Strategic Communications Group is not a b2c PR shop, but we’re always looking for online success stories that can help clients. So we were excited to have the CityShopGirl herself, Kelly Collis, visit the agency to talk with our staff. Kelly is the person and the brand behind the successful CityShopGirl.com email alert service, and shared some thoughts and best practices from her first 18 months in business. Check out some of the press coverage she’s garnered here.
Kelly’s background in politics, PR and online marketing have all contributed to her current success. She’s a life long DC native who has worked for former Congressman Tom Davis, the Freedom Channel (way ahead of its time back in 1999) and DBC Communications. At DBC she got into consumer PR and then directed marketing for NationalJeanCompany.com. That was it for her — she told Strategic she was “hooked on online analytics” from then on.
One thing Kelly shared that’s been highly successful for her is to closely follow thought leaders via social media. She did this to make initial contact with the fashion scene here in DC. (She called it stalking — our term for it is social media mapping.) She has had great success with leveraging her online brand for live events, which Strategic also does for some clients.
Obviously the main channel for CityShopGirl is email, and Kelly’s large, squeaky clean opt-in list is the on-ramp to a hugely desirable demographic. There’s no better way to reach thousands of food and fashion conscious DC women, 18-49 with no kids and lots of disposable income. She just scored a partnership with recently launched TBD.com for advertising representation and further distribution. We discussed how the media business model for hyper local news coverage is uncertain, but it’s definitely benefited her business.
Here are a few tactical nuggets she shared:
- List size doesn’t matter — focus on the open rate for email campaigns
- MailChimp is a good tool for managing email — flexible and with really good analytics reporting
- Twitter — just jump in and start — Kelly had no plan at first, now its her #1 channel for customer dialogue and #2 for traffic
- Off line events drive online brand involvement — a single Sex in the City event netted her 400 new subscribers
Even if you’re a fashion clueless male, there’s something to be learned from Kelly’s success. At the least, you’ll have something to talk about with the women in your life!
