[00:00] [Light, acoustic guitar music begins]
[00:06] Barbara Hagen (VP of Sales and Marketing – ThriftBooks): One example I wanted to just highlight here, um, Bill mentioned how much teachers love to share and we leaned into that here with our, our teacher community giveaways that we partner with, um, to really support, uh, larger scale giveaways of books. So, kind of an additive to the program, like, um, that happens where we are giving away classroom sets of books to teachers. And, um, this is again, speaks to our emotional connection with our community knowing how much they value a full classroom full of books and being able to curate a selection of books that works for them. This isn’t just like a random box that we send them. It really is around working with them as individuals and understanding what, um, community they’re in, what, what grade levels, and, um, giving them a box of books, a classroom set of books that actually delivers what they’re looking for.
[00:56] Barbara: All right. So now I want to just talk a little bit about another community building event that we did last year. Um, it was our 20th anniversary last year, as I mentioned, and, um, you know, being book lover nerds over here at ThriftBooks, we, um, uh, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is, is a favorite. And so we kind of took a page out of that and we created a Willy Wonka-like event. We called it the Teal Ticket giveaway because teal is our ThriftBooks color. Um, and so for three months over the summer, our customers had a chance to win one of five teal tickets.
[01:29] Barbara: And the grand prize was a flyaway. We flew five lucky winners and their guest over to our one of our, um, processing centers, one of our warehouse locations in Phoenix for a behind the scenes tour of our processing center and, um, not only that but we gave each guest, each winner and their guest the ability to, as we called it, take it home as many books as you can carry. We actually end up shipping all their books for them because they had hundreds of books in in some cases that they, they were able to pick out and bring home with them.
[02:01] Barbara: But it was an amazing community event because it offered this kind of connection with a brand that they just don’t normally get to experience, um, to see how everything works behind the scenes and, and then what was great about it is they went back home and they were on the social channels and in our community, uh, Facebook group and just sharing their experience and, and talking about what they saw and what books they brought home. And it really was an amazing engaging event, um, that we were just really, um, happy to, to host them and, and, and see the love of books come to life in person.
[02:34] Barbara: The other element that we had of our community building event, um, last year as part of our 20th anniversary celebration was something, uh, for everyone which we called, uh, this concept we created called Mood Marks. Now what is a Mood Mark you’re probably asking? Well, a Mood Mark is a bookmark with different moods on them. So we created this, this term and, uh, we released them one mood a month. So you can see here the six, uh, different moods that we had. We started actually with Romantic in June because June is such a romantic month and then we kind of unveiled them in different, um, one a month over the next, uh, six months.
[03:13] Barbara: And, um, the moods were actually, uh, unknown to our customers. So they we, we launched, we introduced Romantic but they did not know what the next month’s mood was going to be. So it was really fun to kind of engage with the community and ask them what they thought it should be and get some guesses, um, but we did have those kind of, uh, set ahead of time. And, um, after what you don’t see here but each Mood Mark had on the back of it a sliver of an image. And so after the first one came out and people started to see that there’s an image on it and then the second one, they realized that if you collect all six of these, the Mood Marks actually come together to create an image what we called the Land of ThriftBooks. It was a illustration of what we considered to be the Land of ThriftBooks. Um, so that was kind of a nice surprise for our customers.
[04:00] Barbara: Well, going on to the next slide, you can kind of see here, this is just a snippet of some of the reaction we had in our community on the engagement with, uh, our Mood Marks. When it became apparent that all of these Mood Marks start to form a, in image, uh, the community was just obsessed with collecting all six of them. Um, our social channels were abuzz with chatter, our Facebook group was, uh, overwhelmed with members posting what Mood Marks they needed, uh, which ones they had available for swapping, DMing each other so they could mail out different Mood Marks to each other, trading posts in person, swap meets events were even held. Um, it was an element of community experience that was just un- um, it just surpassed our every expectation. It was amazing to, kind of see it unfold.
[04:50] Barbara: So, a quick, um, mention of some results. So throughout all of these various events, we were able to and with our teacher community, really see some what we call page-turning revenue gains. Um, it came through personalized recommendations. We were able to optimize our, our email content, um, we saw an increase in AOV, annual, our overall customer value, very, very strong metrics.
[05:16] Barbara: But more than just revenue, we also had some, uh, gains that moved beyond just the traditional revenue areas. So, um, I mentioned earlier that we aspired to be more than transactional with our members. It is really our goal to have that emotional connection with customers. And so it’s really important for us that we measure these non-revenue metrics just as well. And we saw really strong gains in, in this space, um, from our membership as well. So, um, really great stuff across the board.
[05:48] Barbara: And then finally, uh, we wrapped up last year with our Cyber Monday promotion, um, that kind of was a culmination of the Mood Marks with this Land of ThriftBooks, uh, giveaway. So you can see here the, the poster which if you had all the six Mood Marks, put them together in a certain order and it created this Land of ThriftBooks. Um, and so this was a surprise and delight for our community members, um, where we were able to offer them this poster free with a certain spend level and, um, kind of really bucked the trend for Cyber Monday. So Cyber Monday usually people are giving deep discounts and, um, dollars off and this was a Cyber Monday promotion that had no discount, there was no coupon code and we actually had a very significant AOV stretch and it performed incredibly well, um, and I think it was just, you know, the six months in the making, all the buzz and community building leading up to this and really resonated with our community members. It was incredible.
