Hey everyone, Kelsey from Petals and Profits back with you on the Retail Florist Podcast. Today is a shorty episode and we’re talking about a marketing opportunity that some of us may be missing - capturing our recipient audience. Now by recipient audience I simply mean the people that we are delivering to. We take Grandma a bouquet from the grandkids, Grandma is our audience.
Or Julie at the bank got a beautiful plant congratulating her on her promotion, so she’s our audience. You get the idea. These recipients are free advertising leads!! Maybe even less than free, because you are literally being paid to put your shop and your brand in front of them. So what are you doing to take them from a consumer …. To your next great customer?
A common, and super great way to earn trust and a reputation for reliability is to provide proper care instructions for each gift. I think a lot of times - and I know I am sooooo guilty of this - we forget that we know what we know!!
We KNOW to change the water every day. We KNOW to add flower food to the water and keep our flower away from heat vents. We KNOW to bag our plants if the weather is chilly. Our recipients however, do not.
And if their flowers shrivel on the radiator or their plant dies from cold shock, they are not going to assume that they didn’t know what they didn’t know. They are going to think badly of our business. So how can you educate - and empower - your recipients?
You can of course include a care tag with each order - that’s a great place to start. But let’s level up a bit. How about adding a QR code to the back of your cards or as an extra insert that takes them to your website. There they’ll find a landing page with full care instructions. This allows you to fully explain the proper care of their gift and gets them familiar with your website! Include a few internal links in your care instructions. For example, if you talk about changing water in the vase, link to a keepsake vase you have for sale.
Yes, including an extra tag is a little bit of an expense, but its an advertising expense and you can work it into your Cost of Goods sold, just like you do your card picks and your paper cost and your food packets. And if it saves you from answering the 782nd phone call about flower care and drives people to your website, bonus!
Another idea is to include a coupon with your deliveries. Now it doesn’t need to be a crazy amount, but give your recipients an incentive to visit your store with a coupon for a percentage off an in-store purchase. At my shop, we do this around the holidays - Mothers day and Christmas. A QR Code will send recipients to a landing page to collect their email, and they’ll be rewarded with a coupon good for 6 weeks. This takes them through June and January! These are the slowest months of the year at my shop and I’ll take any foot traffic I can get. And if you can get a new local recipient into your store, you now have the opportunity to wow them with a great customer experience and bring them back again and again.
What about a code for a discount off a purchase online? When you feel the joy of receiving flowers, it automatically puts you in the frame of mind to SEND flowers. Again, include a QR code that funnels them through an email collection process, and rewards your new customer with free or discounted delivery on their first web order! A good place to start if you don’t have an email marketing system set-up is a printed coupon for in-store discounts or a discount code they can enter online. You won’t capture their email right away, but you may gain a new customer.
Ok let’s reward these flower recipients for sharing!! A simple way is to include a note that if they tag your shop on Facebook or Instagram they are entered into a monthly drawing. Or do a “Petal it Forward” campaign where anyone that receives flowers in a given time frame can nominate someone else local to receive a small bouquet. How?? By emailing you or submitting a form on your website.
One last idea for you - choose a few recipients each month - people that are new to town or that you haven’t delivered to before or often - and send them a post card. You have their contact information, use it wisely! A simple “hope you enjoyed your flowers, stop in for $5 off a vase refill” or “here’s a code for a discount when you shop online” is going to leave a second good impression with your recipient, and help your shop stay top of mind. My suggestion? Send it out the day you deliver so they receive it while the flowers are still looking their best.
Before I go, here’s a friendly reminder to ask for reviews - both from the customer sending the gift and the recipient. Direct them to your Google Business listing with phrasing like “If you loved this special gift as much as we loved designing it for you, we’d appreciate it if you let us know!” Then include a link or QR code to your listing.
I hope that these few minutes we’ve spent together have gotten your wheels turning about what you can do at your business to turn your delivery consumers into customers!! I cycle these concepts throughout the year to fit my quarterly marketing strategy. For editable templates of all the inserts I talked about today that you can use in your own shop, click the link in the show notes!
And PS, you heard it here first - I’m announcing an exciting new resource for florists!! It’s incredibly hard to do alllll the things you know you need to do to move your business - and revenues - forward, right? I know I feel like I am never quite done with my to-do list. We know that we should be blogging for SEO, sending out charming and personable emails, updating our search engine listing and of course, posting to all our social media platforms consistently. But you’re a designer, not a copy writer. And when you’re elbow deep in orders or DCD, those items get pushed to the bottom of the list. Right now, more than ever, staying top of mind and connecting with our customers is what’s going to keep our industry and businesses viable. I’ve been working with clients one-on-one developing easy digital marketing strategies and business processes, but I want to help more florists succeed. I have developed the Content Club. This is a subscription to monthly plug and post blogs, website copy that search engines looooove, daily social media captions, reels prompts and lead magnets for the retail florist. Yep, you simply pop in a few of your own details, copy and paste, and your marketing is done. It’s simple, it’s strategic, and it’s going to bring you sales and build loyal fans.
Why the Content Club?? My goal is to get that time consuming content creation out of the way so you can focus on those tasks that move the needle in your business. An entry level employee (or you on your couch) can now schedule your marketing in a matter of minutes, leaving you free to focus on sales and customers. If you’d like to join the waitlist for the Content Club, which will be opening in August, drop me an email at kelsey@petalsandprofits.com or click the link in the shownotes. I want to help you run your business, without it running you.
