Learn how Instagram Live Seller @kaleidoscopeelements increased sales, saved admin time, and gave customers a checkout experience they love. The result:
✅ 34% Increase in average monthly sales
✅ 8 Hours gained back in weekly admin
✅ 87% Decrease in abandoned claims
✅ 16% Increase in average order value
“All the way around: Paloma’s good for inventory, it's good for sales, it's good for time-saving in your business. Customers give me so much feedback about how much they like it, how simple it is, and they don't understand why all crystal sellers aren’t using it.”
Crystal Matey
Owner, Kaleidoscope Elements
@kaleidoscopeelements
@kaleidoscopeelements · 41.4k Followers · Weekly Live, Story & Feed Sales
Crystal Matey started Kaleidoscope Elements in 2021, selling crystals and sharing their healing properties by going Live on Instagram.
Kaleidoscope Elements makes crystals accessible, so customers can easily use them on their healing journey. In addition to running Kaleidoscope Elements, Crystal is a certified Crystal Practitioner and Trauma Recovery Coach.
Crystal and her husband, Jay, were one of the first businesses to use Paloma, starting with its Beta launch. Their feedback directly informed how the application works today to power a crystal sellers' entire business on Instagram.
Kaleidoscope Elements’ Instagram Live sales are wildly successful, but require nearly eight hours of admin work following every weekly sale to track claims, send invoices, collect payment and shipping information, and keep customers up-to-date on fulfillment.
Plus, with customers having to wait for an invoice, it's easier for them to change their mind. Even with a dedicated following, abandoned claims aren't uncommon.
Crystal needed a faster way to wrap up her Instagram Live Sales, get paid, and get her crystals in her customers’ hands.
Using Paloma, Crystal replaces her tedious, post-sale workflows and gains nearly eight hours back in her week, while improving customers’ overall shopping experience.
Paloma is an ecommerce platform for Instagram Live sales – empowering Live sellers with all of the business tools needed to run an online store from their phones, no website required.
Paloma’s instant checkout automates:
“It just improves all components of the administrative work – not just invoicing, but receiving payment; customers’ understanding: where their invoice is; how to pay; when to pay; staying on budget,” explains Crystal. “It's 100% different and better with Paloma. It just makes life easier. The Instagram Lives flow so much better for crystal sellers – and customers love it.”
Paloma also supports Kaleidoscope’s Instagram Story and Feed sales.
“Story sales would consume my whole day. Now, with Paloma automating this whole process, I’m not having to constantly stop what I’m doing all day to answer customers, make invoices, and go back-and-forth to get payment info. Paloma’s made Story Sales much less inconvenient – I can still offer that service to my customers, but with much less interruption to my day.”
Since using Paloma, Kaleidoscope Elements grew average order value 16%, and customers rave about the seamless and simple shopping experience.
As beta users, Crystal and Jay worked hand-in-hand with Paloma’s team to give feedback and recommendations on features to benefit the crystal seller community.
“We gave a lot of feedback early-on about what worked, or didn’t work as smoothly as we needed it to, or what workflows of our’s took up too much time (like invoicing),” laughs Crystal. “I got answers right away and it was very clear they’re doing everything they can to make Paloma work as seamlessly, smoothly, and glitch-free as possible.”
Paloma’s number one goal is to build a valuable and unique solution for the crystal community. Their team seeks and welcomes seller feedback to build new features and functionality (sometimes within days) that solve sellers’ most pressing pain points.
“Now, it's really rewarding to see our feedback paying off and other crystal shops benefiting from our work with Paloma,” continues Crystal. “The whole team has been wonderful.”
Paloma’s instant checkout tool transforms Kaleidoscope’s workflow, giving Crystal time back in her week and an opportunity to better connect with customers during each sale.
By streamlining the Instagram checkout experience, Kaleidoscope Elements:
“For me, if something's easier and customers like it, that's going to help us to retain and keep that customer with Kaleidoscope,” Crystal explains. “Everybody should be using Paloma; it's great for the crystal seller, and it's great for your customer, too.”
Note: All metrics compare Q1 2024 to Q1 2023.
Ready to try Paloma for yourself? Sign up for Paloma and start selling in minutes.
