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Toy brand GoldieBlox, focused on young girls, is using do-it-yourself videos to reach girls and their mothers.
GoldieBlox introduced “Toy Hackers” last month, a light-hearted weekly DIY YouTube series showing GoldieBlox protagonists taking on a secret mission and building something out of household items — a pink piñata or a “flying carpet,” for instance — to save the day.
“We incorporate everyday supplies like plastic cups into the show and talk to children through GoldieBlox toy characters,” said Jayme Brown, community manager for GoldieBlox. “We want to make DIY content fun and easy to follow: You can build just with tools around you.”
“Toy Hackers” features a different YouTube personality in each episode, including young robot builder Simone Giertz and a mother-daughter team of doll crafters My Froggy Stuff.
“Influencer marketing is new territory for us, especially when it comes to kid-facing content,” said Brown. “We first explored it last December with our ‘Fast-Forward Girls’ video, and that gained enough traction. So we decided to pursue it for the full season of ‘Toy Hackers.’”
But connecting with 5- to 9-year-old girls is not enough. On Facebook and Instagram, it targets moms by pumping out accomplishments of young women and inspiriting quotes from the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. GoldieBlox has 230,000 followers on Facebook with an average reach of around 100,000 people per post; it has a little over 15,000 followers on Instagram.
While social media helps GoldieBlox drive brand awareness, it is never a conversion tool for the company. Instead, GoldieBlox places a big focus on email to encourage parents to buy.
“We are able to create more targeted content with customized subject lines, for example,” said Molly McDonald, e-commerce manager for GoldieBlox. “Our opt-out rate has dropped from 0.4 percent in 2015 to 0.25 percent this year.”
GoldieBlox is now testing a program called Birthday Club where one parent will receive a coupon for $250 worth of free toys for their child, while other participants will receive other discounts and special offers. The company sends out an email gift code 20 days prior to their children’s birthday, and then an email reminder on their actual birthday. GoldieBlox soft-launched its entire email last Thursday, and more than 1,500 people signed up for Birthday Club within 24 hours.
“Right now, a good portion of our emails are product-centric. As we grow, we will be able to deliver more mission-based content,” said Brown. “We want to create a relationship with our subscribers so that the GlodieBlox brand is top of mind. Then, eventually, we want to convert as many of the loyal subscribers as possible into purchasers.”
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