Yahoo! Small Business Awards Grants to Women Entrepreneurs

Back in March, Yahoo! Small Business and Carolyn Kepcher (entrepreneur and former star of NBC’s "The Apprentice") announced "Seeds for Success," a new grant program for women entrepreneurs. Out of more than 5,500 submissions, Yahoo! and Kepcher selected three finalists. Each of the finalists will receive $20,000 business grants, $5,000 in web site and online marketing consulting from Yahoo! Small Business partners Exclusive Concepts, Fast Pivot, and EYStudios, and one-on-one mentoring from leading business experts.

The three grant recipients are:

• Karla Duncan, pediatric speech pathologist and founder and president of Head2Toe Publications, a developer of toys and educational materials for special needs children;
• Abby Port, founder and CEO of Red Koala, which will offer customizable art for home décor on its Yahoo! Small Business site;
• Dana Rubinstein, co-founder of Dapple, which will produce earth-friendly and baby-safe cleaning supplies for babies’ hands, toys, and feeding equipment such as bottles and sippy cups.

Earlier this week, Kepcher wrote a blog post for Yahoo! Anecdotal, the Yahoo! corporate blog, where she shared her thoughts on why the Seeds for Success program is important to her. Her post also gives an overview of the program’s fifteen mentors, and the finalists they’ll be working with. Read Carolyn Kepcher’s post to Yahoo! Anecdotal.

And, don’t forget to stop by the Seeds for Success web site, where you can follow along as Duncan, Port, and Rubinstein use their business grants, consulting services, and mentors’ advice to accelerate their businesses. Whoever progresses her business the most over the next six months will win the $10,000 grand prize. What these entrepreneurs learn along the way could help you grow your business, too!

Melissa Chaika Sobel and Jennifer Farwell
Yahoo! Small Business

One-Two Punch Webinar: Web Design and Online Marketing Best Practices to Grow Your Yahoo! Store

Join Scott Smigler (Exclusive Concepts) and Eric Yonge (EYStudios) on Thursday, May 15 at 1 p.m. EDT as they present One-Two Punch, a free webinar that will highlight web design and online marketing best practices used to design and market million-dollar Yahoo! Stores.

Topics will include:

PUNCH 1: Branding and Design for your Yahoo! Store

• Why branding is important
• How you can identify and communicate your brand through your website and collateral
• Helpful tips and tricks for your website

PUNCH 2: Getting traffic to your Yahoo! Store and converting browsers into buyers

• Search engine optimization best-practices
• Viral marketing and social media
• Email marketing
• Analytics and conversions

Sign-up now for free. Limited spaces are available.

Delivering the Complete Package

With Mother’s Day coming up, I was recently browsing the Vermont Teddy Bear and PajamaGram stores for some gift ideas. While looking at the items in each store’s Mother’s Day section, as a potential customer, something caught my eye – messaging about the free gift packaging, gift card, and other special items included with every order. A quick scan of the stores showed me that these free extras weren’t just a Mother’s Day promotion, but a key part of how they do business.

In past posts to the blog, we’ve stressed the importance of providing a good shopping experience to make sales and earn repeat customers, and have suggested sending freebies (like product samples) with orders to win your customers’ love. Vermont Teddy Bear and PajamaGram take this concept a step further, by adding special touches and extras that deliver the complete package – literally.

Over at PajamaGram, all women’s pajamas arrive packaged in a keepsake organza hatbox, with a Do Not Disturb sign, lavender-scented sachet, and gift card included. Pajamas for men, infants, girls and boys also come with their own special packaging and extras. Vermont Teddy Bear sends every bear as a “Bear-Gram,” complete with a gift box, gourmet chocolate, and a gift card. If you’re at a loss for words, both stores give customers the option to choose from a list of suggested gift messages (creative ones, I might add). These added touches are a good example of how merchants can deliver value to their customers, to gain not only their appreciation, but repeat business and word-of-mouth referrals.

So how can you tell what kinds of extras will be a hit with your customers? I asked Irene Steiner, vice president of marketing for Vermont Teddy Bear and PajamaGram, a few questions about the special packaging these stores include with each order, and for some advice to merchants who’d also like to amp up the shopping experience at their stores.

What made you decide to include special packaging with each order?

Since more than 95% of our BearGrams and PajamaGrams are sent as gifts, we feel it’s very important that all of our products be beautifully presented as complete gifts. We added the Do Not Disturb Sign and the lavender sachet along with every PajamaGram to help convey the sentiment of relaxation. We want the recipient to feel like they’ve just received permission to take a mini-vacation. And the free organza hatbox that comes with every pair of pajamas just makes everything look beautiful when it arrives, and is something women tell us they use over and over again. As for Vermont Teddy Bear, people also tell us all the time how much they love the box our bears arrive in, and that they get a kick out of the airhole. The chocolate that comes with our bears is gourmet Lake Champlain chocolate made right here in Vermont, just like our bears. Sometimes the bears do snack on the chocolate on their way to their new homes, however… it’s a bit of a problem.

