The following is a transcript of a podcast episode released in November 2018. The transcript has been edited slightly for this format. You can listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Or stream it via the Spotify player above.

Jean Edelstein: Hi, I’m Jean Edelstein and I’m from the Seller Content team. Many of you told us that you enjoyed hearing from Josh and Kruti last season, so they’re back to talk about how we’re helping bring buyers to Etsy this holiday season.

Josh Silverman: Hey, everyone. I’m really excited to be here.

Kruti Patel Goyal: Hi, everyone. I’m Kruti, and I’m the General Manager of our Seller Services business.

Jean: Kruti, can you talk broadly about what sellers should be looking for in analytics and insights this season?

Kruti: We’re really excited because we learned so much from last holiday season, and we want to apply those learnings to make this holiday season even better for all of our sellers. First, we want to make sure that we’re helping sellers use the data that we have on Etsy to optimize their shops for search. We hear this question a lot from sellers and we know that this data is super important to you. We want to make sure that we help you understand what items are converting best in search and how you get more visits. We recently launched Search Analytics, which gives you in-depth data about the queries shoppers are using to find your items, which tags on your listings match shoppers’ searches, and how well your listings are converting from those searches.

Second, we’re really excited about the holiday dashboard that we’ve launched, which you can see in your Shop Manager. We're providing simple checklists to help you know what to do all holiday season, every time you log in. We’re reminding you of things like updating your processing times, updating your shipping prices, and making sure that you’re optimizing the right listings to get found in search.

Josh: I’m so excited about that because I know every time I go and talk with sellers, it’s really one of the top things on their mind: What can I do to rank higher in search? And we’re trying to be super transparent about what’s going on and what you can do to rank higher. The more we can both give you data and, even better than that, give you a very simple way to turn that data into action. What are the two or three things you can do to be more successful?

Kruti: And to that end, Jean’s team recently put out the Ultimate Guide to Etsy Search, which is a really great resource to help you dive deeper into how search works and how you can optimize your shops.

Jean: We’re hopeful that it will help you understand the data that you have, and figure out how you can maximize its usefulness in your shop. Data is so crucial for Etsy sellers, but we’re also drawing heavily on it to make decisions about how we’re marketing Etsy as a brand. Josh, can you give us an update on the new marketing efforts that we’ve been exploring for holiday this year?

Josh: Yeah and I bet a lot of sellers are aware that we’ve talked about how we’re spending 40% more money on marketing this year than we did last year. In fact, we’re spending more than $100 million on marketing this year. It’s really exciting. And we do that in a few ways.

First, we spend a fair amount on what we call direct response marketing. A lot of that is in Google. And we do because that’s where people have a very clear intent to buy. If you go to Google and you look for certain keywords, it’s very clear that you’re really looking to buy something. So those places where we buy ads, they convert to your sales really effectively. And what we’re trying to do is make sure that the money that we’re investing on your behalf is going as far as it can to drive your sales.

We’re also starting to experiment with some areas that are a little earlier in the purchase journey, where people maybe aren’t as certain yet that they’re in the market to buy but we want to plant the seed. Television can be one place to do that. And we’re really excited about the television show Making It which ran this summer. Hopefully many of you got a chance to see it. If not, it’s on Hulu, and you should definitely go check it out. It co-stars our very own Dayna Isom Johnson, Etsy’s trend expert, and you’ll see she is fantastic on the show. The show is really all about the power and beauty of craft and it celebrates makers and we think that’s pretty great. Etsy ran its first-ever TV ads during that show.

Right now we’re also testing TV ads in certain cities across America, and we’re doing that in a way that’s really designed for us to learn as much as possible about the power of television. We’re taking a couple of very different types of television ads and we’re running them in different cities to see if they move the needle. [We want to determine] if this is a place where, when we invest, it really drives sales for all of you. We’re committed to continuing to invest and to make sure that we do it smartly so that every dollar we spend on your behalf really drives your sales.

Kruti: Josh, maybe you could talk a little bit about how you think about different audiences, the value of those audiences, and how you reach them in different channels.

Josh: We’re trying to be thoughtful about figuring out who are the types of people who are most likely to love what we sell, and then find them wherever they are. Sometimes, as I mentioned, they’re on Google and they might be very far down the purchase path and ready to buy. Other times they might be on places like Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook. We’re working on how to reach people in those places, and make sure that we tell the Etsy story and we tell it in a way that’s really compelling.

Kruti: I think one of the most interesting things to draw out there is how buyers have different intent to buy at different points in their journeys. We want to reach them at all different points in their journey so that they’re thinking about Etsy, whether they’re just exploring and browsing or whether they’re right there and ready to buy something then.

Jean: Yeah, and ultimately it’s all about the buyer research: testing things with different audiences, measuring our results, and iterating on it. Kruti, can you share how Etsy is drawing on what we learned last holiday season and over the past year to influence how we’re running special events this holiday?

Kruti: Last year, as many of you may remember, we ran our first-ever Cyber Week sales event and it was a huge success. So we’re really excited this year to build on that success and make the Cyber Week sale bigger and better than ever. In your holiday dashboard, you’ll be seeing more information throughout the season about how you can participate and set your shop up for an even more successful holiday season.

Another thing we’ve learned recently that we’re really excited to leverage this holiday, is the effectiveness of a new tool that we released called targeted offers. Targeted offers is a new marketing tool for sellers to be able to reach out to buyers who have already expressed interest in an item that they sell. And that could be through favoriting an item that you sell, or by adding it to their cart. A targeted offer allows you to send them a little nudge, in the form of a discount, to make that purchase they’ve been considering.

