Palisades-Raised Digital Marketer Aims to Help Local Businesses

By SARAH SHMERLING | Editor-in-Chief

Elizabeth Jacobi, founder of MochaBear Marketing, wants to use more than 20 years of experience in digital marketing to help Palisades businesses thrive—giving back to the community where she was raised.

“We do full-service email marketing,” Jacobi explained in a phone interview with the Palisadian-Post. “That can be anything from developing a template to helping someone manage their program on a day-to-day basis, to helping them build a lifecycle strategy to really thinking of customer retention.”

Jacobi shared that MochaBear Marketing is focused on the full customer retention strategy, which means really thinking about how to utilize email and social media together.

“Both of these channels are great,” Jacobi said, “but if they don’t work together, you’re missing out on getting the most for each channel.”

MochaBear Marketing helps clients reach their email subscribers on social media channels, including people who have not engaged or purchased from the brands in a while. They also help them reach new people through social media and utilize the email program to increase brand awareness on social media.

“On the flip side, we also make sure that people who are following on social media also join the email list because that’s how you get so much retention out of them,” Jacobi explained. “In that case, we can build the entire strategy, we can build the creative and we can build all the automation, and then we do a lot of analytics to see how things are performing.”

At the core of MochaBear Marketing is email marketing, but Jacobi acknowledges the complexities of the digital space today and that an email strategy must work with all areas of marketing to be the most effective. Over the course of her career, she has worked with large and small brands, including Pro-Flowers, Harry & David, Toyota and Untamed Sandwiches.

“I’ve been in the marketing technology digital space since 2000—really when it was in its infancy,” Jacobi said. “I worked for a big email service agency, where we worked on many top retail brands and had a ton of experience figuring out how to build a really good customer retention strategy and how to utilize email.”

Though Jacobi said that this period was “long before” social media was a factor, she moved on to work for an agency where the goal of the department she ran was marketing technology and how all of these different tools can fit together for a brand.

“After working for an agency and on very big brands, as most agencies do, I really wanted to start working with the small business,” Jacobi said, adding that she wanted to work directly with the owner or team managing a small business.

In order to do that, since most big agencies do not take on those types of clients, Jacobi started her own email agency to provide the same strategies used on big brand names to small businesses, as small businesses can see just as much success from them and do not need to have a big budget to do so.

“My goal is to make sure that all of these digital channels work together for that small business,” Jacobi said, “because small business owners, they need to go and run their day-to-day business, they don’t necessarily have time to focus on the marketing aspect of it.”

Today, Jacobi, who sits on the Board of Directors of the Pacific Palisades Chamber of Commerce, works with several local brands in the Palisades, including CinqueTerre WEST Osteria, The ABCs of Yoga and Amalfi Estates. Even the name of her business boasts local ties.

“You can hear her barking in the background,” Jacobi said with a laugh during the phone interview. MochaBear Marketing is named for her dog, who was adopted from Star Paws Rescue in the Palisades when the farmers market used to be on Swarthmore.

Jacobi shared that because of growing up in the Palisades, she is passionate about the town and the businesses in it.

“I’ve always wanted to work with Palisades businesses,” Jacobi said. “For me, the Palisades is kind of the best of both worlds, where we’re in a large city like Los Angeles, but it still has that small-town feel.”

Jacobi has had to adapt MochaBear Marketing in several ways in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including hosting webinars of all different levels.

“People have realized that email marketing and social media are so important for staying connected to customers,” Jacobi explained. “They understand now that people may not want to come into their store or eat inside their restaurant, but if they’re able to maintain that connection with them, they will eventually come back, and they can order for takeout or they can pickup curbside.”

The pandemic has also encouraged Jacobi to double down on her effort to work with small businesses.

“It made me realize how much I want to work with local businesses who were really hurt the most by this and how I can help them kind of get back up and running through marketing,” she shared.

MochaBear Marketing works with clients with budgets and goals of all sizes—Jacobi encourages Palisades businesses and beyond to connect with her to see if her services are a good fit.

“I’m always open to talking to local Palisades businesses—no pressure to sign with me—but really just if they need some advice on how they can utilize email and social for their business,” she concluded.

For more information, visit mochabearmarketing.com, email info@mochabearmarketing.com or call 424-272-6712.