how you choose items that you are gonna try to sell? And what's maybe, is there criteria that comes into play for you? Just makes you say yes or no, and, like, what is that? Other times, you have to be like, I'm sorry, like, we're not gonna be able to move that. And I guess, what's the wildest thing somebody's tried to sell with you?
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: Yeah, well, there's a few of those. What it comes down to, really, is, I think at first you think, well, you have good taste, and therefore, if you like it, but that's not enough of a standard, right? Because just because I like it, the entire store would probably be blue, and I would never take anything victorian, and I would never take anything mid century modern, and I would never because it's not my thing. But what you start to understand is your customer and what your customer will and will nothing and what condition it has to be in. And we're really particular, and people will say, whoa, you're so picky. I'm like, well, store never smells bad. I don't have to make an excuse for anything I have on my shelves. I don't have to make an excuse for a piece of furniture. And if I find out there's something wrong with a piece of furniture, we have all these processes in place that we've developed over all the years that I'm going to call you, and you have seven days to pick it up. You have seven days to pick it up because you own it and you glued it. And you didn't tell me you glued it. We didn't see it. And now we've seen it, and we think it's a hazard. You got to come get it. So our standard is pretty high, and I think as a result, that's why we sell 93% of everything that comes in. I mean, in this industry, that's huge. But you learn over the course of time and things are cyclical. So, like, for example, when I first started, mid century modern was nothing like nobody wanted it. People thought it was ugly 1960s furniture. And now I get really decent money for it. There is a great clientele for it within my store, but it's come as a wave. I always think if I go to New York and they're selling it in New York, in Rhode island, it'll catch up. A year from now, it'll catch up. You know, it's like fashion, you know, only it moves at a little bit slower pace. It's a little bit harder to do fast furniture than it is to do fast fashion. But you still do it, you know? But there's also those trends. Like, for example, everybody's grandma had a hutch. I'm old enough. My mother still has a hutch. We don't even sell them. Nobody wants them. The trend is away from that. If you have a dining room at all, you don't have that piece of furniture in it. Younger people don't even register for good China. They don't need a piece of furniture to house it. And then when they get to a certain age, their mom moves into a condo and says to them, well, now you do Thanksgiving, honey, because you've got the big house. They come running in here, hair on fire china. I'm having Thanksgiving. And they buy it that way. But then they don't store it in a display type of way. They store it in totes in their garage, even, you know, they store it elsewhere. So it's just following those trends to understand, you know, what's going to work. And people have to submit pictures of their furniture to me via the Internet for me to approve before we let them bring in mine.
Dave Charest: Gotcha. Looking at your kind of path and journey to this place, or you should say starting your journey doing this business. I mean, was starting a business something you ever thought you would end up doing?
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: I think because I worked in corporate America, and I thought that it was really sort of dysfunctional in a lot of ways. You know, I worked for a Fortune 50. My department alone, you know, marketing and advertising was 267 people. It was a lot of layers. And I couldn't talk to the vice president without going to my vice president, even though he was my client within. And it just seems so incredibly useless. You know, it really didn't seem like much got done. It seemed like a lot of people talking about a lot of things, but not doing a lot of things. So I think that was a frustration. I loved working for the advertising agency, that was a blast job that I just loved. I was a copywriter for them, and then I was a copywriter for in corporate, but I really got to understand all different people's businesses that way, and I really liked that. So I can see that, you know, what does Steve Jobs say when you look back? You can connect the dots. You know, I can see the dots connecting. But if I thought, are you going to ever open your own business? I'd say probably I did, only because I thought, well, at least then it's my screw up. It's my right or wrong. It's my. It's why I wanted to be the person parenting my kids, you know? Cause I figured, hey, when they need the therapist, I want them talking about me, not the nanny.
Dave Charest: Taking some responsibility there.
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: Yeah, I'm taking responsibility for that.
Dave Charest: Well, I'm curious. I mean, your skillset as this copywriter, I mean, you apply any of that stuff to, I would assume, like, descriptions of items and things like that comes in handy.
