Rachel Lessne manages all of marketing for CakeSafe and discusses the origin story of the business and what she does to market a very unique product. Cakesafe makes a variety of products that protect cakes and other baked goods during shipping.
We discuss contests, giveaways, social media strategies, selling on Instagram, IG Stories and Highlights, Google Shopping and much more!
Transcript
Jesse: What’s going on, Richard?
Richard: I’m doing great and I’m excited about this one. You know, we talked about niche and down all the time and trying to find a unique product that it’s hard to compare and don’t have many competitors and kind of create your own category. I think we found the perfect one.
Jesse: Yeah, I think so. You know, we’ve been in
Rachel: Hello, I’m good, how are you?
Jesse: Awesome, awesome! it’s Friday here today. Yeah, yeah. So we wanted to hear a little bit about, well first, what does, speaking of niches, what does CakeSafe sell?
Rachel: Well, CakeSafe sells… Well, basically, we design ourselves and manufacture and sell products for bakers, and we have a few different product lines, but the most well worth is the СakeSafe itself, and it basically keeps a fully assembled tiered cake, a wedding cake, or you know, any type of tiered cake, it keeps it cold, it keeps it safe from bumps and tips, and mountain drives and you could even check your CakeSafe with a cake on a plane as baggage and it would keep your cake protected.
Jesse: Wow. Wow. And I imagine, so, and I’ve seen your Instagram profile, some of these cakes are very ornate and very detailed.
Rachel: Oh, yeah.
Jesse: So I can imagine what, you know, like some of these cakes might be hundreds or thousands, thousands of dollars? Oh, wow!
Rachel: Thousands! Totally. I mean, we sell to everybody from home or hobby bakers whose cakes, you know, they might be small and they might be basically decorated for, you know, just a hundred dollars up to, if you watch the Food Network and, some of the people on there who are just celebrity bakers, their cakes are thousands and they’re taller than a person, and so we really sell to the whole baker market.
Jesse: Wow, and I bet those cakes are not thousands of dollars if they tip over.
Rachel: No, and it’s scary because as a baker, you could get sued by a bride if you don’t deliver the cake, if it tips over in your car on the way to the venue.
Jesse: Yeah, be careful with the brides, I think that’s right.
Richard: Funny, you mentioned the Food Network there because half of the fun of watching those cake shows are сake wars. I can’t remember what one of the men I saw, is when they’re transporting from one table to the other table. So you would take half the joy out of watching that show. You guys give them a CakeSafe.
Rachel: Exactly. Actually, I don’t know if I should say who it is, but the one of the bigger shows, we were in talks with them and they said: “We can’t use your product because it would take all the drama out of the show.” That’s why people tune in to see if the cake will make it.
Richard: Great ad to put in the middle of that show but not so good for the show itself.
Rachel: Totally.
Jesse: I like maybe that could be a new marketing tagline for you guys like, you know, such “Cupcake Wars wouldn’t accept our product.”
Rachel: Yeah.
Jesse: So let us know how CakeSafe got started?
Rachel: Well, it was just a
And one time she had something going on and she couldn’t deliver her cake, so she sent Scott her husband, to deliver it. And as soon as he got in the car, he was like: “There’s something wrong here. There’s got to be a better way to do this. It’s so terrifying.” And you drive five miles an hour and, you know, there’s got to be a better way. And after some research, you didn’t find anything out there on the market. So he just made for Julie just one CakeSafe box and it’s, the design is
Then, it had a rod that went down through the center of the cake. Just normal bakers would put a dowel in any way, but this one just connects to the safe box so it made it completely
And it makes the presentation very professional as well. And, you know, Julie was just: “My husband just made this, there’s just one. And that’s it.” And then Scott in 2008 or 2009, he lost his job you know, because the economy kind of tanked and he was just one of many who got laid off and he had three kids, Julie and Scott with her three kids, and he woke up I think two days after he got laid off, because he knew he had to do something and he just said: “I’m going to make CakeSafes.” And he just sort of blipped into doing it. And he made them by hand back then like hand cutting all the individual pieces, shipping them, building a website.
