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alam Forever is on a mission to celebrate cultural diversity by helping immigrants and the next generation share the inspiring, artistic culture of their homelands. Positive Brand has been with Salam Forever from the very beginning, helping them shape this mission into an online business. By using our network of artists and designers around the world, we have merged the east with the west and created a collection of greeting cards, unique gifts, and fine art prints that are perfect for connecting people by sharing a unique culture, decorating homes, and celebrating special moments.
Research and Insights
We started small, creating a line of greeting cards and sharing the art and the inspiration for each design with followers on Instagram. We grew our following organically through laborious engagement and networking. We learned a lot about our customers in the process.
Based on our experiences, we continue to produce original, high quality content to keep our followers engaged and to grow our brand by delivering content worth sharing. And we attend festivals and cultural fairs to conduct ethnographic research where the open dialogue between customers and their friends as well as customers and the Salam Forever sales team is invaluable.
Creative Solution
In addition to the ethnographic testing at festivals and the valuable insights we’ve gained from our followers on social media, our marketing programs for Salam Forever have benefited from a series of insights that inspired specific creative solutions. These insights are based on the following behavioral marketing principles.
Recency Bias. People place more emphasis on what they have been exposed to recently. For Salam Forever, a Reach and Frequency strategy to building market share has been the foundational marketing principle at work for their brand growth. This is achieved through boosted social posts and steady influencer marketing.
Boosted posts have delivered hundreds of thousands of impressions. Combined with the impact of the influencer marketing program, Salam Forever has experienced a 450% increase in Instagram followers.
Social proof. Sending personalized packages of product to influencers who post videos of their unboxings has dramatically increased Salam Forever followers and consequently sales.
Anchoring and Framing. In addition to increasing market share for Salam Forever which has resulted in an increase in customers, Positive Brand has effectively increased the amount each customer spends. This has been accomplished through choice architecture and the anchoring of prices.
On Salam Forever’s e-commerce website, SalamForever.com, product prices are anchored at $8 per greeting card. However, listed with that price is a further list of price options. The full price list includes the option to buy a set of 5 cards for $7 each or 10 cards for only $6 each and a third option for Stationery Sets of 20 cards for only $5 each.
Anchoring the price of the card at the highest price ($8) and then Framing cards as “sets” (sets of 5, 10, and 20) instead of focusing on the total quantity (1 set instead of 5 cards) encourages purchases of sets of cards. This has dramatically increased the average amount of a purchase order.
Scarcity. Salam Forever’s best-selling card recently ran low in supply during a peak buying period. This decrease in product availability of one product was used to increase purchases of a wide range of Salam Forever’s products in their e-commerce store. By advertising four products that were currently in short supply, Salam Forever customers responded by hoarding—buying much larger quantities of product than normal and from product categories that were not implicated in the advertising regarding items in short supply. This sales promotion resulted in the largest sales spike in Salam Forever’s history.
Power of Free. Another behavioral marketing principle is the impact that multiple engagements have on brand growth. As documented by Zaius (Marketing Profs), “if you manage to drive a second purchase, your customer is more than twice as likely to buy a third time, and even more likely to buy a fourth time.”
For Salam Forever, this strategy is implemented with an incentive for the customer’s first purchase that includes a path that leads to the second purchase. That meant giving a free greeting card (first purchase) to customers that would subscribe to receive Salam Forever’s promotional emails (incentives for second, third and fourth purchases).
Giving a free product (a greeting card) to new subscribers has increased the average order amount for customers that redeem the free coupon. It has also dramatically increased the number of return visits to the online store.
Outcomes
In the last 365 days, Positive Brand has increased sales for Salam Forever by 126%. In just the first two months of 2022, Positive Brand’s scientific approach has delivered increases of 142% for total sales volume compared to the same period last year, with an increase of 55% for the average order value, and a 56% increase in total orders. And that’s our idea of spreading the joy.