Creating a very happy Mothers’ Day for Carol’s Daughter

Specialty skin care retailer Carol’s Daughter approached Digital Surgeons with a challenge: to help grow sales of their popular all-natural beauty products over the key Mother’s Day period.

After gaining fantastic visibility by appearances as a featured product on such mainstream media juggernauts as The Today Show and The Oprah Winfrey Show, our job was to turn social media into a successful tool for increasing both awareness and sales.

The Mothers’ Day card, reimagined

Creative, strategic and development teams brainstormed together, and a concept called Notes to my Mother was born. The centerpiece of this initiative was the notestomymother.com microsite. Using Flash animation, this beautiful site consisted of flying, butterfly-shaped notes on which the user could write a message to mom. As Darren Orlando, vice president, direct, of Carol’s Daughter put it: “The notes were deeply emotional ranging from a simple ‘I love you Mom’ to ‘Please carry this note to heaven,” Orlando says. “It was just amazing emotion.’

Emotional connections become social connections

The site drew more than 50,000 unique visitors in only 30 days, and of those almost one in three posted a note. In addition, pageviews were well over 200,000.

The microsite helped drive significant traffic to Carol’sdaughter.com, with visits up 25% over the same period a year earlier. Unit sales rose 30% and overall revenue increased 33%.

Digital Surgeons developed Facebook and Twitter components to the program promoting a free gift set each day, the winner to be selected from among those consumers who had written notes.

20% of those who wrote notes posted them on their Facebook pages, and resulted in over 3,000 likes and 1,500 comments. In addition, the number of consumers who liked the Carol’s Daughter Facebook page jumped 14%, from 219,000 to over a quarter of a million. The number of consumers following the brand on Twitter jumped almost 20%.

A robust email campaign was also an important element of the program, with e-mails sent to existing customers inviting them to send a note. These were then followed up with e-mails to moms who had received notes, and others to thank those who had visited the microsite and created notes. Links to the main site with information about gift sets and best sellers were highlighted, and also helped to increase traffic and sales.

Our development team was able to make all this happen by connecting the custom flash application to their email provider through a custom API connection.

Social Engagement = Brand Building

The success of Notes to my Mother underscores, yet again, the extraordinary potential for brand building when a social marketing initiative is based on outstanding strategy and execution. It’s one thing to create a program that results in increased revenue; it’s another to accomplish that goal and then to combine it with thousands of enthusiastic ambassadors for your brand.