He did everything himself and just slowly over time, slowly in the beginning. It just grew and grew and he would get CakeSafe for free to people and now it’s, you know. It’s nine years later, I just had to look at the day on the computer. Nine years later — and we’re in a commercial space, we have six employees and we sell all over the world, literally all over the world, Asia, every continent. It’s just really huge. And like I said, everybody from home bakers to celebrity bakers use it because it’s literally the only safe way to transport cakes without heart palpitations.
Jesse: Yeah, I bet. I mean, that’s an awesome story. I love it when people build something that they had a specific need for themselves and then people keep asking: “Where did you get that? Can you make one for me?” So that’s like the classic entrepreneurial stories, yeah, I love it. So now, is Julie a part of the business as well or did she, did she stay with baking?
Rachel: Yeah, after the business started growing, I’m not sure what year it was before I started working. So I’d say, maybe two or three years. And Julie started helping Scott out in the office and so she would do a lot of the office work, well, he would do production because it was starting to grow so he couldn’t handle all of it himself. So then it was a
Jesse: Awesome. So, and now you’re an employee. So what do you do?
Rachel: I started out, I answered an ad for an office manager and when I started, I was literally kind of doing everything besides production. I even did a little bit of that. I would print the labels, I would pack the products, I would bring them to the post office, I would do customer service, a little bit of marketing. And now since the business has grown we have, it’s really so much better, now we have a designated shipper, designated
Jesse: Awesome, yeah. And we were looking at the site beforehand social profiles and we love it, so you’re doing a great job.
Rachel: Well, thank you.
And, you know, I think now we want to see what kind of tips and what kind of help you can bring to the community and let people know how you did it, because like I said earlier, I’m jealous and I want to copy some of your tricks.
Richard: Yeah, and hungry… The pictures… (laughing)
Jesse: We’re looking at the CupCakeSafe right now, so for people were driving there is pictures like there’s you know, let’s get this
Rachel: Well, it was a little easy for me I’ll have to say because the product we have is so
And that’s a good way to you know find stellar testimonials and then you can reach out and ask if you know they would share a picture if they hadn’t already and then share it with your social media or with your blogs. But for me, it was kind of easy because when a customer gets a product, they tend to reach out, you know, no matter what if they get a review request email or not, just saying how it changed their lives. So I just about 50 percent of what I post is our customer content and about our products, and the other 50 percent is just sort of loosely related to what our customers would find interesting. So you know maybe other desserts or other recipes, not strictly cakes or you know just really outrageous cakes or you know just fun engaging content.
Jesse: Oh sure. And I think you know the product is very
Rachel: People are going to tune out and not want to read it, If it’s all just sales pushy.
Jesse: For sure! And I noticed you had several giveaways and contests there. What was the idea behind that?
Rachel: Well that has really helped us a lot to grow. In the beginning, when not a lot of people had their hands on the product, it seems too good to be true. And, you know, people might: “Hm” and “Ha” over the product for, you know, years before buying it. So it’s to get testimonials and to get reviews to give away is also a great way to do it and to also just get, you know, lots of visibility for the product. So we, you know, once a year, we’ll definitely always give away CakeSafe, every January we’ll give one away and people can enter to win on our website — CakeSafe.com.
But we’ll also do, as smaller giveaways will do, you know, if your business can’t afford to give away 300 or 400 dollar product, give away for, it can be anything a ten dollar gift certificate or you know, however much you want that to be. But people just love to get something for free.
They also love to get something very exclusive. We recently had an excess of, we have a bunch different products, but it’s just a small
Richard: No pun intended with the hotcakes.
Rachel: Exactly (laughing.) Well yeah, it’s just you know doing something that gives somebody something for free or discounted really makes them appreciate your company. And also something exclusive that you just want to make your customers feel special and included.
Jesse: Sure. So this was the VIP group, the VIP treatment. Really.
Rachel: Yeah, exactly. But what I did on Instagram it’s just literally anybody who follows us on Instagram, or you know they don’t even have to follow us on Instagram they can find our stories and then they get this
Richard: Speaking of stories, how stories I’d imagine you know, because of, is Julie still baking too by the way before I ask this question?
Rachel: She will bake for their Cake Trade Show, believe it or not where there’s like cake competitions and you know bakery supply vendors like us will set up a booth, she’ll bake for those events and she’ll bake for, you know, if a friend’s getting married. I actually got married last month and she made my wedding cake, but other than that she is kind of bowed out of the baking.