So for this holiday season, we’re going to be offering that product to sellers at no additional cost until December 31. If you haven’t tried out targeted offers yet, this is a great opportunity for you to do so and see how effective this tool can be for you.

Jean: Finally we have some questions that we’ve gathered from the community. So many of you were excited to talk to Josh and Kruti directly, so we picked three questions that seem to be among the most common.

First, Beth from Aunt Maymes Attic: “As a handmade seller and a one-person store, I would like to know how I will be best utilized for the holiday season. Will I be left in the dust, or should I take on the approach as the ‘little engine that could’?”

Josh: Etsy is all about celebrating the little engines. That’s what we live for, that’s what we do. And I think that’s how we stand out in this sea of sameness: We band together all these amazing makers like you, so we have one louder voice. We'll be talking a lot in the holiday season about the power of the individual maker. That’s how we get that real human connection between a buyer and a maker. That is the magic of Etsy. We’re going to be working hard to tell the story of makers like you, celebrate makers like you, and make sure that you stand out this holiday.

Kruti: One thing to note is that the majority of our sellers are one-woman shops like yours. Etsy has always been about supporting the one-person business or the micro-business. One of the things that we really want to make sure is that we tell your stories, and that’s as much our job as it is yours. And so really think this holiday season about how you can bring your story to the front and center in your shop—in the listings that you create and in the About section of your shop—so that everyone who comes to your shop knows a little bit more about what makes your shop special.

Josh: Certainly something we see is that items that come with a story are a lot more valuable than just another commodity and that’s what makes Etsy special. The more we can do that together and the more you can avail yourself to tell your story, the more power it has.

Jean: Next we have Kate from Home Sewn By Kate, who asks, “Next-day shipping, free shipping, and personalized items are primarily advertised during the holidays. How are you going to include the shops that can’t offer [those things]?”

Kruti: It’s true that during the holidays people are looking for things that are special, which often means personalized. They want to make sure the things they order are going to arrive in time for the holidays. And, of course, everyone’s looking for a deal. They want save money and free shipping is a great offer to help them understand that.

I think it’s really valuable this holiday season to take another look at your shop and think about whether there are opportunities to offer personalization for the items that you offer. Whether there’s a chance for you to experiment with new pricing that allows you to shift some of the shipping pricing into your item price, which can entice buyers to check out your shop when they’re looking at lots of other items that have free shipping in comparison to yours. And think about how you can stock up on items so that you can offer faster shipping. These are all really important things to your buyers this holiday.

Josh: And Kruti, I’d point out that with Etsy Shipping Labels, you’re getting some of the best deals on the market in terms of the cost of shipping. Nobody out there is getting to ship their product for free. And using our shipping label product, you're able to access some of the most competitive rates on the market.

Now the question is, do you choose to break that cost out and shine a spotlight on it to the buyers or not? Your competitors, mostly, are not. They’re bundling the cost of shipping in together with all the other costs of goods sold, putting that in the item price, and showing shipping as free or very inexpensive. That’s what most of your competition is doing. It’s not that they’re paying less for shipping. They’re just choosing to expose it differently.

Personalization is really a great specialty of Etsy, where many items bought on Etsy can be personalized or customized. We think that’s terrific and we’re going to do more to try to highlight that. And that does mean that it may not be available to be shipped the very next day because the maker might be making it and that’s OK. In fact, many Etsy buyers have been trained to come to Etsy a little bit earlier in order to build in a little bit of leeway. But that doesn’t change the fact that the buyer still needs assurance that the item is going to arrive on time. So we're doing more to expose by when the buyer can expect this item to arrive. And what that means for sellers is to update your processing time and make sure that it’s accurate. And if your items take time to make and make with care, that’s great and we celebrate that and there are many buyers who come early enough to take advantage of that.

Some sellers do have items that really are ready to ship the next day. And as the holiday season gets closer and closer and closer, it’s great for buyers to know that those items are available as well. What’s important for each of you as sellers is just to take a look at the processing time and make sure that it’s accurate. If you build in too much buffer you’re going to lose out on sales. If you cut it too close, you won’t actually meet your commitments and that’s not good either. We just ask that people try to be accurate.

Jean: Mark from efinegifts was one of many vintage sellers who reached out to us. He asked, “Will you be actively promoting vintage in any of your advertising?”

Josh: Yes. I am such a fan of vintage. I think that vintage items can be fantastic buyer experiences, bringing these wonderful treasures to life with Etsy being one of the very best places to buy them. And I think Etsy is the best place to sell them. I think it’s a real treasure within Etsy and one that I want to make sure that we continue to really invest in and have grow. I will say my office is entirely decorated with Etsy vintage items and it’s gorgeous. My home is filled with many wonderful Etsy vintage purchases. Personally, I’m a big fan and can attest to the great buyer experiences that come from this.

One thing I would point out, as we’ve been diving deep into more buyer research on vintage, is that buyers often don’t come with a purchase mission of vintage. They come to buy home furnishings and they find that they love vintage. Or they come to buy clothing and they find that they love vintage. So, it’s often a differentiator. As they learn to navigate for it, they learn to navigate for it within a mission to find home furnishings, clothing, jewelry or some other category, rather than as their starting point.

Kruti: Another thing I would add is that you should look out this holiday season for vintage items to be featured in our marketing. We have a gift guide every year that features vintage. We’ll also be highlighting vintage items in our performance marketing, so those are all ways we’re going to continue to show our commitment to vintage.

Jean: Fantastic. Josh, Kruti, thank you so much for your time today. It’s been great speaking with you.

Kruti: Thank you.

Josh: Thanks, everyone! Really excited for a terrific holiday season together.

Head to your Shop Manager to create a targeted offer campaign today.