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: Yeah. And what I use, when I started with constant contact, I told you I used these, you know, new this week. You know, I did these six items, and now we do that. Plus we do three items that are on sale every week. And we have a loyalty program that has helped us to build our readership, which I can talk about if you want, but then separately. During COVID I was encouraged to go back to my roots, kind of. Okay. My store was shuttered for 57 days by the state of Rhode island. Everybody's was. Everybody that was non essential. And to connect with my customers, I started writing a blog. And I started writing a blog on interior design because that's what I do. That's what I know. And we used a couple of different platforms at first to try to distribute and try to. And the bigger the readership got, the harder that was. And a friend of mine, actually that works for AWS said to me, use your constant contact. And I was like, what? And he's like, yeah. And I was like, really? And it was such a great decision because now it's all in one place. And they get an interior design blog twice a week written by a professional writer, is what I tell them.
Dave Charest: Yeah, there you go.
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: And then they get the two blasts about what's new and what's on sale. So I use my writing every single day and my marketing background because, I mean, I was told by my great marketing professor at GW, everything is marketing.
Dave Charest: Yes.
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: Okay. Everything. You market yourself the moment you walk out your door. By what you wear, how you act, everything. So I always think of that. And I use the copywriting all the time, and it helps with the blog. It's a different format than I was used to, you know? Cause I was used to writing about your business and writing about your thing and making it about a blog has to be more personal. So that was hard, especially with a daughter in cybersecurity. It was really hard. She's like, no, don't say that. But also to make it topics that my customers want to read, you know, and they come in weekly and tell me, I love the blog on pillows, you know, who knew? And it connects them to the store, so it makes them want to come in and the sharing of a little bit more personal. Like, I don't say where I live, I know that. But sharing a little bit, like Easter Sunday, my blog comes out on Sundays and Tuesdays. Easter Sunday, I'm not going to write about pillows. That just seemed wrong, you know, but I'm also not going to write about something religious that also seems wrong. So what I wrote about was, I recently became a type one diabetic, and I wrote about my reasons for gratitude, and it was totally off topic. And I had people crying coming and saying to me, I'm so glad you shared that, you know, my brother's a diabetic, or, I've had a health challenge, and the support that I got or didn't get, you know, da da da. And it just opens the customer relationship up to something bigger. And at first, I was a little resistant to sharing a little bit like that. But it has really proved to be a really great strategy. Even though it wasn't honestly a strategy, it was kind of was an organic.
Dave Charest: Evolve again, like, thinking back on it or having that reflection period. Like, what would be the marketing lesson you learned from that then?
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: The marketing lesson is that you don't do business with businesses. You do business with people, right? So I became a person to them. I didn't just become a shop a stop. It's a conversation we're having, and they share with me topics they'd like me to talk about. So it's a two way street where they reach out to me and say, you know, I never really knew how to do wallpapering. So I decided, okay, I'm gonna wallpaper a bathroom while my fiance was away. It was an interesting project to try to do in one weekend, but I did. But then I could talk about it, like having recently done it, and then people are coming in saying, I loved your bathroom, how it came out. Do you have any more tips? You have any more? And it becomes a conversation. And while they're here, oh, they bought a console table, you know, or they picked up a piece of jewelry, or they bought a handbag, or they bought a rug, or, you know, so they're doing business with me and the women that work with me instead of. Consignment's limited, you know, and they like us, and this makes them feel like they know us a little bit.
Dave Charest: What can you tell me, then, about just the role of community in your business, then?
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: Community in what sense?
Dave Charest: I guess you talked a little bit about the importance of really, like, knowing your customer. And I guess, like, how does that play into the people knowing you in the community? And to your point of, like, just how you've made these personal connections through just changing the way you're writing and doing these things? But, like, also, just what role does that just play on bringing people into the store? Like, what impact do you find that has?
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: One thing I realized because of the university of Rhode island, we have a lot of kids. They come to campus with their parents, obviously, the first time. After that, they're like, no, I don't need your mom. But the parents are nervous. You know, they're scared. They're dropping their baby off. I get that. When we show them that we can be a resource about community things to them, like, in just chatting them up, it's like, oh, you know, I don't know what Johnny's gonna do because he's gonna need a haircut. And we're like, okay, well, we can give you three barbers right here, right now. We can tell you where to take him to dinner before you leave. We can tell you book your hotel now for graduation, even though he's a freshman. And we do that, we also. One of the things that's near and dear to me is I'm on the board of directors of the local domestic violence resource. We used to just sell clearance on the sidewalk and give them the funds. The landlord did not like that idea of having stuff on the sidewalk like that, that we couldn't bring in at night and some of us couldn't lift some of these pieces.
Dave Charest: Sure. Yeah.