Richard: Ok. But in general where I was going with that is, you actually have the product to put inside of the CakeSafe too. So when you’re doing the stories you could get pretty creative, like I can imagine as you’d almost be like pretending like it’s going to fall: “Oh, wow.”
Rachel: Yeah.
Richard: How have stories, how have Stories changed Instagram, Stories compared to like a traditional post?
Rachel: Yeah it’s, my kind of general philosophy with social media and marketing is to make your customers feel like your friends and not just feel like, you know, you really actually want to become friends with your customers. And the Stories on Instagram help accomplish that you can post things that are just silly like I think last week, Danny, our office manager was having a rough day and so she laid on the floor and played with the office dog boo. And I just, you know, I filmed her and put it in the stories and it just makes you very relatable to your potential customers. And you know you see the employees, you see what’s happening you can also of course throw in salesy sort of stories like “look at this”, but I always try to make those stories fun and just you know something that people really want to see, as you know, a friend.
Richard: Have you seen using Highlights in addition to stories work well for you?
Rachel: Yes. Because Stories, they disappear after 24 hours, but you can top a button on any story and make it a highlight, that stays in your profile for as long as you want it. So are, you know, really good content that could be a repost of a story from one of our customers who delivered… There was one who delivered a cake in
Jesse: That’s great. So with the highlight. You mentioned some customers sent you a video did they send to you, like can they do they have to send you the video file in order for it to be to posted as an Instagram story or can they just like post it to your Instagram account?
Rachel: So it’s a little bit complicated. They can they can message the video through Instagram like a direct message. But they have to like if you’re in a direct message on Instagram, I’m opening one now. There is in the right message field, it has a little kind of photo icon like a mountain, and you have to kind of attach it there. If you send it like as a post it’s not actually going to move. Like if I reposted that it would just be a still photo of a video. Anyway, it’s getting all complicated, but they can they can send me the video through Instagram they can email it. I can snag it from their social media. And as long as I have their permission, but there are a few different ways to get the content.
Jesse: Well I think that’s a great tip in order to, you know,coming up with your own stories and Rich and I have filmed a couple, for Ecwid Well, you know, it’s
Richard: Plus to your point earlier, if it starts out as a story you can test it not worry about it as much because it can disappear in 24 hours and then you find out if it’s a hit, then turn it into a highlight. So people can see it more.
Jesse: I like that. You’re challenging me, Rachel, now, I know I need to up my Instagram game here by a couple of degrees. So along with Instagram, I noticed you have implemented one of our newest features. That’s the Shoppable Posts, Instagram tagging. So how’s that been going for you?
Rachel: It’s really great. It’s you know it’s easy for, you want to make it as easy as possible for somebody to buy something. So if you know somebody is just scrolling through their Instagram feed and they see something wow worthy, where are they’ll see that little shoppable icon on the post be able to tap it and then you know if they decide to click over they just tap the post and it brings you right to the product that you’re selling and they just check out right there. So it’s been really wonderful, that feature. And I do a tip that I have for that is you don’t want to make every post shoppable. It just makes it look a little too pushy and too salesy.
Jesse: Sure.
Rachel: So you know I like to put at least 3 or more posts in between shoppable posts because I don’t want somebody to visit the profile and say: “Oh you know they’re just trying to sell all this stuff.” I want them to visit their profile and say: “I’m going to learn something if I follow them, they’re posting tips and fun things and, you know, they’re not just trying to sell to me.”
Jesse: Sure. But you really want to sell it to them so (laughing.) I think that’s awesome. I know for people that are listening to you know please do check out the CakeSafe Instagram profile, because you can see these product tags in the wild, and your mouth will be watering with all the cake pictures as well. But I think it’s awesome that you get to show these very cool products on Instagram that people are going to follow and like and heart to know all the fun social media stuff. And then at the same time, you get these shoppable tags, and that’s my Minnesota accent with “taks” coming out. But you can actually see it on a profile so that’s awesome that people listening. And then we started with Instagram here but a lot of these same, of the same tactics, can be used on Facebook as well. I noticed on Facebook you have like 50,000 followers probably I think 14,000 on Instagram. What do you do differently on Facebook than you do on Instagram?
