Personal Marketing: the right email at the right time

Communication with customers is essential, but due to time restraints, this is often limited to generic newsletters or social media posts. However, according to Forbes.com, 73% of consumers prefer personal communication with retailers over these generic messages.

With our Personal Marketing solution, you can automate emails and make sure customers receive communication when it matters most to them.

 You can read how this works and how other retailers use it in this blog!
 

How does Personal Marketing work?

Unlike regular digital newsletters, you do not create mailing lists within Personal Marketing. We link our tool to the customer card in your cash register system, either RetailVista or OpSuite. 

We read out real-time data and emails are sent based on this information.

There are all kinds of triggers that we can use to send emails, below are just a few examples:

• The purchase of specific products
• Visits to your centre or the lack thereof 
• Birthdays
• Loyalty card registration

Once these emails are set up they will be automatically triggered when it matters. You no longer have to schedule time for pushing out emails because this process is fully automated. This makes Personal Marketing the ideal tool if you want to reach out to your customers in a personal and efficient way.

Here are four tips on how you can use Personal Marketing to entice and inform customers.

Tip 1: Inspire customers to come back

We know that as time goes by, the number of active cardholders can drop to less than 50% of the number of outstanding cards.

That's a shame, because not long ago these people signed up, left their details and expected to visit you often! Personal marketing is a great way to approach inactive card holders and we recently did that for one of our British customers.

We sent an email with a competitive offer to customers who, in June 2022, had not visited the centre for at least 6 months. In total, we sent 2,393 emails and 1,028, or 43%, of these emails were opened.

We then tracked the purchases these customers made in the days after sending out the e-mail:

• Number of purchases: 26
• Average purchase value: £54.78

That means 26 customers who returned to this store after being inactive for 6 months. The average purchase value was also a lot higher, £54.78 compared to the normal average of  £30.55 per purchase!

Tip 2: Balance reminder to redeem points

Garden centres that use points on customer cards can use Personal Marketing to send a gentle balance reminder to cardholders. One of our Dutch customers does this twice a year; during the Christmas period and just before the Easter break.

Last Easter weekend they sent an email to all 2,844 customers who had more than 250 points left on their card. Of these 2,844 cardholders, 1,206 opened the email and 125 of them came within  3 days after the email was sent. That means more than 10% of the recipients visited them almost immediately after reading the email!

Of the customers who had not opened the mail, only 6% came by during the same period.

They ended up spending €47,25 per purchase, so the extra revenue was €5.906 in the 3 days after the email was sent.

Tip 3: Register new cardholders

Many garden centres issue loyalty cards in-store without asking for contact details. That’s fast and efficient, but you have to hope that the customer registers online since only after completing the registration you have an e-mail address to communicate with.

One of our clients came to us with this problem and together we set up a campaign to entice cardholders to register their cards. During a two-month period, a gift voucher was raffled every week among newly registered cardholders and as the main prize, one cardholder got to shop a minute for free!

The result? 1.609 cardholders registered which was a lot more than usual.

Via our Personal Marketing tool, we took care of the communication so that all cardholders are well aware of the benefits of their new loyalty card.

Tip 4: After-sales support

Most communication between you and the consumer is about selling products: offers, newsletters and posts on social media are aimed at attracting visitors or getting them back to your centre. 

However, with Personal Marketing you can also be relevant after the purchase, for example by sending tips for caring for house plants. This helps your customers to enjoy the purchase made at your centre for longer and build a community of loyal customers.

And a satisfied customer comes back far more often than a customer who sees his houseplant slowly dying, right?

We already have a lot of templates ready in our tool that can be used, for example:

• BBQs
• Pond equipment
• Flower bulbs
• Anything in regards to grass & turf

By sending your customers automated tips after they bought something from you, you ensure that they are well informed and get the most out of their purchases!
 

The right email at the right time

These are just four examples of Personal Marketing emails with which you can entice & inform customers. By using Personal Marketing you can send e-mails, once or automatically, based on what your customers are doing.

We believe that good service leads to more customers, but every garden centre uses Personal Marketing in its own way.

Do you also want to know how you can get more out of your loyalty card? Please contact us, we will be happy to help you!