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: So what I did was I took one of my stock rooms, and I made it their room, and everything we sell in there, they get 100% of what we sell. We give them a check every single month. And I think because that's so entrenched in this community as a great organization, that none of us wish existed, but we're really glad it does. That has also played a part in developing the caring community. They know we care. We care about something important, and we're willing to put our money where our mouth is, you know, so we're all that clearance stuff. What happens is if it becomes clearance, I own it like it was yours, but now I own it. And if I sell it, I get 100% of what I sell it for, but instead I give it to them. And so people know that and they know that I've dedicated that space to them. And it's a feel good thing, but it's something near and dear to me, too, that they know I'm walking the walk, I'm on their board, I'm doing this, and they know it. It's thing, you know, when you think.
Dave Charest: About just the business in general, like, I guess, what type of person are you in terms of, like, are you looking at the numbers every year? Are you setting goals? You're setting priorities, like, are there things that are changing or, like, what's your approach to all of that?
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: I think when I first started, it was, oh, this is fun. And then the kids went away, and then I got divorced. Suddenly it was like, oh, this is my income. I've got to bring my skills back here. You know, I have a degree in business. I got to, like, actually use it. I got to do math. I always was really good at managing expenses and that kind of thing, but I wasn't really as goal oriented, and the switch flipped, I don't know, maybe nine years ago. And then suddenly it was like, I got to beat this year I want to beat. Next year I want to beat, you know, every, every year the goal went up and went up. The last three years have had the best three years in the entire time I've been here, even with the economy the way it is. And I think some of that has to do with, well, if you need a couch, you need a couch. But if you need a couch and you don't have to go to a regular retailer, as we say, you can come here and you can pay half of what you would pay there, then I benefit from a bad economy sometimes. You know, there's points at which, like 20070, eight people just stopped. You know, people didn't buy anything, but now they're still buying, but they're buying, maybe using more discretion, you know, and also I have a good amount of customers who really, actually think this is the best way to buy things, you know, because it's the best really for the earth. And, you know, if you got to buy something, why not buy something that's already existing instead of something new that creates all kinds of more of a carbon footprint.
Dave Charest: When you think about just this year, are there any specific goals you're working to this year with the business?
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: We went over a big threshold three years ago and then went over it again and again.
Dave Charest: Is this in terms of sales?
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: Yeah.
Dave Charest: Yeah. Okay. Gotcha.
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: And so my goal is even bigger this year to do that. And because you have to, I mean, your expenses are going to up. Everything's going up. And so one of the things we did was we tweaked the consignment contract even, because what happens is something comes in, say it's $100, and then at 31 days, it was taking a 10% discount. So it's taking dollar ten off. And then at 61 days, it was taking 25% off. We adjusted those only slightly to seven and 20, making us not have to raise our prices to cover our nut, and the customer makes more money. And it was something I really thought about. I kept thinking, I can't in good conscience raise a lot of these prices just because everybody does it. People get in that mindset. It's inflationary mindset. They get in this way of, well, it's just more expensive. And you see businesses doing that, and it galls me. Well, it's because it's Tuesday, it's more expensive, right?
Dave Charest: Yeah.
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: And so for me, I just looked at how could I contain the cost and maybe just take a little bit less of a reduction in the price. So if it's $100 now, I'm only taking $7 off that first time. So you and I are splitting $93 if I sell it instead of $90. And over the course of time, that does add up. But you have to think about all those things, just as if we have to think about all the processes that we do for taking things in, putting things out. If someone brings something that's unacceptable and drops it off, what's our process? And some of those things, I watch for the money. I watch for the money because I'm spending too much dumping the stuff you just decided you didn't want to clean. Now, there's a fee associated, so if you don't pick it up within seven days, $20 a box. So I offset my costs, and you're more motivated to come get your stuff that is not sellable. So I'm always looking for those kind of things and also different display opportunities that will make revenue go up. The prettier you make the store. And the more you show people what they can do with something, the more likely they're going to buy it.
Dave Charest: I want to talk a little bit about the marketing stuff here, and we'll get into constant context specifically in a moment, but tell me a little bit about. I mean, how do you get people to the store?