Rachel: Well before I get into that can I just mention how we got so many followers? It kind of relates back to what we were talking about before giveaways. So you know to ultimately get all these you know eventual sales, social media has been so huge and you know people might be wondering you know: “I have 100 hundred fans on Facebook, you know, how do I grow it?” Maybe they’ve been doing ads and you know it’s not happening. I would say that like we were talking about before a giveaway is one of the best ways to increase your followers and if you can do it, giveaway with another brand that you know. If we do we give away with another cake supply, you know, company that makes something that’s not competitive to us, but also you know people crave then their followers will see our product and are our followers will see their product, and they’re most likely going to well if that’s the terms of the giveaway, you must like each business to enter that giveaway. Then they’re going to you know they’re going to be your fan and as long as you keep posting engaging content, then they’re going to be your fans for life. So that’s you know a tip I have to get the followers. But what I do differently…
Jesse: Well, let’s stay on that for a second, because I love this because this is I’ve heard this similar type of conversation, you know, in the past year so people are really having success with that. So did you just look for, you know, I see this spinyourcake.com is that the one you’re talking about here?
Rachel: Yeah.
Jesse: It’s similar but not competitive. Right. So that’s awesome. Did you use an app to do the giveaway or did you just trust people?
Rachel: No. Yeah, yup. We just sort of do our giveaways manually, well, you know, randomly pick somebody as the winner. And it’s just such a great way to get exposure for both brands if you’re doing a partner giveaway.
Jesse: So then in this case. So you know I’m sure from these conferences you know a lot of people in the industry so that: “Hey you, SpinYourCake people. We want to do this giveaway, you exposed us to your brand will expose to ours and likely the same customers,” so are you just saying to the prospective customers just follow both brands and we’ll choose the winners that zap to?
Rachel: You know it will it depends. It’s you know as long as both brands are happy with it. It could be just simply like both brands and comment on this post to win. You can also make them, you know, to share it for extra credit but you could simply tell them to like the post and be entered to win or like and comment, or my personal favorite, is to enter to win your comment tagging 3 bakers. So no matter what brand you have, you know if it’s watches, you could say you know, “tag three of your friends” you know or somebody that would be interested in the product. But yeah, I tell them tags three bakers and then you know that just increases the visibility of the posts by so much. And I’ve had great luck with that sort of thing even just with our, you know, it’s not a partner to give away if it’s just something that we’re giving away ourselves even a $25 gift certificate if you say to tag three bakers then boom — visibility up.
Jesse: Oh, for sure. Yeah. And people are probably going to they’re actually going to tag bakers that have not been exposed to your brand so, that’s awesome. Alright, so we talked to Instagram. What was your Facebook game so what do you do differently or is it the same?
Rachel: Oh yeah. So Facebook, I didn’t do Facebook differently than I do it now, about, you know, six months ago. So since Facebook sort of changed a bit and their algorithm of you know what’s shown to, you know, users on Facebook is now geared towards more family and friend and less business, I’m actually posting a lot less on Facebook.
Before all that changed, I was posting every three hours. I would schedule out a post every three hours. And you know, I worried a little bit that people would get sick of those posts but they didn’t. They ate it all up, the pun again. Boy, they loved the posts. But now since you know things have changed all of their posts are pretty much like once a day. But I spend time where you know I would be posting every three hours, I’ve spent you know still the same amount of time but looking for very engaging content. A lot of videos, all reposts from certain accounts like the Food Network or Insider Dessert. They have very engaging videos that I can you know share on our page and get engagement for our page even though it’s somebody else’s content. And if you know, it credits the original video so you’re not doing anything illegal.
