This week, I interviewed Maurissa McCarthy, Marketing Manager for Shop It To Me, a site that tells you when the clothing brands you love go on sale in your size.
“I was studying at AAU in 2011 and was looking for an internship, when I come across a tweet about Shop It To Me, and I thought to myself this is the coolest thing ever! I’ve always been a big sales shopper, and I kind of know what is a good value for the brands I wear, so when I discovered shop it to me, it was a perfect match. It was a dangerous match.”
Since starting as a marketing intern back in 2011, Maurissa McCarthy has grown into the role of Marketing Manager for Shop It To Me. She loves the daily notifications she gets from the service, which started out as a side project while CEO Charlie Graham was studying at Harvard Business School:
“He loved sales and finding deals, but got frustrated when things sold out in his size by the time he clicked through to the item. So that’s where the idea for Shop It To Me came about. He talked with all of the females in his life and they got behind the idea and said “You have to do this for clothing.”
Today, Shop It To Me is going strong- working with over 100 online retailers, and trying to keep in constant contact with their audience. Maurissa is telling me how excited she is about trying out new social platforms and using the Kit UI to take the pain out of Facebook campaigns.
Kit.: How does social media play into Shop It To Me’s success?
Maurissa: It’s super important to stay top of mind with our members and hopefully gain new members through social media. Posting things on the regular and just being consistent is really important for us, and it’s also an extension of our support for members. We’re always engaging in the conversation and inserting ourselves in conversations with sale shoppers, our retailers, jut saying we’re here, we’re hanging out! We love sale shopping! But also sometimes our users will tweet us with any issues, or if they’re really excited about something they’ll tag us on Instagram. We’re always responding to people right away, reaching out to people, sometimes working with influencers… that’s really fun for us. We’re everywhere. Twitter, FB Instagram, Pinterest, and we’re exploring the potential of Snapchat. We’re always looking to hop on the bandwagon as soon as we can with anything that’s new and exciting. It’s a great way to build a new audience.
What have you been exploring with Snapchat? It seems not many brands are venturing there yet.
Yeah, and there’s actually so much potential. We’re still sort of in the research mode of seeing what companies are actually doing. I normally use it on a personal level to send amusing things to my friends on the bus or at work or whatever; The way that a lot of fashion brands are using it, it’s a way to give your followers an inside peek at what’s going on. For example, Rebecca Minkhoff introduced a preview of her fall line of handbags on Snapchat. Some brands have posted special codes to use online by the end of the day. It’s also a means to show what’s going on around the company, leveraging stories, running contests… it’s really fun and interesting to see how brands are using it. It’s a fleeting moment- a really good way to do something timely like a contest.
That sounds awesome. Back to Facebook- you ran an ad through Kit this week. How is that going?
We actually have 2 running right now. We’ve seen some conversions, which is exciting. One of our interest tags from Facebook is Kate Spade New York, a really popular brand with 173 people interested. So I created an ad around that with a cute creative and we’re tracking that. It’s really cool to see in real time what’s going on.
What was your experience setting up the ad?
Super easy. The UI was really easy for creating a campaign. It’s really nice to see something so user friendly that you don’t have to think about too much. And the interest tags make it a no-brainer for whom to target. Some interest tags have surprised me.
That’s great to hear. Thanks for your input, Maurissa!