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: I have a big physical space and a big old sign. I specifically did the lease at this place because of where it's physically located. Because we have a lot of tourists and we have a lot of seasonal people. We have a great main street in Wakefield that half of them don't even know exists. I'm across from a Starbucks at smart. I'm also across from our Wakefield version of Whole Foods, which is called Belmont Market. Right? All kinds of prepared foods and fresh. And he started out as a fruit stand, but it's bigger and bigger and bigger and people love it and they love to shop there. And I'm across the street. We can wave. His wife and I, we wave. We can see each other. So it was physically, you know, picking a good location was a great thing. And then the email blasts. I can't tell you how often that brings people. They're standing outside the door before we open. So they know, because I've put out, okay, you know, this is on sale. I've just marked this on sale. They want it. They're standing out there at Christmas time. We do 50% off on December 15. There's a line they start to know and it's all that communication with them, you know, it's four times a week, you know, and they sign up for that. When they become a loyalty member, they sign up for that. They know they're getting that. And what I offer them in return is I offer a point system. So for every dollar you spend, you get a point, you get 500 points, you get 10% off anything you want to buy. You could outfit your whole house, I don't care. You also get 10% off in the month of your birth on a sale. You pick, you know, and you can buy a whole set of living room furniture. I don't care, you know, because you've been a loyal customer and I'm going to reward that. You trade me your email for that. And then I don't send you garbage, you know, I don't send you garbage content. I won't name them by name. But there's one company that if you look on their website, website they will send you. And it's not something you buy every day. Let's just say it's a big, expensive piece of jewelry, and they will send you texts, like, 24/7 like, you're going to buy that over and over. You're like, no, we already bought that. Yeah, it's just too much. And it's junk. It's garbage. It's not good content. It's not anything I want to read. So I think that that's another way of getting them into. You have. You're known for how clean you are, that you're picky. You only take good stuff and then you keep touching them, you know, hi, I'm over here. And people said to me during COVID when we were all shut down, they were like, they missed us. They missed us. And that says everything to me. We have people who come in almost every day because our inventory changes every single day. It's never the same storage. You know that thing about you never step in the same river? Yeah, it's like that because new stuff's coming in every single day by appointment and going out onto the floor every single day by appointment, you know, so they see new things that they didn't see before. You know, we have a ton of dealers that shop us, and word gets around. You know, if your store smells, if you have high prices, if you have bad inventory, it gets around. But the word of mouth is, I'm just blessed. It's good and it stays good, but it takes being picky.
Dave Charest: Sure. Yeah. So I'm curious, how did you like, what brought you to constant contact?
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: Actually, a friend of mine was in a related kind of a business, and I said, you know, I'm thinking, like, I want to, you know, send an email, you know, and it really started as that, like, and at first I thought of you guys as like a newsletter. Right? First I started with the emails that I had, and I realized fairly quickly that was beyond me. Like, I couldn't manage a list that I sent out from me every time I wanted to talk to you. I knew it when I had to send a press release out, and it was hard for me to just send it to the newspapers. I wanted to send it to, you know, I had a few hundred names and it was like, becoming ridiculous to manage that list. And she said to me, you know, they have this company. And I was like, what? It's called? What? You know, and what I think, I mean, I'm 60 years old. I think you have one of the easiest to use platforms. My hosting on another platform, and they're not instinctual to me. My blog is created on WordPress. That took me a while. That took me a while to figure out what they meant by some of this stuff because in my day, you could take the computer down. At college we would go over to write a stupid program that was going to be three lines of code and everybody would be sitting in the hall. The computer was down again. So I didn't grow up with a computer in my pocket like my kids did. And so some of that is not as intuitive to a person of a certain age or you're just not inclined to, you know, I find that constant contact was super easy to use. And I also like that you guys came back at me and you've done it multiple times now and you've said, hey, can we spend like 30 minutes on the phone? Because we have some ideas and it's not a we want you to spend more money, it's, you can do this better. And at first you're like, oh, what's behind the curtain? You know, like, okay, they're going to, they're going to want more something. And actually the last call I had a six or eight months ago, the guy gave me really basic suggestions on tweaks that really impacted my open rate. I have a 40% open rate on average. That's fantastic that 40% of my customers are engaged. When I send an email. And I think it was a couple of percentage points. And that's big. When you have 6000 people, it's going to. A couple of, of points is a good amount of people. You don't ask me to do that math. But it's just, I found it out through a friend and I started doing it. And like I said, at first I wrote this sort of newsletter and it was way too big and it was way too awkward and it was just not good. And then I realized, okay, what people really want to know, they want shopping voyeurism. This is my turn for it. They want to see what's in the store without going in the store. They want to see what's in the store when they're in their pajamas, right? So they can open it up and go, oh, she just got wicker, you know, or, whoa, did you see that? I mean, we have the most stunning 1920s slag glass stained glass lamp. It's arts and crafts period. I mean, it is, it came