my very first newsletter

Hey you,

I can’t believe i am writing this right now. first off, happy new year!!! Second, thanks for joining alongside me as I figure out this newsletter world. Truthfully, we are going to wing this and see what happens. SO, all i ask is for your honest feedback along the way. Sound good?

Sweet.

Before we get into it, I wanted to also express my gratitude to the amazing team at Social Snowball for sponsoring today’s (and my very first!) newsletter. Noah, Zo, and the rest of the team at Social Snowball share similar values in how I work when it comes to campaign planning, creator and brand relationships, and more. You’ll learn more about them over the next few weeks, but if you’re looking to build, launch, and automate your word-of-mouth marketing programs easily, reach out to them ASAP.

So, what can you expect from this newsletter as a whole?

1. A look into my mind when it comes to all things social media marketing and influencer marketing.

2. What I have learned about the last 7+ years of being a consultant in the marketing space across various niches from brick and mortar promotion to pushing DTC and online sales to increasing retail velocity.

3. Random things I am loving. If you didn’t know, I had an instagram account all around health and wellness and one thing I loved doing was trying new products SO we’re going to bring that here. I’ll share brands I am crushing on, products/apps I use that have allowed me to work smarter, and truly anything that brings a smile to my face that I think you would similarly enjoy.

4. All of the above will be said with my true opinions. Life is too short to have a filter.

Let’s quickly rewind.

If you’re new here, you might be wondering who am I? What do I do? and Why am I so obsessed with building brands online?

Some of you reading this might be friends, clients, or even family and know what I do, but let’s take scroll back a bit.

Here are 8 quick facts in no particular order about me that give some more context about how i got here:

• I am born and raised from New York City, which feels rare these days, but I currently live in Williamsburg.

• My first client was Doris Dev and their brand, Canopy, where I went to lead their social media and influencer initiatives for over 3+ years. This client taught me SO much from systems, project management, what it’s like to scale a team, how to structure successful partnerships as we launched partnerships with the Skinny Confidential and Prose, and more.

  Since Canopy, I have also been given the opportunity to work with brands like immi, Honey Mama’s, TALEA, Calirosa Tequila leading the way on either their social media iniatives through managing and scaling their accounts and/or running point on their influencer marketing initiatives from building out systems and strategy, managing seedings, to handling all their paid creator initiaitves as well.

  In 2021, things changed. I’ll never forget talking to one of my now best friends, Grace Clarke, about how she was working on this really cool olive oil that was going to launch. A few weeks later, we found ourselves sitting with Andrew and Allen, the founders of Graza, in a conference room in Tribeca talking about their goals for Graza as a brand across social media and creators. The goal? Be everywhere — in videos, in the background of videos, just literally everywhere.

  After that meeting, I was officially given the chance to lead and consult the social and influencer initiatives for Graza. 2,000+ seedings and thousands of pieces of content later, I still work with Graza and their team leading organic social, influencer, and scaling our ambassador program (tbh i have been LOVING this side - woo! attribution!!!). Graza is an account that truly showed me what beauty can happen when you have a team and founders that trust you, give you what you need to succeed, and with enough time to do so. There are so many learnings that I could probably write a month of newsletters on it. You can read a bit about my work with them here on Marketing Brew.

Ok well that was like the biggest fact ever.

• I feel like if you work in marketing, it’s always a bit difficult to get people to understand what you do. BTW did anyone else get asked nonstop at their holiday family dinners, “so, what do you actually dof or work?” Anyway, when people ask what I do I say one simple line: “I help brands become best friends with their consumer.” I do this through content, through furthering relationships with creators, through showing up where the ideal consumer is to educate and entertain them, and have their consumers become their #1 ambassador. My goal is to always have a brand say they have a community (active) vs. an audience (passive) upon working with me.

  • For example, I managed $500K+ in ad spend last year just strictly on helping brands source creators to create content and establish relationships that have helped increase conversion, drive in-store velocity, and DTC sales.

• I never planned on getting into marketing. I actually wanted to be a dietician/nutritionist so if you want someone to geek out on that, I am your girl.

• Speaking of school, I was always introverted and focused on work whether in school or out. I went to three colleges only to end up leaving my junior year to focus on consulting. I left the city to go to Vermont (shoutout to any Catamounts), came back home, and ended up at Marymount Manhattan before heading over to Hunter College.

