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In the jewelry and luxury retail business, the shift from simple transactions to lasting relationships has become more important than ever. Today, the most successful jewelers understand that building trust and learning about their customers is key to earning their loyalty. To help illustrate this, we’ve gathered three jewelry industry veterans to weigh in on how they build learning relationships with their clients.
What is a learning relationship?
A learning relationship is the practice of a retailer continuously engaging with the customer to understand their preferences, values, and life events. It’s about moving beyond the sale and truly getting to know your clients over time, allowing you to offer personalized experiences that resonate with them. This approach fosters trust, strengthens connections, and ultimately leads to repeat business and customer advocacy.
Mauzie Mays | Owner of Mauzie’s
Mauzie Mays of Mauzie’s in Centennial, Colorado believes that the heart of a learning relationship lies in continuous engagement that never feels canned or robotic.
How do you build a learning relationship with clients?
“As consumers ourselves, we understand the importance of building strong and effective relationships with customers. Most of what sets Mauzies’s Fine Jewelry apart from other jewelry stores in our area is the relationship we build with our valued customers.
We diligently make sure that none of our messages feel generic, or that any mass message we send via text or emails feels like a generic blast to each customer. We add a personalized touch to each message we send so the customer understands their value to our company.”
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What’s the most effective way you’ve found to reach your customers?
Leveraging the information gleaned with a curious culture, means when the customer leaves the store the sales associate has contextual, relevant, and often very personal insights into a client - and can communicate as a trusted advisor and not an unknown salesman.
“When it comes to communicating directly with our customers, we have found that Clientbook is the most effective tool we can give our sales associates. Before Clientbook, we relied on email, phone calls, and voicemails for communication. We found that rarely do people answer phone calls from unknown numbers, emails frequently get lost in spam/junk folders, and voicemails are rarely responded to. Text messaging has proven the most powerful medium we use. Clientbook has optimized our time by leveraging automated messaging, easy to use templates, and the freedom of receiving text messages outside of work for time sensitive matters.”
Clientbooks inbox makes it quick and easy for the sales associate to connect with customers when their custom work is complete, a new piece arrives from a designer that matches their style, or major life events are on the horizon.
“Now we are able to check in with customers frequently, send urgent messages in a timely manner, and our response rate has heavily improved.”
How do you balance modern marketing methods with traditional approaches?
During conversations in the store, finding out if the customer follows the store on Instagram, Facebook or other social platforms helps the store identify opportunities to connect with customers.
“An overwhelming number of our customers prefer in-person communication when they visit our store. We’ve balanced this by keeping up-to-date promotional signage in store, as well as having in-store conversations with those who visit. We also are sure to post on Facebook, as well as Instagram, to keep our more ‘tech savvy’ customers informed as well.”
Kendall Martin | Owner of Martin Jewelry
We talked to Kendall Martin, one of the Martin sons of Martin Jewelry in Omaha, Nebraska. Like May, he says personalization is an important part of clienteling and building a learning relationship. For him, it fosters important word-of-mouth marketing and repeat business.
How do you build a learning relationship with clients?
“Our customers like it when they feel like we care about them. So the messages that do best are the ones where we’re not pushing them—rather it’s us doing our best to meet their needs and show that we actually are interested in them.”
What’s the most effective way you’ve found to reach your customers?
“Word of mouth has been huge for us. That’s why clienteling and developing relationships with customers is so important, so that they will give us their word-of-mouth marketing.”
How do you balance modern marketing methods with traditional approaches?
Understanding your customers’ communication preferences and social platform interests can help the store better leverage each platform for the community that responds to it.
“It’s always a challenge to target a wide age range and utilize all the various social media platforms. We use text, phone call, social media and email. We do feel that texts and phone calls are the most effective way to communicate. Email is falling off as a viable resource. We can always do more to stay in better touch with our customers. We hope to follow up more regularly and with messages that don’t feel automated.”
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Audrey Willis | Jewelry Designer & Marketing Manager of Willis Fine Jewelry
Audrey Willis from Willis Fine Jewelry in Rockwall, Texas, uses her marketing background to build relationships both with in-store events and virtually through Clientbook so she and her team get the best of both worlds.
How do you build a learning relationship with clients?
“The heart of the jewelry industry always lies in personal connection. We use Clientbook combined with social media, and in-person events to maintain meaningful connection with our clients.”
What’s the most effective way you’ve found to reach your customers?
“It’s easy at Willis Fine Jewelry to create a meaningful connection because we take the time to get to know our clients past their jewelry needs. Clientbook has made tracking and actioning the connection between our clients stronger because of how easy it is to reach out and get a response.”
How do you balance modern marketing methods with traditional approaches?
“We throw so many types of events and make sure our clients know about the ones that make sense for them. Our clients are vocal about wanting to know when their favorite designers are in store, their favorite products go on sale, and when the next swanky party is happening.
We also have begun our journey through social media, we have made it more of a priority because it is one of the first impressions of a new customer. We use social media as a way to further connect with our existing or new clients.”
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Summary: Why learning relationships matter
All three experts agree on one thing: learning relationships are the future of jewelry retail. Moving from transactional sales to truly understanding your customers’ preferences, needs, and life events is the key to building long-term loyalty.
Each expert’s approach emphasizes the importance of personalized engagement, continuous learning, and offering tailored experiences that resonate with customers on a deeper level. By doing so, you can turn your customers into brand advocates who return time and time again.