from a great collector and it's like, oh my, you put that out there and they're like, oh, I'm going in. It morphed into that. And then like I said, in 2019, when I started blogging, I picked up a lot of emails organically and through the store, through the loyalty program. And then when it got unwieldy, like, they were scheduled to go out at 05:25 a.m. but people were getting at 1130 because the list was 400 an hour or something like that. And my friend said to me, duh, constant contact should host that, too. And then it's all in the same place. And it's easy. I use a proprietary software that's meant for consignment. They have a facility for dropping all your new emails every week from the loyalty program. I drop it into a file, I drop it into you, and it's like, boom, I don't have to type them in. I don't have to. And it kicks what it kicks like. So when I combined from the other place, platform and yours, you guys kicked a bunch of duplicates and it was like, this is great because then I'm not being charged for emails that I'm sending to you twice. You know, you guys are like, nope. So that's been really helpful, too. Really helpful. Favorite feature, I am a copier and paster. I totally admit it. It's really good that I have like a, I have a couple of formats and every once in a while refresh the format just because, but that's really helpful when you run your own business. You know, I have five employees. I have thousands of customers. I have thousands of consignors. I have bills and all the things that small business people have. And then I don't have to reinvent the wheel because I come from corporate advertising. I know the importance of sticking with your colors, sticking with your typeface. I mean, those are the things, I use the same typeface on constant contact that I use in every sign that I make for the store. Because when I worked for the travelers, we only used one color, red. That was it. We only use like three fonts. That was it. You want it to always look like you. And I think if you're trying to use buckshot, right, then people don't know, like, what is this? When you're consistent and people know, oh, this is what this looks like. This is what this looks like. Then they can pay attention to your content instead of being distracted by, what's he doing now? What the heck is this?
Dave Charest: Yeah, so a couple of things here. We'll start with this. What would be your best piece of marketing advice for? Or what would you say to somebody just getting started with constant contact? Let's start there. What would your advice to them? Be?
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: Be patient with yourself, especially if it's not something that you've ever done before. Right. And also that your list is really important. Right. So how are you going to get your names? And keeping them in constant contact makes me feel safe, you know, like, here they are and they can deselect, you know, and that. That's great that they should be allowed to do that. But figuring out a way to either through a loyalty program or at first, I used to do raffles in the store or something, but build a good list, be patient in learning how to use it and try different things because your tools coming back are good. So I can look at it and go, why did that bomb? Why? I'm always 40% to 50% open rate and this one was 29. And pay attention to that because the data is going to follow the data. It's going to tell you something. It's going to tell you, oh, okay, you sent it to the wrong time of day. You didn't have a great tagline. Your reline was like, guess what, everybody.
Dave Charest: And eeyore wrote it for you. And you.
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: I find one of the things that seems to work really well is for my business is I list brands, right? So because my inventory changes every day, I can change brands. But I talked to a woman across the street. She has a running store. I talked her into doing a blog for the store. And I'm like, I'll help you. It's okay, you know? And one of the things I said to her was, you have to have an appealing read line or I'm not opening it. I'm too busy. Everyone's too busy, so. And I'm not talking about win a million dollars in this email, you know, I'm talking about something that seems like maybe I can't get this information somewhere else. They always like a good sale, too. The reline is, we're having a sale. They open them and then they come in and think everything in the store is on sale. You're like, no, just the lamps. Didn't you read it? But I'd say that that where I'd start and reach out to you guys because I've had to go, hi, I'm really confused because I don't know how to do this. And they're like, oh, it's easy. And they share your screen, they tell you how to do it, and then you feel like, okay, you can do this. And I think you also have to be consistent. Like, my people know, Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you know, and I don't miss them. Like, we were going to Portugal a few weeks ago, and I wrote my blogs ahead through and including, because if I didn't, then Tuesday comes, where's your blog? People tell me they wake up, get their cup of coffee and read my blog. To me, that's, you know, that's really cool. And they know on Friday mornings they're going to see what's that shopping voyeurism. They're going to see what's new in the store. I think that's also important to just be consistent with it. So they, you decide, okay, Tuesday's your day. You're going to send a blog every Tuesday. I mean, so many of us know those companies that it's just random. Like, you get a blog from them or an email or something, and then you don't get anything for six weeks, and you're like, what is this? You know, like, suddenly you got another one and then, you know, the other ones that inundate you and you're like, stop doing this. I'm going to unsubscribe. So that's a fine dance. You know, don't be afraid to make mistakes, you know, because it's just an email. I mean, unless you send it out with, you know, your Social Security number in it or something, you probably are not going to make too much of a mistake. And you can't sweat the small stuff. Like, every once in a while I send something out one day and it said in my onion instead of, in my opinion, now I can fix it. And when you click the link, it's fixed. But the part that you see at the beginning, I can't fix that. So in my onion, you know, and I just have to go, you know what? I'm a human being. Here we go.