[06:43] [SheerID logo appears with URL: sheerid.com/business/]
[00:06] Barbara Hagen (VP of Sales and Marketing – ThriftBooks): One example I wanted to just highlight here, um, Bill mentioned how much teachers love to share and we leaned into that here with our, our teacher community giveaways that we partner with, um, to really support, uh, larger scale giveaways of books. So, kind of an additive to the program, like, um, that happens where we are giving away classroom sets of books to teachers. And, um, this is again, speaks to our emotional connection with our community knowing how much they value a full classroom full of books and being able to curate a selection of books that works for them. This isn’t just like a random box that we send them. It really is around working with them as individuals and understanding what, um, community they’re in, what, what grade levels, and, um, giving them a box of books, a classroom set of books that actually delivers what they’re looking for.
[00:56] Barbara: All right. So now I want to just talk a little bit about another community building event that we did last year. Um, it was our 20th anniversary last year, as I mentioned, and, um, you know, being book lover nerds over here at ThriftBooks, we, um, uh, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is, is a favorite. And so we kind of took a page out of that and we created a Willy Wonka-like event. We called it the Teal Ticket giveaway because teal is our ThriftBooks color. Um, and so for three months over the summer, our customers had a chance to win one of five teal tickets.
[01:29] Barbara: And the grand prize was a flyaway. We flew five lucky winners and their guest over to our one of our, um, processing centers, one of our warehouse locations in Phoenix for a behind the scenes tour of our processing center and, um, not only that but we gave each guest, each winner and their guest the ability to, as we called it, take it home as many books as you can carry. We actually end up shipping all their books for them because they had hundreds of books in in some cases that they, they were able to pick out and bring home with them.
[02:01] Barbara: But it was an amazing community event because it offered this kind of connection with a brand that they just don’t normally get to experience, um, to see how everything works behind the scenes and, and then what was great about it is they went back home and they were on the social channels and in our community, uh, Facebook group and just sharing their experience and, and talking about what they saw and what books they brought home. And it really was an amazing engaging event, um, that we were just really, um, happy to, to host them and, and, and see the love of books come to life in person.
[02:34] Barbara: The other element that we had of our community building event, um, last year as part of our 20th anniversary celebration was something, uh, for everyone which we called, uh, this concept we created called Mood Marks. Now what is a Mood Mark you’re probably asking? Well, a Mood Mark is a bookmark with different moods on them. So we created this, this term and, uh, we released them one mood a month. So you can see here the six, uh, different moods that we had. We started actually with Romantic in June because June is such a romantic month and then we kind of unveiled them in different, um, one a month over the next, uh, six months.
[03:13] Barbara: And, um, the moods were actually, uh, unknown to our customers. So they we, we launched, we introduced Romantic but they did not know what the next month’s mood was going to be. So it was really fun to kind of engage with the community and ask them what they thought it should be and get some guesses, um, but we did have those kind of, uh, set ahead of time. And, um, after what you don’t see here but each Mood Mark had on the back of it a sliver of an image. And so after the first one came out and people started to see that there’s an image on it and then the second one, they realized that if you collect all six of these, the Mood Marks actually come together to create an image what we called the Land of ThriftBooks. It was a illustration of what we considered to be the Land of ThriftBooks. Um, so that was kind of a nice surprise for our customers.
[04:00] Barbara: Well, going on to the next slide, you can kind of see here, this is just a snippet of some of the reaction we had in our community on the engagement with, uh, our Mood Marks. When it became apparent that all of these Mood Marks start to form a, in image, uh, the community was just obsessed with collecting all six of them. Um, our social channels were abuzz with chatter, our Facebook group was, uh, overwhelmed with members posting what Mood Marks they needed, uh, which ones they had available for swapping, DMing each other so they could mail out different Mood Marks to each other, trading posts in person, swap meets events were even held. Um, it was an element of community experience that was just un- um, it just surpassed our every expectation. It was amazing to, kind of see it unfold.
[04:50] Barbara: So, a quick, um, mention of some results. So throughout all of these various events, we were able to and with our teacher community, really see some what we call page-turning revenue gains. Um, it came through personalized recommendations. We were able to optimize our, our email content, um, we saw an increase in AOV, annual, our overall customer value, very, very strong metrics.
[05:16] Barbara: But more than just revenue, we also had some, uh, gains that moved beyond just the traditional revenue areas. So, um, I mentioned earlier that we aspired to be more than transactional with our members. It is really our goal to have that emotional connection with customers. And so it’s really important for us that we measure these non-revenue metrics just as well. And we saw really strong gains in, in this space, um, from our membership as well. So, um, really great stuff across the board.
[05:48] Barbara: And then finally, uh, we wrapped up last year with our Cyber Monday promotion, um, that kind of was a culmination of the Mood Marks with this Land of ThriftBooks, uh, giveaway. So you can see here the, the poster which if you had all the six Mood Marks, put them together in a certain order and it created this Land of ThriftBooks. Um, and so this was a surprise and delight for our community members, um, where we were able to offer them this poster free with a certain spend level and, um, kind of really bucked the trend for Cyber Monday. So Cyber Monday usually people are giving deep discounts and, um, dollars off and this was a Cyber Monday promotion that had no discount, there was no coupon code and we actually had a very significant AOV stretch and it performed incredibly well, um, and I think it was just, you know, the six months in the making, all the buzz and community building leading up to this and really resonated with our community members. It was incredible.
[06:43] [SheerID logo appears with URL: sheerid.com/business/]
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