Lately it's been great to see so many users preparing for the busy season with the marketing features in FloristWare. We have had a lot of inquiries and traffic on our new support site about generating customer lists for email campaigns and physical mailings.

We often get included in the emailings. We love to see what the users are up to but it can be surprising to see how often florists lead with price. Price can be a powerful motivator but please don't cheapen what you do. There are other vendors out there that can always be cheaper but they will never be able to match the quality and service provided by a real local florist.

The MarketingProfs.com website has a great article on the downside of leading with price. Please take a look.

There is a very good article on the Amex Open site called How to Take Advantage of the Holiday Sales Frenzy.

Points two and four offer great tips for users who plan on taking advantage of some of the marketing features in FloristWare to maximize holiday sales.

Please think about number four first:

4. Offer an anti-frenzy experience.
One thing that online retailers are pushing hard right now is the idea that you can shop from the comfort of your own couch and simply choose the products you want...

How do you take advantage of this? Any advertising you do for the holidays should stress convenience. You don't have to sell on price right now. Instead reinforce that the customer can take care of their Christmas shopping with a simple phone call or visit to your website.

Number two is also relevant:

2. Use more limited time offers.
Thanks to all the other retail offers in the market right now, people are more willing to see and respond to offers with a deadline. Deadlines can also help to create urgency for your offers. This doesn’t mean you need to be a dictator about sticking to the timing, but using the idea of limited time promotions may be more likely to work now.

When you are pushing the convenience of your service also stress that time is precious! Yes, you can take care of the customer but you need to do it now because you won't be able to take any more deliveries after December XX. Don't make it too easy on them by promising you can take orders right up until the last minute. Reinforce that your service is valuable and in demand - something that they need to take advantage of immediately.

Good luck!

Christmas is fast approaching and we're seeing many users take advantage of the marketing features in FloristWare to e-mail their customers. E-Mail marketing is a powerful tool and we are happy to see our clients using it.

Many retailers ramp up the frequency of their e-mail marketing efforts during peak buying periods. It makes sense - customers are looking to buy and are probably going to be more receptive to your offers.

Be careful though - it is possible to send too often. Remember - if someone feels they are getting spammed and asks you to remove them from your list now you won't be able to e-mail them for Valentines.

Keep a close eye on the unsubscribes for each campaign. If you e-mail your customers regularly your list should be fairly stable - you should not be seeing a lot of unsubscribes. If you start to see the number go up as you increase the frequency you probably need to back off a little.

Pay close attention to the content too. Don't just focus on "buy, buy, buy". Focus on the value you offer - specifically the convenience (don't focus on low prices alone).

More Information: Four Tips for Successful Holiday Email Campaigns from MarketingProfs.com

There is a very good article on on The Art of Discounting on TheStreet.com.

It talks about a couple of important things:

"...the key to growing your business involves activating dormant customers by using strategic discounts. By "dormant," I mean customers who are interested in your product or service, but have refrained from purchasing due to price."

and

"The "art of discounting" involves offering lower prices to attract new budget-conscious customers in a manner that minimizes the possibility of current buyers (who are paying full price) taking advantage of these price breaks. In the best case scenario, all current customers continue to pay full price and the discounts generate pure incremental profits. However, it's more likely that some existing patrons end up buying at the lower price. Thus, for a discount to be successful, profits from new customers must be greater than the margins lost from current buyers."

This article includes some great advice and FloristWare gives you the tools to you need to put it into practice.

For example - we believe that you should never promote value products or discount to customers that have high spending averages. Why encourage them to spend less?

Fortunately the marketing tools in FloristWare make it quick and easy to create different lists. You can have a list of "value shoppers" who - one average - spend less than $X on each order and a list of "high rollers" who spend more. You can send a marketing email or postcard campaign promoting discounts and low prices to the value shoppers and another stressing premium product and convenience (and featuring more expensive items) to the big spenders.

You can also find customers who have not purchased since a certain date - this lets you "activate dormant customers" just as the article describes.

And instead of discounting you can always use the points program as the incentive. In fact you can use something like "Triple-Points Wednesdays" to promote exactly the kind of program described in the last paragraph. FloristWare makes it easy.

Ever since we introduced website integration in FloristWare v3 (the ability to retrieve orders from your website into FloristWare) we have learned more about our users and their websites.

One pattern we see involves multiple domain names. We see that many florists have - over the years - purchased and used multiple domain names. This can be a good thing but it can also create problems - specifically when florists lose track of them, let them expire, fail to redirect them, etc.

This article from the MarketingProfs.com website explains why keeping track of your domains is so important and makes some excellent suggestions on how to best go about it.

We often hear from users that want to use the marketing features in FloristWare to promote special in-store events. There is a great article on the AMEX Open forum on this very topic and we encourage you to check it out.

FloristWare can really help you with step 1 (Start early and go viral). The marketing features make it quick, easy and free to notify your customers about the event.

FloristWare can also help with step 2 (Call a charity). The fundraising feature is an ideal way to get a charity interested in partnering with you.

One idea that we have seen used really well for step 6 (Offer a game) is a "name the flower" contest. There are lots of varieties most people have seen. One shop had a few different arrangements featuring some less common varieties and they went home with the people that could identify the contents.

Good luck and have fun!

We heard from a few FloristWare users today who were looking to send one more e-mail blast prior to Christmas.

This is a great idea. Until recently many shoppers seemed to believe they had more time to shop than they actually did. Now they realize time is running out and they are starting to panic. This is the ideal time to catch them - you can make all their shopping problems go away with a quick phone call.

But there isn't much time. You will need to get the message out asap. At this point - two days before Christmas - that means e-mail.

Fortunately FloristWare has great tools for creating lists of customers and then sending them marketing e-mails. And, in a situation like this, there are some advanced features that can really help. For example:

1. When you create your list consider excluding people who have already purchased in the last week or so. If they have purchased that recently there is a good chance they already bought something from you for Christmas and you don't want to risk alienating them by seeming greedy.

2. Look for customers that are flagged as being interested in Christian holidays - there is a feature for this.

When it comes time to write the content there are some great e-mail marketing tips here. This section in particular is very good:

Instead of pitching an blatant sales message you use a gentle tone so the email marketing message reads like a customer service-oriented message.

Don't go with a "Buy! Buy! Buy!" approach. Instead explain that you are ready and able to help make their last-minute shopping problems go away!

Good luck.

Some of our favorite users create short video clips that they then post online to help promote their stores. The article 5 Sixty Second Video Ideas to Help Sell Your Business from the Amex OPEN Forum offers some great points that will help anyone who is thinking about trying this.

We are pleased to be sponsoring a special free webinar from Huckabee AIFSE - sales trainer and founder of Floral Strategies for our users. It will concentrate on increasing average order value. This is the perfect time to review this information so you can take full advantage of it as we head into the busy Valentines period.

This session is being presented to our users free of charge to thank them for their support & loyalty and help them off to a great start in 2011.

There is a great article on the Business News Daily Site about Search Engine Marketing and how it is vital for brick-and-mortar businesses.

When you are looking ahead to 2011 please give some thought to taking some (or maybe most) of the budget that you used to direct to more traditional forms of marketing (like telephone directories, print advertising, etc) and exploring some of these newer options.