Dave Charest: We got 1 minute left here. So I just want to ask, what would be your best piece of business advice that you've learned over the years?
Marianne Mernick-Sullivan: Well, as a person who basically was told, this is the most stupid idea that a person has ever had, and you're going to lose this money on us, and, you know, we're just going to have to eat this investment and whatever. I would say it sounds hokey, but if you believe in it and you're willing to work hard at it, if you believe in it, you have to be willing to go for it, you know, and seek out other people's advice that smart people, you know, like, I always think about the presidents of the United States, and you watch the ones that surround themselves by people who are smarter than they are. And you're like, yeah, that's my kind of person. You know, surround yourself with smarty people and learn from all of them, as opposed to, I am the smarty pants and you are all my minions. So I think it's learning from others and believing in yourself. God gave you, what, one mouth, two ears? Right? So you gotta, like, listen to people, but not the naysayers, you know, you gotta listen for the gem. And I think it's scary, you know, so many businesses fail. So many businesses fail. And I was told I would. In my first physical store, I had a personal, I'm a corporation, but I had a personal guarantee on the rent. That means they can take my house. Talk about scary, you know, three young children at the time and they could take my house. But I believed in it and I believed that I could do it and that there was a market for it. I could see it, I could smell it, you know, and I thought, but I'm just gonna keep trying to do it and do it better and better and better. And this helps. I mean, constant contact really helps. I tell so many people, hey, don't mess around with some of those other things. Constant contact knows what they're doing and they've been helpful to me. And even when I've called and said, I don't understand this new, you know, like, I jumped into the stratosphere of emails, right suddenly and my rate went up. And the guy goes, well, you're not limited in how many times you can send something out of, like, you know, that's a really good point. And good stuff's willing to pay for good stuff and it's not exorbitantly expensive, really. Any small business should be able to afford it and it builds over time, which is nice. So when you group, you know, you get from x number emails to x plus two, it should go up, but also you have time to adjust. And the reason why you have more emails is because you're doing better. It makes logical business sense to me.
Dave Charest: Well, friend, let's recap some items from that discussion. Number one, be upfront about the type of employee you're looking for. Marianne specifically calls out the kind of people that would be a good fit for her available roles by focusing on the things that may interest them. For example, if you like HGTV, you'll like this job. Or if you're interested in art, you'll like this job. Doing this makes her more likely to find people that are engaged in the work, you know, so it's a bit like marketing. What's in it for the audience that you're trying to attract? Marian appeals to those interests to find great employees. In addition, of course, she pays well, offers a signing bonus, and provides discounts on purchases and consignments. Essentially, she treats her employees well to keep them. Number two, use trends to drive your market. Marianne explained why she didn't sell hutches in her store. Today's trend is away from that piece of furniture because younger people aren't looking to display China. So how can you keep up with the market trends within your industry to decide what you should or should not be communicating with your customers? Plus, trends also spark people's curiosity. Use them to your advantage. Number three, put people first in marketing. During the pandemic, Marianne started blogging about interior design. She also started to reveal more about herself as a person. This action allowed her to see firsthand how people would respond. The lesson she learned was that people don't do business with businesses, they do business with people. Focus on building those relationships with your customers. Relationships are your secret weapon against the big box stores. So here's your action item for today. Survey your contacts Marianne learned so much about the content her contacts would find interesting by chatting with them. So make sure you're asking people what they're looking to know. Creating a survey is an easy way to get this type of feedback. Then you can create conversations and content that truly resonates with your customers. I've included a link to an article that shows you how to get started with a survey in the show. Notes notes I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. If you have questions or feedback, id love to hear from you. You can email me directly at dave.charest@constantcontact.com. If you did enjoy todays episode, please take a moment to leave us a review. Your honest feedback will help other small business marketers like yourself find the show friend I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and continued success to you and your business.