• University of Vermont is the reason I am here now (or so I am convinced). In 2013, I started a food account, which is now @theflexiblefoodie, posting probably some of the ugliest photos you have ever seen when he all used to apply Instagram filters on top of every single thing. This account was supposed to be private after I accidentally hit “Post to Facebook” and then everyone found out. This account sparked my love for growing and scaling community, content, as I scaled the account to 50K and ended up with the awesome opportunity to work with brands like Hinge, Harmless Harvest, Dr. Praeger’s and more. It is what threw me into the world of understanding the influencer side of marketing and how it could improve and be able to also advocate for myself.

• At 20, I accepted an internship with Spoon University to be a pintern (pinterest intern) and truthfully, didn’t really know how to make pins, but taught myself in powerpoint. That evolved to be working with them to help launch the vertical Spoon Healthier and exposed me to awesome restaurants and local NYC spots, which led to me to get into consulting.

• After building my account and working at Spoon, I felt like restaurants were an easy spot where content could improve. After all, people eat with their eyes first so why not try and make someone drool through their phone? So, I ended up reaching out cold over DM to restaurants around New York City such as O’Bagel (one of my favorite bagel spots!!!!) and Gregorys Coffee to help with their content, social + community building, and increasing sales through creator + press events and experiences.

Well that’s just a quick rundown on me! As I am writing this, I realized that picking facts is extremely hard and I could find a way to talk forever. Now that you have the rundown, let’s get into something exciting…

App of the Month

Being that we’re kicking off the new year, if you’re a founder or operator of a brand, you are probably thinking about how to improve for your customer acquisition costs, how to build and automate an influencer and affiliate program, how to get your customers to become your biggest ambassadors, and the list goes on…

So, I am going to leave you with a platform that can help all of that and more for you before we speak next week, which brings me to today’s sponsor, Social Snowball.

The type of affiliates brands partner with is changing. The word affiliate no longer only means publishers and media buyers. There is a new modern affiliate that brands are partnering with. Think: influencers, ambassadors, and even customers! Social Snowball is one of the first affiliate platform for DTC brands that is laser-focused on enabling partnerships with modern day affiliates.

Social Snowball is the control center that lets you configure programs, track referral sales, send commission and rewards, and automate it all.

If you’re currently running your program through free platforms such as Shopify Collabs, you have probably run into some walls you wish you could bust through as your program has scaled or even if you’re just starting out.

Whether you’re a brand wanting to start investing in this or are doing up to or over $500,000 in revenue on Shopify, Social Snowball can help you unlock affiliate and referral growth. Here’s how:

• Klaviyo integration - SS sends every affiliate event (new affiliate, new referral, commission paid, etc.) as a trigger event to Klaviyo or any other ESP. We also send properties unique to affiliates (affiliate codes, tracking links, commission value, etc.) as custom properties to the subscriber profile in Klaviyo so you can automate and personalize all affiliate communications through Klaviyo. All data from Social Snowball is automatically sent to Klaviyo in real time.

• No code leaks - Their Safelinks product eliminates the possibility of code leaks to those discount sites we know and love and help you avoid coupon abuse.

• Customer referrals - Turn your customers into affiliates post purchase. Build a flow of post-purchase touch-points with customers in the click of a button whether through an email flow or “thank you” pages after their purchase.

• Frictionless affiliate sign up - Affiliates can sign up to a program by filling out a form that takes less than 1 minute.They will then receive instant access to their custom discount code, affiliate link and dashboard.

• Dynamic payout redemption - Affiliates can choose between 700+ instant payout redemption options from an entirely self-serve redemption portal. Most platforms only allow one or two MAX. Affiliate can choose from Venmo, Paypal, Visa Gift Cards, bank deposit, Amazon gift card, store credit and more. Also, send out payments on a schedule that makes the most sense to you!

Get started on a 30-Day Trial now right here and see what Noah and the Social Snowball team can do for you to add another revenue source to your business!

That’s a wrap for this week!

Anywho, the goal for the next issue, which will be written as I head to Spain for the first time (!!), is going to run through:

• The best formats for social media teams in 2024

• My Ultimate Tech Stacks currently for Social Media and Influencer Marketing

• How to adopt a strategic mindset in social media marketing

Thank you SO much for reading. If you liked it, I would love to learn more about you and what you would love to see or what questions you would love answered from this weekly newsletter so hit the reply button and shoot one back.

Also, if you have a friend or coworker who you think would love to join the part, just shoot them this link 🙂 https://kendalldickieson.beehiiv.com/subscribe

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