Modern Jewelry Trends

Although the most common promotional offer in marketing emails is a percentage off the purchase price, it’s dollars-off amounts that generate higher clicks. In fact, click rates for emails offering a specific dollar amount off are 45% higher than those offering a percent discount (even when the amount saved is the same.) A new study from e-mail service provider Silverpop Systems analyzed 610 marketing e-mails, both b2c and b2b, sent by 430 companies to 100 or more recipients. Why does a dollar-off amount seem more attractive? My guess is that percentage-off discounts are so prevalent in marketing they just don’t get much attention anymore (and doing the math is hard!) Design Within Reach offers good customers a coupon that is good for $50 on a purchase of any amount. The retailer found that most customers, pleased with the generous gift, ended up purchasing items worth far more than $50. The Silverpop study also found that lifestyle photography does pay off in higher e-mail click rates for b2c marketers. The average click rate for e-mails to consumers with lifestyle photography was 6.3% compared to 5.4% without it. The study uncovered a few surprises. Although a postcard-style design remains a favorite format for marketing to consumers, a newsletter format gets a better click rate: 7.1% versus 6.2% for postcard layouts. If you market to consumers, you should at least try a newsletter-style layout. Branding in an e-mail subject line results in 32 to 60% more recipients opening that email. So if you plan to market to your customers via email this holiday season, use your name and/or a brand in the subject line, use a newsletter format with lifestyle photography, and include a coupon for a specific dollar-amount off. Oh, and don’t try to save money by sending more than a hundred or so emails yourself unless you have some good email marketing software. Your message will probably be labeled as spam and blocked.

Imelda Marcos, icon of conspicious consumption, has announced a new jewelry collection. The prices? A budget-busting $20 to $100. Remember, this is the woman whose suitcases of diamonds, emeralds, and rubies were confiscated by the government of the Philippines. She returned to the Philippines in 1991 from exile in Hawaii, where her husband died in 1989. Marcos says that the designs of her new jewelry collection are based on “flea market finds” and her old accessories and clothes. “This is more than about money because money can only buy you food and things like that, but only beauty can feed your soul and your spirit,” Marcos says. But perhaps the most amusing aspect of this whole story is that news reports on the new collection noted that, for decades, Filipinos used the phrase “Imeldific” to describe acts of excess. Imeldific: it’s so “bling.”

One of the holy grails of the web is a way to search visually. Stock photography agencies do a great job of this, allowing you to search for horizontal green fields or smiling engaged couples. But of course, they aren’t really searching visually, they are using keywords that staff members use to tag each image, from color to feeling and subject. As far as shopping search goes, no one has yet found a way to automatically parse through the thousands of items offered for sale on the web and show you other items that look the same. Not for lack of trying, of course. The latest attempt is a new search engine called Like.com. This new site offers accessories, including jewelry and watches, from many retailers and allows you to search by visual aspects, colors, and categories. Retailers include Amazon, ice.com, eLuxury, and others. Basically Like.com is an affiliate site: they make money if you end up clicking on a product and buying it from the retailer (all the transactions happen on the retailers’ sites, a tracking code carries the information that you came from Like.com.) So does it work? Well, it is pretty good at showing you items of similar colors and shapes. But much of the time, it appears to be using keywords rather than visual similarities. (Bangle searches will include cuffs that are called bangles in the description and tennis bracelets include money clips with tennis racquets on them.) It can definitely offer you pages of watches with orange straps or multi-strand pearl chokers, but earring silhouettes are a bit more problematic. Still, if you want to comparison shop basic yellow gold hoops or tennis bracelets across retailers, it does the job surprisingly well. But somehow it isn’t really much fun, despite a celebrity wardrobe search section and the lure of locating the handbag of your dreams. It’s definitely worth checking out, though, especially if you are an online retailer who has struggled with how to present customers with easy ways to find jewelry on your site. It may even inspire you to create some interesting keywords and create a few custom searches of your own.

The trend for push presents, the gift from the father to a new mother to celebrate the birth of a child, got a little trendier this week when The Philadelphia Inquirer published an article on the topic, called The Family Jewels. One of the sources for the article was Modern Jeweler’s Birth of a New Occasion story in September 2006. The grassroots phenomenon has been picking up steam for the last few years: perhaps this article will give it another push.

The countdown for the release of Blood Diamond, now scheduled to open on December 8, has begun. An ad for the new movie, which starts Leonardo DiCaprio, appeared last weekend in The New York Times. Basically, the ad features a diamond dripping with blood. Meanwhile, a recent study shows that the more consumers hear about the movie, the less likely they are to want to see it. (What? A diamond dripping in blood doesn’t say “holiday cheer” to you?) A study by the Jewelry Consumer Opinion Council in mid-October found that nearly one-third of 2,942 respondents have heard about the movie compared to 15 percent four months ago. But 27 percent say that they are extremely unlikely to see the film as compared to 23 percent who reported the same in June. Moreover, of the 46 percent back in June who were extremely to somewhat likely to see the picture, only 43 percent report the same in October.

The battle for holiday market share has started already. Wal-Mart announced today it is cutting prices on 100 popular electronic items, including TVs, laptops, and cameras. Other big-box competitors are expected to follow suit. Let the price war begin! For Wal-Mart, accelerating the discount-push that usually starts the day after Thanksgiving signals that it intends to compete primarily on price this holiday season. Price cuts announced today include $500 off a Panasonic 42-inch HD plasma television (now $1,294) and $300 off a 37-inch Polaroid LCD television (now $997). Although Wal-Mart, lest we forget, is America’s largest retailer of fine jewelry too, the push on electronics shows where the retailer believes the money is this holiday season. And the traffic: the retailer surely hopes that these marquee items will draw early shoppers who may decide to do all of the rest of their shopping in Wal-Mart too. The early push also echoes moves by many online retailers to start holiday marketing efforts well before Black Friday. So what is Wal-Mart pushing in jewelry this year? Prices have been cut on some popular sizes of diamond stud earrings set in 14k white gold: 1 carat total weight studs (I, I1 with an IGI report) are now $1,388. The Wal-Mart.com homepage features a classic solitaire engagement ring with a link to the bridal department. The jewelry page showcases a two-carat total weight Journey necklace for $4,500 and some square mirror-cut quartz gemstone cocktail rings for $149. A “Design Your Own” section features promise and family rings with engraving and customizable stones. The retailer is also featuring a two-carat “Lucia” diamond ring with a pave setting for $8,000. Not exactly a Tiffany Lucida (the description says princess but the photo says emerald cut) but you can’t say they aren’t trying to upgrade that image. 

The Natural Fancy Color Diamond Association has launched a new website to help educate consumers about the rare gems. Five buying tips on the site are: 1) Color is more important than size, 2) Learn about fancy diamonds on ncdia.com, 3) Request a report from a major laboratory, 4) Know your budget, and 5) Purchase from a knowledgeable jeweler. The site refers consumers to retailers who are members of the association. Want to be listed? To join the NCDIA, retailers must sell and promote natural color diamonds or at least want to. AGS members are automatically eligible but other retailers need a reference from a current NCDIA member (most fancy colored diamond suppliers belong). Other member benefits include a holiday selling guide by Diane-Warga Arias that will be available in the trade area of the site next week and a full sales training program planned for next spring. Membership fees range from $5,000 for chains to $500 for independents. To feast on more about fancies, check out our It’s all in the Mix story on the trend for mixed color fancy colored diamond jewelry and Defying Gravity story on the high-flying prices for these gems. Both ran in Modern Jeweler’s September 2006 issue.