I post about ones a day on Facebook and I really just, it’s the same sort of feel as you know you want the potential customers to feel like friends. You know I try to post things where people will comment, I’ll ask questions and get people to try and comment. And another thing that I do to really get the personal level up is we created a group called CakeSafe Crusaders and you don’t have to have any of our products, you could just you know be interested in it or just be you know somebody who wants baking tips and you can you know anybody can join the group. But it’s a small group I think we have about 300 people in it now, and I use the group to give discount codes first or to release to tell them about new products first. So it’s that exclusivity factor there again, so that, you know, you really feel a connection with these people and a lot of times in the group, the people who do have our products just post very often about the product that they’re using at the moment. It will be their acrylic disks for icing smoothly on cakes. It will be in progress, and they’ll post about it or that their CakeSafe, and then all the people in the group who don’t have our products see that this is, you know, a real person who has our product it’s not us trying to sell to them, it’s you know a real testimonial. So it’s just it’s like a safe place, that group, where you know people can also ask questions. Just I somebody asked: “I’m making like a replica of a barbecue, like I’m making chicken, well, it’s cake but it’s supposed to look like chicken. How do I do this?” And I thought that and I said: “Oh, actually another member in the group, I know, she does food replica cakes a lot, you know, will you help?” And then they have this conversation on the page. And you know they’re helping each other out. And if you’re in the group most likely the settings kind of default too. If anybody post in the group, you get a notification. So a lot of the posts in the group are much more engaged with invisible because they always get a notification that there’s a new post in there whereas they follow us just the main CakeSafe fan page, they’re not going to get you to know post notifications in your post.
Jesse: Sure. So that’s kind of a way to get around this the idea that Facebook again posts are basically you know, nobody sees them anymore.
Rachel: Yes exactly.
Jesse: So. So the steps you use there, the tip was really to create a Facebook group. Is that correct?
Rachel: Yeah.
Ok, awesome, so I think there’s a lot of people that could benefit from that where, yeah, you have a Facebook page and you know unfortunately all the work that goes into these posts, a lot of times they don’t get seen unless you boost them. But a Facebook group might be a good tactic for other people to borrow there. So appreciate that. I want to come back to that video you mentioned. So borrowing videos from other other accounts. How do you borrow it?
Rachel: That’s a really good question, because I don’t know how I stumbled upon this. But as far as I know, maybe it’s changed, but as far as I know if you’re on a computer on a desktop or a laptop, you can’t kind of, I’m going to use the word steal even though it’s not stealing, you know, it’s the video is credited. You can’t take that video and post it on your page unless you share it right then and there, which you know it just goes to your page the instant that you send it there. What I do is I want to schedule out posts so I can you know I can post a photo of one of our products and then in an engaging video and another photo of a product and then an engaging video. I don’t want to have to live exactly in the now and post I don’t want to wake up at midnight and have to share that.
So if you are on your phone, I use an iPhone and you go to your Facebook just you, know your personal Facebook. I’m doing it right now as we speak. I’m going to type in Dessert Insider. That’s where I get a lot of the content and so I go to their video in Dessert Insider. And again I’m just you know I’m using my personal Facebook app on my phone and I click on that, you know, a video that I want, at the very bottom it’s playing and I want to mute that sound, so at the very bottom to the left is a share button and if you click that share button and it’ll have it’ll come up with a few options and one of the options will be “copy link” and then you can go into your Facebook, the Facebook page app on my phone as well. So I just click on over to that open you know, go to post something I just click the publish by and and I paste that link that I just copied into it and then, it’ll still have that weird long link but you know I don’t really want as the caption and you can just delete that whole link but the video will stay there as long as you pasted it in there, wait for just a second for the video to show up there then you can delete that nasty
Jesse: I like this hack here! I wrote I have notes done on this one, because yeah, so for people this at home if you don’t know what to post on your Facebook page, rewind this a little bit. Check out those options that I’m sure there’s some. If you don’t make the video somebody else made a video that’s appropriate to your niche and you know, borrow it. We won’t use the word steal, borrow that video, curate it. What’s a social sharing world. So I love it. I love it. And there are no excuses to not have stuff in your profile though. That’s the problem. Now you have the tips. So. So we covered Facebook and Instagram I know we could go way more
Rachel: Google Shopping for sure.
Jesse: All right.
Rachel: So we through Ecwid, we just downloaded the Google Shopping app. We were actually part of the beta test. We were honored to be a part of that and you know that really gave us the opportunity to see if it was going to work for us. So we tested it out with you guys on Ecwid. And you know the results were really wonderful: for every one dollar spent we were getting about seven dollars in revenue.
Jesse: Awesome.
Rachel: So yeah that was tremendous results. We were super happy with that. So when the beta test ended we decided to go forward with that and you know use our own money we spend. We set it for $150 a month to our budget. And now like I just looked yesterday, and for the past month for every dollar that we spent, we got nineteen dollars and 80 cents back as revenue.