Was there a time when special packaging wasn’t included with each order?

There was never a time when we didn’t include the special packaging. We have done catalog tests where we test saying “Free Packaging with Every Order” vs some other message and the “free packaging” message pulls best.

How do you decide what “extras” to include?

We have brand meetings every week to talk about how to make our brands even more relevant for our customers, which includes regular discussions about what to offer and when to change the free extras that come with our bears and pajamas. We also survey our customers with our ideas and let them tell us what they prefer.

Does your gift packaging and the extras included change over time, or for different holiday seasons?

We’ve changed the message on our Do Not Disturb Sign a few times and switched from bath salts to a lavender sachet a few years ago after we heard from several customers that they take showers, not baths. We are also talking about offering a holiday packaging option for our PajamaGrams this Christmas. We’ll be launching a survey soon to see what customers think of our new packaging ideas. For Vermont Teddy Bear, every time we try to change from our gourmet chocolate bear head, we hear that nothing tops it, so that’s been a mainstay for years.

I also notice you have suggested card messages, for different occasions. Can you tell me a bit about these?

Our customers use the suggested card messages a lot. We know because we all go help dress bears and pack pjs from time to time, and we proof the cards before they go out the door for delivery. We have an in-house copywriter who writes most of them, but our employees have fun making them up, too. We have a lot in poet-wanna-bes here! We also grab good ones that our customers come up with, too!

Can you offer any advice to merchants who may also be looking to deliver something extra to their customers?

Every business is going to have different customers with different needs. For us it’s critical because we want to stand out in a competitive gift business. Of course it adds cost and takes resources to pull it together correctly, but we’ve found that it’s a major draw in attracting both new and repeat customers. Customers also don’t want to receive free stuff just for the sake of getting something free – they’d rather have lower prices – so what you offer really has to make sense for your product line without throwing off your pricing strategy.

Big thanks to Irene, for sharing these suggestions and experiences.

Almost all stores sell items that could be gifts, whether it’s a gift for another person, or a gift for the shopper who places the order. If it makes good business sense for your store, you may also want to consider including free extras and special touches that deliver the “complete package”.

Smaller merchants that don’t have a large budget for extra items may choose to focus on presentation. For example:

• If you sell bath and spa products, you might want to "wrap" these in a waterproof carrying bag. Not only does the waterproof bag provide extra protection when shipping the order, but it’s something the customer or the recipient of their gift can use time and again. I once received something similar to this, and although the bath products have long since been used, the carrying bag gets pulled out every time I take a trip and need to pack items like shampoo, conditioner, and other bath products that could potentially spill while traveling.

• If you sell jewelry, you may already package this in a small box, or a sealed plastic bag. To give orders that extra touch, you also include a cloth jewelry pouch (something that can be used with the item purchased, or for other purposes), offer free gift wrapping, or both.

You don’t have to be a big store to add extra touches to your orders, just creative, and in-tune with your customers’ needs. Making it your business to go that extra mile can help you earn both new and repeat customers, and encourage them to spread the word about the extra thought and care that went into their order, beyond the point of sale.

Jennifer Farwell
Yahoo! Small Business

Join Yahoo! at the E-Commerce Summit in New Orleans April 23rd & 24th

Is your business optimized? Are you working with the best vendors? Have you negotiated the best services and rates? Do you ever really know?!

It’s tough to know the all answers, but a good business manager should always make the effort. Yahoo! Store is working with an educational trade association of small business owners, called the E-Commerce Merchants (www.ecommercemerchants.org) to help Yahoo! Store customers improve their online sales strategy.

E-Commerce Merchants is a network of hundreds of small business owners around the country who collaborate to improve their businesses. By working together they are able to share ideas, tips, suggestions and resources on what is working for them and what they need help with. The group has been around for a few years and has amassed a fantastic portfolio of business best-practices and industry contacts for its members, many of whom provide discounted pricing to the members.

This trade association offers periodic webinars that allow you to interact with industry leaders on a range of important topics as well as in-person networking and educational presentations at their bi-annual E-commerce Summits. Join me at this year’s Summit in New Orleans April 23rd & 24th as I present on a special Yahoo! Store panel with Yahoo! Partner, Shawna Fennell of 1 Choice 4 Your Store.

Yahoo! has 25 FREE VIP passes for you to attend the New Orleans E-commerce Summit on April 23rd and 24th! Passes are available first-come, first-served. To register please use this link:
www.ecmta.org/ecommerce-summit-spring-2008/index.cfm?code=YHOO

(This is a very special offer, so to ensure no seats go empty a $99 deposit is required during registration. You will be refunded $99 when you arrive at the event in New Orleans.)

Looking forward to seeing you in New Orleans!

Mike Ober
Yahoo! Small Business