Tucker Gunleather: Social Media, Graphics, and Email Support
Papi Digital (Freelance) | Jun 2021 to Jan 2025
My Role: Digital Marketing Coordinator

 

Overview
Tucker Gunleather is a Texas-based maker of leather holsters, belts, and other goods, and the main client account I supported at Papi Digital. For more than three years, I planned and scheduled social media content, designed graphics, edited video, produced and proofed Klaviyo newsletters, and ran influencer outreach.
 

What I Owned

• Planned Tucker's content calendar and scheduled posts to Facebook and Instagram through Buffer, 4 times a week

• Built a content database of posting times, copy, and holiday themes, from veterans' holidays to traditional ones

• Designed graphics in Photoshop and Illustrator, cutting out holster photos to create clean, simple ads

• Resized and edited videos to meet each platform's specs for Reels and feed posts

• Wrote and documented a step-by-step newsletter process in Klaviyo, including pre-send checks of the logo, photo, and every link, with owner approval before each send

• Built and scheduled more than 20 customer-review newsletters on a twice-weekly rhythm (Thursday mornings and Sunday evenings), each with its own holster, headline, and subheadline

• Researched firearm articles and blogs to create newsletter content that pointed readers to compatible holsters

• Tracked the performance of 32 Facebook and Instagram posts in spring 2023 and found that videos, memes, and encounter clips outperformed product-feature posts

• Ran YouTube holster-reviewer outreach: built the reviewer database, wrote the DM templates, followed up in rounds, and managed communication with 6 influencers

Social Strategy
I followed my lead's strategy of four content pillars:

1. Brand apparel: lifestyle posts featuring models wearing Tucker shirts

2. Humor: gun-culture memes

3. Tribute: content honoring veterans and law enforcement, with credit to the original creators

4. Product: simple, direct holster graphics

How the Email Work Was Split
My lead built and scaled the Klaviyo flows. I handled the content that went into them: newsletter layouts, graphics, review and article content, and the final proofreading and link checks. I sent each layout to the owner for approval before it went out. Tucker also partnered with Affirm to offer a discount that encouraged more sales, and I featured the offer in newsletters. Confirm before keeping.

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Challenges and How I Handled Them

• Staying aligned with the client: Product names, graphic text, and promotion details had to be exactly right. I came up with different ways to explain the same question until we were on the same page.

• Influencer research: For a campaign built around YouTube holster reviewers, I built a database of reviewers and checked the product information before it went to the client.

• Learning on the job: I was new to social media when I started, so I followed my lead's strategy closely and built a repeatable content database so every post had its date, copy, and graphic planned ahead.

Results
Social performance, Feb to May 2023 (publicly visible counts, collected by hand)

• Instagram: median of 297 likes per post across 17 posts, with the top post at 2,305 likes

• Facebook: median of 175 reactions per post across 15 posts

• Content takeaway: videos, memes, and encounter clips drew the most engagement, while product-feature posts lagged

Email and outreach

• More than 20 customer-review newsletters built and scheduled, Sept 2024 to Jan 2025

• A documented newsletter process with link and layout checks before every send

• Outreach to YouTube holster reviewers, with templates, follow-up rounds, and 6 influencers managed

What I Learned
Communication is key. Using the right product names, and asking clear questions about what a graphic should say and what the next campaign was, kept the work accurate and saved time on revisions. I now explain the same idea more than one way until the client and I are on the same page.