Online florist’s network results bloom with SMS digital strategy
With the power of the internet today, online florists face tough competition from all over the world – not just those florists in their area. These businesses need a strong online presence that ensures customers think of them first when ordering flowers.
Teleflora International Network is an online florist network where orders can be placed from virtually anywhere in the world, then completed and delivered by a local florist. Leading florist network Petals is an Australian affiliate of Teleflora USA, and between the two businesses they have 40,000 affiliated florists worldwide.
“Now more than ever it’s important to be present in mobile in every aspect: emails, mobile websites, and now with text messaging. SMS is another channel we can use to get in front of consumers when they’re on their mobile devices. That’s why we saw the importance in focusing on our mobile digital strategy.” Gene Nubla, General Manager, Teleflora International/Petals Network
Challenges
The shift to mobile marketing has well and truly reached the floristry industry, with increased pressure to keep up with digital trends.
“Now more than ever it’s important to be present in mobile in every aspect: emails, mobile websites, and now with text messaging. SMS is another channel we can use to get in front of consumers when they’re on their mobile devices. That’s why we saw the importance in focusing on our mobile digital strategy,” says Mr Nubla.
“We see a lot of customers browsing on mobile and we need to be there.”
Use cases
Petals has previously used SMS and MMS for Mothers Day promotions, but decided to explore MessageMedia’s mobile landing pages for its key Christmas campaign.
Mobile landing pages give businesses the ability to send a tailored landing page, using their own branding, colors and logo, without the need for website edits or a developer. Call-to-action (CTA) buttons invite Petals’ recipients to order, then link them directly to the relevant page on Petals’ website. The second CTA button enabled customers to call Petals in just one tap.
Benefits
Better customer engagement
The use of short trackable links within the preview allows businesses to track customer engagement with great precision, such as who opened the link, how many times they visited the website, and other vital data that informs future campaign activity. Shorter links also allow for more text in communicating your message, without wasting characters on displaying full weblinks.
Using mobile landing pages for the Christmas promotion led to a higher level of customer engagement than comparable campaigns. The Christmas campaign was sent to 18,000 recipients, and the resulting engagement rate was higher than that experienced with other channels.
“We saw 1,000 unique visitors, with an average of two visits per unique user. Fifty consumers visited the site five or more times, including 150 people who visited between four and 17 times.”
“This is the sort of engagement we like to see.”
Petals’ experience reflects a similar experience to other businesses using mobile landing pages. Rather than a message that customers glance at and forget, mobile landing pages induce customers to engage with the content for a longer period of time. Customers keep the mobile landing page on their device and refer back to it as they think about purchasing. This greatly increases the likelihood that customers will purchase when they are ready, either via their desktop or mobile device.
Lower opt-out rates
Mr Nubla was pleased to note lower opt-out rates with mobile landing pages, indicating that more customers prefer the visual format.
Petals sees text messaging and mobile landing pages as an important part of its ongoing strategy.
“We’re still early on in our SMS marketing strategy so we’re looking forward to testing and learning more, such as which messages or images do well, or how different wording affects conversion rates.”
“Our business is very cyclical and seasonal. Our biggest days are Valentines Day, Mothers Day and Christmas, so we would look to text as an additional strategy for those campaigns. That’s where we really want to reach consumer, so I definitely see SMS and mobile landing pages as part of our strategy and marketing mix going forward.”
This interview was part of a webinar hosted by MessageMedia. If you would like to attend a future webinar, follow us on LinkedIn.
