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Mari Luangrath

Head Cupcakeologist, Foiled Cupcakes

Biography

Mari Luangrath

Mari Luangrath is currently growing her third entrepreneurial venture, Foiled Cupcakes, Chicago’s most talked about gourmet cupcake company. Passionate about bringing people together, Mari’s goal is to foster personal relationships while providing the absolute best in personal service, delivery and quality.

Previous to Foiled Cupcakes, Mari ran both a rubber stamping/scrapbooking business and a home staging business, on top of being a full time mom. In her spare time, Mari enjoys shopping for shoes, training for a 5k, eating chocolate and discovering Chicago’s diverse restaurant scene. She is a member of the Chicago Young Professionals, Young Professionals of Naperville via the Naperville Chamber of Commerce, the Naperville Jaycees, and currently attends classes at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Foiled Cupcakes

Foiled Cupcakes creates and delivers 20 different flavors of cupcakes to the Chicagoland area. The company officially launched in May, but owner Mari Luangrath had been steadily building buzz for her business for several weeks prior via Twitter which has continued to be her key business driver.

Tutorial

Shoes, Chocolate & American Idol: How To Build an Army of Brand Ambassadors Using Online Conversation

Tutorial Day, Tuesday November 2nd, 9.00-12.00

Social Media is all the rage these days, and companies are quickly identifying several ways to use this free medium to their advantage. But how do you engage your audience and have them become your brand ambassadors so you don’t have to do all of the work?

This hands-on workshop will help you find ways to use social media to grow your company’s relationship with your target audience and have them spread the word for you. In this workshop, you’ll

Learn the basics:

  • Get familiar with the different social media platforms available to you, and determine which makes the most sense for your objectives
  • Discover the pros and cons of “The Big 4” platforms, and find out which will impact your business the most profitably with the least amount of effort
  • Understand the difference between SHOUTING and engaging online

Learn from other companies’ experiences:

  • Hear about actual social media campaigns that real companies (large to small) have done for revenue-generating results
  • Know what NOT to do when responding to a negative comment online

Learn from your fellow attendees:

  • Break into teams to create social media strategies for actual companies
  • Work with others to assemble your own social media go-to guide of strategies, campaigns and other buzz-generating ideas to try right away

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Presentation

Shoes, Chocolate, and the Chicago Cubs: How I started my cupcake business using Twitter and Facebook

Case: Foiled Cupcakes

Track: Social media
Conference Day #1, Wednesday November 3rd, 10.30-12.00

Mari Luangrath, Head Cupcakeologist at Foiled Cupcakes, is obsessed with shoes. So obsessed, in fact, that she launched her cupcake business by talking about . . . shoes. And as a result, Foiled Cupcakes now personally serves a client list of more than a hundred Fortune 500 companies, a dozen wholesale and restaurant partnerships, and a healthy list of Chicago’s influencers, surpassing revenue goals by more than 600 percent in nine months.

Without a traditional “cupcakery” storefront but instead choosing to focus on online order and personal delivery, Foiled Cupcakes is Chicago’s most buzzed about cupcake operation. Having launched its website in June 2009 and marketing via Twitter and Facebook (totally by accident), owner Mari Luangrath shares the three easy, applicable, and effective strategies she’s found to channel prospects into buyers during the launch and growth stages of Foiled: 1. participate in relatable conversations; 2. facilitate fun; 3. do it again. She’ll provide concrete examples of social media campaigns following this methodology along with real outcomes and actual numbers, along with the pitfalls and mishaps the company has encountered along the way.

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Expert panel discussion

Conference Day #1, Wednesday November 3rd, 14.30-15.30

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Philadelphia 2010