Jesse: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Rachel, you gotta move that budget up now.
Rachel: You know you could do 300 and double it. You know we’re still a small business but we’re you know as things help us grow like this Google Shopping app on Ecwid did, you know when we’re able to really become that larger business and increase our sales a lot. I mean that’s huge to be able to, what I say about Google Shopping versus social media, I think both of them are wonderful. Social media helps us get more customers who are likely to buy in the future for our page or our site. We use Kliken stats and it’s a great start to show us that from the time a customer first visits our store. It takes about nine days to come back and purchase and about five visits until they make their purchase and we notice a lot of those people are coming from social media. But with Google Shopping it’s not that delayed, they’re purchasing immediately because they’re already looking for what we have, you know, the keywords that we put into our shopping campaign are “cake transportation”, “how to deliver a cake.” You know all the versions of that. So if something’s googling those words they’re looking for a solution right now and they’re going to purchase at the moment. Whereas social media, it’s still wonderful to build that following, but they might not be immediate purchasers.
Jesse: Yeah, they might just be, they might just like to look at cupcakes online.
Rachel: I do know we have you know kind of not a large following, but I do know we have a lot of people who aren’t bakers at all and just you know our videos are kind of just mesmerizing to watch. Usually somebody who, you know, it doesn’t want the bakers but we don’t hate on the non bakers because even if you’re a
Jesse: Sure it doesn’t hurt to have people that know about your product even if they’re not necessarily buying themselves. So, yeah and I think when you’re talking about Google Shopping I think the beauty of that is that when people are typing in “cake transportation”, your product shows up at the top and it’s a picture of it so that you know for people that don’t know what Google shopping means that’s what we are talking about. So somebody types in the product that you sell and boom — a picture of a product shows up at the top with the price that people can click in immediately go to your site. And that and you’re right there ready to buy right now they’re not thinking about the future.
Richard: Yep, to your point, that’s the difference between paying for it through ads and SEO. You could literally. Well maybe not in your particular case because not as much competition, but you could literally be trying for months or years to try to get up the ranks and get in Page One with SEO whereas with Google shopping boom you land on top of all SEO even the number one ranked SEO and someone has seen it with the picture and a price. They pretty much know they’re going to page to buy something right. If they wanted to if they really just wanted to look into it more they’re going to scroll down and look for an article or something.
Rachel: Yeah, that’s awesome.
Jesse: Yeah. Perfect. So and Rachel you’re helping me market Ecwid as well because Google Shopping is kind of a big thing where we’re you know mentioning to people and then the Instagram Tagging is also something that we’re really excited about. So you know we didn’t choose you because of that but just because you’re using it.
Rachel: Yeah I could verify both of them, you know, that they worked for us. That’s all I can say. They know where your testimonial to both of those features really helping business.
Jesse: Awesome this is not a paid testimonial (laughing), we are not get paid with their cakes, or CakeSafes. Perfect. So Rachel, I mean I know you guys do a lot of different things. I mean I saw a lot of different stuff on your site and on Instagram. Are there some other apps that you think would be useful for other users out there?
Rachel: Definitely. I mean just in the Ecwid world, I mentioned the Kliken stats, it just gives a real insight into some statistics that you might not have realized. Also though I did mention before, Stamped.io, the product reviews that have helped to grow our business tremendously, because you know you can try and sell your product, you know, so much you know it’s not, people aren’t going to take it as well as a real testimonial from a verified buyer.
And what else. Oh, the one other on the Ecwid, we use the GiftUp! app for digital gift cards. And it’s just really easy to set up and a great way to be able to if you have a business where like us, you really have to be the baker and know the size of your cakes to purchase a CakeSafe, if you know a baker’s mother once purchased a CakeSafe for them, you know they’re going in blind, kind of but you know they could just get a gift card, and that’s an amazing present from the baker and they can select the size that they need.
Jesse: Got it. So the gift up app allows people to buy you know whatever kind of gift card they want?
Rachel: It’s I think I want to say there’s a five dollar minimum, but I think that’s just the minimum that I that I set ours to, l think you can literally have it be any amount you want. I think I set the cap of ours as a thousand dollars. I think you could, you know, you could type it in, a gift card for you know the digits of my daughter’s birthday and feel like, you know 10 81. So it really is able to customize any gift card that a customer wants and that lets you upload your own graphics. So it’s just, I don’t know I really like that app, it makes it so easy and so professional to sell the gift cards. And it’s just digital you the recipient gets the email and then the buyer is able to schedule the time that email, and sent it’s just a quality app.