Want to dig deeper? Let’s compare each of Kaleidoscope’s workflows before and after using Paloma.
Managing inventory is a challenge for crystal sellers – each week, they may have hundreds of unique items to show at each sale.
To prepare for each sale, Crystal manually assigns a price and claim code to each crystal. These codes define how customers claim each item.
For example, Crystal assigns the code “LL12” to a Lapis Lazuli bracelet. During the Live Sale, a customer claims the bracelet by typing “sold LL12” into the Live Chat. The first customer to use the claim code wins the item.
Crystal writes the claim code and price on a sticker, adhered to each crystal.
Crystal inputs the name and price of each crystal into Paloma’s automated inventory uploader, and the app automatically assigns each item a claim code.
This step saves Jay from needing to manually enter this information into a spreadsheet during the Live.
“It's only about 30 minutes extra to add that information into Paloma – and then it's a great way to check inventory after the sale. I can see: what got claimed and what didn't. Whereas before, it was just a sticker on a crystal – there was no system for keeping track of inventory that is still in stock,” explains Crystal. “Now, I click on inventory in Paloma, filter out what's been claimed, and literally see a list of everything that I have still in stock.”
Instagram Live sales are fast-paced, with sellers showing off products to their Live audience, and customers typing an item’s code into the comments to buy them.
During the Live, Crystal is showing items and teaching customers about each crystal. At the same time, she’s watching and searching her Instagram Live feed to announce each crystal’s winner.
This sounds simple, but these claims are rolling in quickly; may come in out-of-order; or are quickly pushed off-screen by other customers’ claims. This leads to in-fighting in the comments, and Crystal constantly pausing and restarting to play both Live host and referee.
Meanwhile, Jay is typing each win (e.g, customers’ Instagram handle, crystal name, cost, and claim code) into a spreadsheet during the Live. The claimed items are placed in a basket with a sticky note to be cross referenced with the spreadsheet later on, to properly invoice and ship.
It’s hectic – and not just for the Kaleidoscope team.
Customers, meanwhile, are excitedly claiming items and may lose track of their winnings. Later, they may realize they purchased more crystals than budgeted and may regretfully ask to put items back – leading to abandoned carts and lost sales for Kaleidoscope.
During the Live sale, the claim process remains very similar for the buyer – commenting “sold” and the item’s code, like “Sold LL12” to win the Lapis Lazuli bracelet.
Crystal no longer needs to play referee. Paloma's Claim Feed displays the winners in real-time (with time stamps; down to the nanosecond), so Crystal can easily announce winners and shout out new customers.
Buyers receive a pop up notification when they win the claim, including a subtotal and a link to their cart. They stay in the Live and continue shopping, but can easily track their spending and stay on budget.
Crystal, meanwhile, focuses on her audience and connects more meaningfully with customers. She gets to show more crystals in each sale, because she isn’t constantly starting and stopping to manage the claim process.
“There was so much stopping and starting, and we don't have that anymore. I've been able to add more crystals to the table, which means more people get those particular crystals before I sell out. So, I'm getting more revenue each week and my sales have increased. There's been so many benefits all the way around that I didn't expect and increased revenue is a huge one.”
Invoicing and getting paid is one of the more painful aspects of selling on Instagram. The native shopping options require a website, and don’t support Live Sales. And many Instagram sellers, like Kaleidoscope Elements, have too much inventory to use traditional web shops.
Paloma is the only app on the market providing a comprehensive ecommerce system, without the need to build a website.
When Crystal ends the sale, her workload is just getting started.
“Before Paloma, invoicing was horrible. It was my least favorite part of my job,” Crystal laughs. “After a live sale, I’d turn around and just see nothing but baskets and hours of work that I knew was coming.”
First, Crystal goes through the crystal bins and claims spreadsheet to create an invoice for each customer. Invoices are itemized, so Crystal hand-types every item and its price on the invoice.
She needs to reach out to each new customer, one-by-one, to ask for shipping and payment information, as Kaleidoscope accepts multiple forms of payment, like PayPal and Venmo.
The whole time, she’s fielding questions from customers about their items and invoices.
