How to Turn Your CREOATE Followers Into Stockists

A ‘follower’ is an existing CREOATE customer who wants to keep your brand on their radar. 

They might not have been ready to shop from you when they first came across your store, but they hit the ‘Follow’ button on your store page so they can be kept in the loop with your new products and promotions. 

They may not be customers yet, but with a bit of TLC, they may soon be ready to make their first purchase. There’s plenty you can do directly from your CREOATE dashboard to help with this. Read on for our tips.

Where can you check your followers?

But first: how can you see how many followers you have? You can check your follower count from your dashboard. 

Head to the Email Marketing section to see your total follower count, or look in the Followers section to see a list of names.  

💡Did you know? Around 7% of CREOATE brands have over 100 followers. If you’re anywhere near this number, you’re doing great! If you’re a little behind, try adding a line in your bio encouraging people to follow your store for updates.

5 Ways to engage your followers

So now you know how many followers you have, let’s look at how you can help turn them into buyers. Follow these five simple steps:

1. Send them an email using our Email Marketing Tool 

With our Email Marketing Tool, it’s easy to send your followers a personalised message in just a few clicks. 

Log into your Dashboard and head to the Email Marketing section. Under ‘Automated Campaigns’, select ‘Message your followers’. 

Scroll down, and you can see the automatically generated message that will be sent. Your most relevant products will automatically be pulled through under the headings ‘Here are our newest arrivals:’ and ‘And here are our most popular products’.

Make the most of the chance to add your own stamp to this email template

You have the option to add a personalised message above this auto-generated content. This is a great place to shout about your new offers, bundles and product lines, but try to keep this fairly brief — a couple of sentences is great.

Write your personalised message in the section ‘Include a personalized message in your invitation emails for your store followers’ at the top of the page, and this will automatically pull through at the very top of the email. 

When you’re finished, hit ‘Save & Invite’ to send the email to all your followers. You can also message your existing CREOATE customers from our Email Marketing section —  just select ‘Message your customers’ across the top instead. 

💡Heads up! Once a follower places an order with your brand, they’ll move from your followers list to your customers list. 

2. Refresh your product catalogue & tag new bestsellers

It’s good practice to check in on your CREOATE product catalogue regularly. As well as reviewing stock levels to avoid disappointed customers, this is a chance to upload any new products, and experiment with which ones you tag as bestsellers depending on current trends and seasonality. 

Tagging products as Bestsellers makes them instantly more eye-catching. If you have a big product catalogue, it can also help stop the retailer from feeling overwhelmed with choice

📚 Bookmark for later: Best practices for uploading & tagging your products

Refreshing your store with new stock makes it likely that your store will be included in an auto-generated weekly CREOATE email that will go out to all your followers. 

3. Add a temporary store discount

Our weekly auto-generated ‘Brands You Follow’ email also alerts CREOATE customers if a brand they’re following is currently running an offer (and of course you can email them to let them know, too!).

It’s easy to set a blanket offer for your store, and this can be quickly switched off at any time. Just head to your Dashboard → Settings → Store. Beside Discount, check the box ‘Enable Storewide Discount’. From there, you can select a percentage discount amount, and set a new minimum order value for the offer (or keep this the same as your regular minimum order value). 

You can switch this off at any time by simply unchecking this box again.

4. Bring plenty of personality 

Bestseller tagging, bundles and promotions are all well and good, but ultimately what’s going to turn a follower into a stockist is you; your brand, your products, your vibe and your ethos. So make sure you let it shine! 

We have plenty of tips for optimising your CREOATE store and bringing personality to your store description, so definitely check out our guide for this.

But it's important to make full use of every touchpoint available to you. For example, when sending an email to your followers with our Email Marketing Tool, be sure to include that personalised message — and make it personal. 

Let’s look at these two examples: 

1. Shop our new range of handmade bowls and plates in time for spring. Prices start at £5 (WSP) and we’ve added some new bundles, too.
2. Happy Friday to all our lovely followers! It’s been a busy few weeks in the studio getting ready for the launch of our spring range, and we’re so excited to share the first of our lovely new designs with you. They might be our favourites so far, so please do check them out! Many thanks for supporting our store, and don’t forget to follow along @NBpottery to see all the good behind-the-scenes stuff (including some epic throwing fails!). Many thanks, NB Pottery (Natalie & Ben x) 

Which brand do you warm to more, and which would you rather stock? 

📚 Bookmark for later: How to optimise your CREOATE store

5. Be patient and consistent 

Did you know, it takes on average six to eight ‘touches’ to make a sale? That means a potential stockist might need to see or hear from your brand up to eight times before they go ahead and make a purchase! 

So don’t be disheartened if you don’t see results right away. Be patient and keep consistent. The results will follow. 

💡Heads up! Keep in mind that you can only send an email campaign with our tool once every 15 days, so make sure you time these to line up with your best updates. 

Final thoughts 

Your CREOATE followers have actively shown interest in your brand. They want to hear from you, and to be kept in the loop. 

Follow the steps above to make sure you’re carefully nurturing these potential stockists, and keep patient and consistent with your communication. You've got this!