Jesse: Awesome, awesome good tip there. Yeah.
Rachel: And then in the outside the Ecwid world, obviously, the social media apps on your phone like Facebook and Instagram, and you know if you’re doing a Business Facebook page you want the Facebook pages app, and then to some of my favorite photo apps to help you know to create and edit the posts that you’re going to put up there. The actual it’s an Instagram app. It’s just called Layout. And it kind of lets you create a little collage. But it will only be in the square ratio. So you know it’s good for Instagram but it’s just a really quick and easy way to like if you have a before and after photo and you want it displayed right on the one screen and not have to swipe. You know it just very quick to you know upload one two photos, and boom they’re there.
Jesse: And then you do that, Is it a phone app?
Rachel: Yeah it’s phone app. And the other one that I really like this is the only paid app that I use. And this is a phone app as well. It’s called Spark Post and it’s by Adobe and I am really just obsessed with this app. I think it costs 99 cents a month.
Rachel: But if you use it, like I’m all for free, I’m very cheap, but this one, that I have never been disappointed by you know the dollar a month for it. It allows you to upload you know and have your own content, photos and create a really just kind of stunning post if you want to overlay text, it has an option to also you know to make things move like texts can you know swipe in and it allows you to add a logo. And it also has kind of templates where you can take something really visually stunning and add your own branding into it. So if you’re looking for posts, you know, that feature your brand. But look just really beautiful. It’s just a good way to look at their templates, add your logo in. They have all these free royalty free photos for you to use. I just really like this one.
Jesse: That’s awesome. Only 99 cents.
Richard: I am talking about Jesse’s language.
Jesse: I’m cheap too. I like to pay for apps, I think I’ve tried that one before I think I Rich is looking I mean we played.
Richard: It was Spark video we had because we were trying to do something new stuff but Spark posts. I know what you’re talking about because you sometimes just have that static image because you took an image it’s not necessarily
Jesse: Yeah, probably draws the eyes too, as people are scrolling through there you know scrolling to their phone with their thumb. You need smth to gather you know to grab their eye.
Rachel: Yeah, the resolution of you know if you upload a
Jesse: Got it. Now is it also help creating Pinterest pins?
Rachel: Yeah. So with Pinterest, we use a lot of customer testimonials as well. You know, we’ll go through and or I’ll through (it’s just me), repin things that are engaging as well like I think I have a Cake Humor board on Pinterest where it’s like hysterical cakes because you know you want anything that’s engaging is good.
So you know we’ll repin a bunch of engaging content and then we’ll use testimonials in other boards like CakeSafe Users or you know just a Customers folder. And what’s nice about Pinterest is you know you don’t have to go to these individual boards. If you follow us you’re going to see it in your feed. So no matter what we’re we’re saving into the different boards of it’s a funnel cake or if it’s one of our products. But typically, I don’t really use the Adobe Spark post for that. I’m kind of like stealing pictures on our website. Every time I upload a testimonial, the reviews are separate from the testimonials we have testimonials just a tab on our website, where I upload them it’s not you know its people who send me things directly and I put a photo and a testimonial up there for them. And every time I put up a new testimonial we have the Pinterest extension on our browser on Google Chrome. So if I hover over any photo, whatever website I’m on it’ll give me the option to pin it so I’ll just literally take I’ll just click on the testimonial photo and click “Pin” and I’ll paste the caption as whatever the testimonial quote was. And that will go right over to Pinterest and go directly into our Pinterest whatever board I want it to pinch you without actually even having to go to Pinterest.
Jesse: So that’s that’s a nice little hack there as well.
Rachel: Yeah I mean you can do that with all your with any of your products too if you just go to the product page on your website just like you’re a customer and have that Pinterest extension on your browser. Just click on the photo of your product and pin it over to Pinterest.
Jesse: I like that too. How does Pinterest work for you guys? Do you get the traffic and sales from there?
Rachel: Yeah we do. We have a running. I forget what Pinterest calls it running, you know, ad promotion on Pinterest and we spend about $50 a month and we just have that same sort of add for you know a few months we’ll just run and we do we use Google Analytics, and we can see that you know, we are getting sales from Pinterest.