Invoicing alone took Crystal nearly six hours each week.
“It was so much work. It just took forever and really took up my whole day,” explains Crystal. “Plus, all of the messages going back and forth between my customers and me in order to get all the information for the invoice. It was just really frustrating.”
Time spent invoicing impacted more than Crystal’s availability – some customers lost interest in their crystals by the time they received an invoice, resulting in lost sales.
“It’s like night and day now!” laughs Crystal. “I don't have to invoice at all anymore! It's amazing to be able to tell customers during the live sale: you don't have to wait! As soon as you're done shopping tonight, you can check out on your own – you don't have to wait for me or for an invoice.”
Let’s rewind: Crystal’s working the Live Sale and the customer claims the Lapis Lazuli bracelet.
Crystal isn’t managing the Live feed anymore; she’s focused on her customers and showing her next crystal. Paloma’s instant checkout experience takes over, alerting the claim winner.
Buyers remain in the sale to purchase more crystals. They can view their itemized cart at any time, which helps customers to track their orders and stay on budget.
Once they’re ready to checkout, Paloma:
The next day, Crystal uses Paloma to send customers’ reminders with a click of a button, expediting checkout and reducing abandoned carts.
“I don't have to ask new customers for their information, because of course, they fill that all out when they check out through Paloma,” explains Crystal. “Plus, they check out much quicker – before, I was chasing people for payment or it might take 24 to 36 hours to send the invoice, leading to more abandoned orders. All the way around, it has made my life so much simpler. When the Instagram Live is over, I'm done.”
Once the sale and invoicing is complete, it’s time to box up and ship the crystals.
Crystal returns to her spreadsheet, cross referencing the bins, sticky notes, and manual invoices to make sure the right crystals are sent to each customer.
Adding to the complexity, many customers maintain “open boxes,” adding crystals to their cart over a period of time. Crystal needs to review spreadsheets from Live sales spanning months to invoice appropriately and ensure all claimed crystals are in the right boxes.
Crystal then manually types the order information into her shipping carrier tool to print shipping labels – messaging customers to correct any shipping address errors as she goes.
This process is time intensive and error-prone, making it difficult to track orders and inventory over the year.
Crystal exports carts and orders from Paloma, in the right format to upload into her shipping carriers to print labels – no more manual entry required. (Paloma also integrates with Shippo, offering sellers’ a faster solution to create shipping labels.)
Crystal pulls up each invoice in Paloma to double check that customers’ complete orders are in each shipping box. Paloma aggregates all purchases over time, making it easy to track customers’ open boxes and ensure all ordered items are shipped out. Customers receive automatic tracking updates, so they know when their crystals are on the way.
“Paloma’s making fulfillment more accurate, because we're catching if we missed an item that's supposed to be in their basket,” shared Crystal. “It’s so easy to check with Paloma what should be in that box before it ships out, and that has also improved our customer service.”
When buyers receive their order, they can check the itemized invoice to re-familiarize themselves with the crystals.
“A lot of times people are new to the crystal world, and they don't know how to identify crystals in their order,” explains Crystal. “So, the itemized invoice helps them to be able to check all the details, make sure they received all their items, and recall the crystal names to learn more about them.”
Paloma’s performance dashboard, meanwhile, gives sellers full visibility into sales performance, making it easy to track how sales are trending each week.
Paloma’s order reports also provide full customer and order information for Kaleidoscope’s tax reporting. Paloma’s payment processing partner, Stripe, provides and auto-files a 1099-K form, taking yet another critical administrative task off sellers’ plates.
“I just don't understand why all crystal shops aren’t using Paloma – not only can you increase revenue and get paid so much faster, but the fees cost less than a lot of the typical invoicing services,” explains Crystal.
“And, customers love it! If it makes your life easier as a seller, that's a plus. But, when the customers are telling you: ‘this is so simple, I love it. I love how my invoice is itemized. I love how I get a running total, and I can stay on track of my purchases.’ It just offers so much to the seller, but also so much to the customer in terms of service.”
Ready to automate your Instagram invoicing and get paid faster? Sign up for Paloma here and start selling in minutes.
© 2024, Paloma®
© 2024, Paloma®
