What a difference a year makes!

According to Kate Swanson, customer relations manager of Art Impressions Inc., 2011 was a lackluster year of marketing for the family-owned company that has been designing, manufacturing, and selling handcrafted rubber stamps to craft stores and individuals for the past 25 years.

“We were one of the businesses that was impacted by the economy and with the size of our staff, we didn’t have the time or budget to spend on marketing.”

And then—something happened!

It all started with an owl …

“Owls—our customers love owls,” Kate says.

So Kate did what Art Impressions has been doing for 25 years, she listened to their customers.

“We did a ‘Facebook Freebie’ and said that anyone who Liked our Page would get a code for an exclusive free stamp from our new Whoot line.”

Using Social Campaigns from Constant Contact, Kate was able to run the ‘Facebook Freebie’ by creating a tab at the top of their Facebook Page. When people clicked the tab they would be brought to a page where they would either be given the code (if they were already fans), or they would be asked to Like the Page before they could see it.

After people “Liked” Art Impressions they were able to gain access to the exclusive code for that was just for Fans.

To promote the campaign, Kate sent an email to their list of email subscribers. After not seeing much growth from asking customers to “Like Us On Facebook” in previous emails, they finally saw results.

In just 10 days they added 172 new fans—and that was just the start.

“What we saw were a lot of our new fans were actually helping us connect with their friends on Facebook,” Kate remembers. “We kept adding new fans even after the promotion ended.”

In the two months that followed, Art Impressions added a total of 600 new fans.

Staying connected

It wasn’t just new fans that flocked to the Art Impressions Facebook Page during and after their social campaign, it was also new customers who wanted to stay connected with Art Impressions and sign up to receive their email newsletter.

Of the 172 new Facebook Fans, 91 signed up to receive email updates along with plenty more in the months that followed.

For Art Impressions, all it took was inserting a sign up block into their Social Campaigns Facebook landing page along with the code, and asking people to “Join our email list for updates on our promotions & products”.

They also added a “Join My Mailing List” tab at the top of their Page.

The “Join My Mailing List” tab on their Facebook Page helped Art Impressions grow their list, during and after the campaign.

Being where your customers are

When Kate started to revamp Art Impressions marketing efforts, she found that there were online communities where their fans were engaging outside of Facebook.

“A lot of our customers would rather follow us on Pinterest or get inspiration from our blog,” Kate explains. “It’s important for us to have a presence where our customers want us to be.”

She included icons that linked to both Pinterest and their blog, under the email sheet inside the campaign – that way people who wanted to stay connected outside of Facebook and Email could do so. Since then, their following has tripled on Pinterest and readership on the blog is at an all-time high.

Art Impressions used their campaign to connect new Fans to their email newsletter, blog, and Pinterest page.

Keep engaging!

For Art Impressions, their social campaign was a just a jumping off point for their marketing efforts.

They’re expecting to do 30% more sales than they did a year ago, and they also have an engaged Facebook following of 966 Fans, a popular email newsletter with over 4,000 subscribers, and an active community on their company blog and Pinterest Page.

If you want to kick start your marketing efforts with your social campaign, you need to pay attention to what your customers want, give them a way to stay connected, and make sure you have a presence in the online communities where they are already engaging.

“We’re now able to do a lot more with our marketing,” Kate explains. “It helps us stay connected with our customers, build our community, and share our inspiration.”

Want to get more fans for your Facebook Page and get more business? Try Social Campaigns today.