It’s you know it’s not stellar but it’s not bad. It’s still enough for us to keep spending $50 a month. But I’m not super happy with the ease of use for Pinterest. I think of Pinterest as a big company that you know has their stuff together, I’ve had phone conferences with Pinterest. They want to you know they want us to do a campaign with them. And they’re you know doing my doing a screen share with me and they’re saying: “OK, you know how we’re going to click you know to create a promotion,” and they’re like: “Wait a minute, the button is not there. Right. Why don’t have the button?” And I don’t know. So it’s been a little bit tricky with them but it’s you know it’s worth it if you can get an engaging ad up there on Pinterest. But I just you know shout out to the Pinterest worlds you know: “Make it easier!”
Jesse: I’m actually playing around with Pinterest as well for Ecwid.
Rachel: Oh, yeah.
Jesse: And yeah I think I mean I see it for CakeSafe is a lot more obvious that the visual and the food is way better than for us, but yeah it’s a little challenging and there’s way more information there than I need. And we got to go to one section every time and like: “What’s all these other 14 places I could click.” So, yeah. Yeah, I hear you. We’re all trying to figure it out.
Rachel: That’s why I like you know just put the Pinterest extension on your browser and then you never have to visit it just pin over all your products and they’ll be there without having to go through the hassle.
Jesse: There you go. I like that. So Rachel, or any other tips or questions we should have asked you during this?
Rachel: Oh geez. I don’t know we covered a lot.
Jesse: We definitely did. Yeah, yeah. Rich any last questions here?
Richard: No, I mean that was very helpful. I mean I’m a super quick one just so you don’t have to go in detail. But we know how and Instagram you only get one link and kind of use that link wisely. And I noticed you have a Linktree. How’s that worked well for you?
Rachel: Yeah it’s you know I I think it could look a little better, if we have just had the free version of Linktree. So if you go to just CakeSafe on Instagram, you’ll see our linkto.ee\CakeSafe but people you know it’s pretty obvious to people that that’s a link and you just click on it, and then it brings up all different categories whatever categories I want to be there. So once you click there you’ll see at the top it says “Shop on CakeSafe.com.” You know I want that to be the top one I want to push sales. But then there are 3 links below that: “CakeSafe Box Video Tutorials”, “Acrylic Disk Video Tutorials”, “Spray Booth Video Tutorials”, so that you know I don’t want to overwhelm people if they go to our website and we offer such a variety of different products, and they might not even know what they’re looking for. So if they click on that link tree link they’ll be able to you know everything is sectioned out sort of so if they have chocolate here and they spray cocoa butter, they’re going to want to look at the spray booth tutorials. So it just makes it easier to have like pertinent content there without sending everybody to one website and telling them, you know, go to click on the link on our website, then go to a blog then scroll down then do this if we have a blog post we want them to see we just link that exact blog post in a Linktree and we can customize you know the but and so it all say “Read our blog post on, you know, the CakeSafe in Japan.” You know and they’ll bring that right there instead of having them you know do a bunch of steps so I do recommend the Linktree.
Richard: Awesome so if I mean obviously we’ve said the name so many times we probably know where you’re going to say to send them but if people want to learn more about you, what’s the best place for people to contact you or where should they go?
Rachel: I’m also, you know, I’m there to like help people and I can help people coach them with tips and things you can email me directly if you would like cakesaferachel@gmail.com. I spell my name Rachel I’m happy to help out with tips and tricks. If you just have a question about what’s best for your business. At CakeSafe, we’re all about lifting up other people whether it be our customers or other small businesses. So I’m definitely there to help fix that. We’ve talked a lot about our social media and our social media across the board is just CakeSafe so if you’re on Instagram it’s CakeSafe. Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook you can find examples of what we’ve been talking about. If you just visit any of those and our website is CakeSafe.com.
Jesse: Awesome, Rachel! So people are listening if you want some mouthwatering pictures to check out CakeSafe on Instagram and Facebook. And for people listening a ton of great information here please listen to this again! So much information you can apply your own business, please get out there and make it happen. Thanks, Rachel.
Rachel: Thank you.
Richard: Bye, bye.
