Mother's Day Marketing and Sales Tips

Episode 227:  In this episode, Vonda and Lori are joined by Jennifer Barnard, from Tillies Flower Shop in Wichita, KS. With Mother's Day just around the corner, Jen shares valuable insights on marketing strategies that can still be implemented. She provides suggestions on how and what to do to maximize sales during this peak period. The hosts and guest also discuss the importance of getting your staff prepared and confident in selling, as well as the effectiveness of creating bundles and improving communication with customers. Tune in to this episode to gain practical tips and ideas for a successful Mother's Day season.

Sponsored by:
Flower Clique
Flower Clique Prep School
Real Life Retail Florist

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:02

I mean you could be talking to Taylor Swift. Yeah. And you're selling her a $25 bouquet. Right. And you never even gave her the option.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Welcome to the Business and Pleasure of Flowers. We're your hosts, Vonda LaFever.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

And Lori Wilson. And we believe that business and fun are a perfect combination. Kind of like us, Vonda.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Lori, this week I made a call to order some flowers. Actually, I had two sympathy things I had to send flowers to. Yes. And I called some shops, and I'm still get at my wits' end when people say, and how much did you want to spend? Ah, really? You tell me they were not Flower Click members. Well, I have to say, one was a brand new flower person that knew it. I just signed up for Flower Prep School. Oh my gosh. So it was a new employee, and I was very patient and really working hard at it. But every time I hear that, you just like kind of, whoa, wait a minute. Did you say you want to spend $25? I didn't. I asked what she might suggest, though, and she did kind of jump in. Wow. I honestly I did not know people still did that. That's kind of where I was with it. Except, Lori, we were on Shop Talk. What did the lady say?

SPEAKER_02 1:38

Yeah, she does. She does it. She does it. She's up in the northeast where like DC area where everything is pretty high end. And she said that she starts at like 60. Right. And then one of our shops that is in the south, like her average order is like in the high 90s, which it should be reversed. Like it was crazy. So we're being rude, Vonda. We have a guest.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

I was just gonna say we have the sales special. We have a Google right now. We have our sales second to you, Lori. Second to you. Second to me. Yes. Jen, thank you for joining us. Jen for chilies.

SPEAKER_03 2:20

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

Well, I think this is our annual sales stop podcast with you because you and I were just talking and we realized you were here this time last year. And it was one of our most downloaded podcasts. Wow. So look how popular you are, miss. I guess some people like to listen to me. You're a very big deal. So uh we're gonna talk about sales and some marketing, last-minute marketing tips and stuff to get ready for Mother's Day, the big day. And we have no notes, so we're gonna just wing it because that's how we do it the best. Yeah, 14 days by the time this is Jen. I mean, marketing-wise, Vonda was like, they can't really do anything marketing-wise because now it's everything should have been done. And you your comment was well, there are some things they can do. What are those some things?

SPEAKER_03 3:22

Yeah, there's so much with digital that you can still do. And just like what Vonda was saying, now's the time to really train your staff. You really want to make sure that they're gonna offer the $300 queen for a day. You don't know who you're gonna talk to on the other end. I mean, you could be talking to Taylor Swift, yeah, and you're selling her a $25 bouquet. Right. And you never even gave her the option. So you want to follow up on all your sales training. That's when all your digital marketing comes in. You have your email campaigns, and really, even though you have your email campaigns maybe planned, we all know we learned from COVID, you have to pivot a lot in the floral industry. Your product is gonna start coming in, and maybe you're not gonna get those palms or that color rose. And so you've got to figure out how to pivot, make a new product, get it online, get it on your website, rebrand it and put it out there and market it.

SPEAKER_02 4:33

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 4:33

So lots of stuff you can still do.

SPEAKER_02 4:35

Yep. Can I say one thing about email marketing too? Just a little side note. Double check your work, double check your work, double check your work. Send yourself a test email or send it to a coworker and have them look. Right before we got on this, I get a lot of emails that I know you do too, Jen, from other flower shops because I'm always looking for inspiration and see what they're marketing. I just got one from a flower shop. The subject line is order flows now. It should say order flowers now, but there are typos in the subject line. And so easy, so easy to do that. Vonda, you and I have both done this. This is why we send test emails to each other before we ever send it out. We send it to three different people before we ever send one out because this happened. Our eyes play tricks on us. You spend a whole lot of focused time creating the email. Our eyes play tricks on us, and we think it looks fine, and and you're missing something. And my heart breaks for this flower shop. There ain't nothing they can do now.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

No, once you send it, it's gone. Yep. And that's one of those things that sometimes you're laughing so hard, or I'm laughing so hard because Lori, didn't you say yes, yes, like, but this is in the subject line.

SPEAKER_02 6:15

You know, it's one thing when it's in the body, you can kind of hide, but uh, this is I mean, that's one thing you want to make sure you focus on it.

SPEAKER_03 6:26

Like what I said, a lot of people already have their email campaigns planned, but you know, that product didn't come in, right? And so they have to swap out, and you're like just frantic quickly. You're gonna re-swap an image on that email campaign, but you forgot to do the link or the name change or the price change. So yeah, I always try to do my email, have it in there and draft, and then I go back to it a couple hours later and recheck it again because maybe you don't have another set of eyes, but at least you've got fresh eyes. Right. That's exactly what I do.

SPEAKER_02 7:08

Walk away from it and then go back before you put it in schedule, and you you always find something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

So okay, so you're saying email marketing. I should have my emails ready to go. And what am I supposed to do? Have them in draft or ready to go.

SPEAKER_02 7:28

Because, like Jen said, you don't know if your product until you know for sure you have the product.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Okay, so I have them in draft and I have them on my calendar so I don't forget to send them because they send them in draft and I might get them, right? Yeah. What else can I do?

SPEAKER_03 7:45

So for emails, it's okay to send two emails a day, like Mother's Day week. I'm a big proponent of two different types of emails. You have one that maybe you have like 10 images on, and then another one that comes out later in the day with just one. Like people are so quick. Sometimes that just one image is what's going to grab somebody. And then maybe you need another one that has all the options on there. But it's really important to send them every day at different times of the day because everybody looks at their mailboxes at different times. And we all know we all get a thousand emails that you may not have time to scroll down to see where it's at. So that's another little tip for emails.

SPEAKER_02 8:35

Are you saying 14 days before Mother's Day, you are sending 28 emails?

SPEAKER_03 8:43

I'm usually not sending out two a day until the week of holidays. So but before that, like every day, your first email should have already gone out from Mother's Day. Right.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

And you don't get a lot of unsubscribes when you send out that many.

SPEAKER_03 8:59

Oh, yeah. You're always going to get unsubscribes because we're always adding new emails in there too. So hopefully you already have your Valentine's Day emails dumped in there. So update your email list. Like this is your time to really capitalize on your emails that you've captured.

SPEAKER_02 9:17

Yep. We just did that for our Flower Click members in our email marketing. We just pulled all of their Valentine's list, uploaded all of their Valentine's Day lists, got them ready.

SPEAKER_03 9:27

And if you need inspiration, follow some people. You know, Lori does a great job with their with FlowerClick members. I follow a couple of the shops that use FlowerClick emails. I follow Scott's NYC. I tend to follow some shops that have the money to spend on big marketing companies. So I follow them for inspiration and ideas. Yeah, there's another one. Is it York Flowers?

SPEAKER_02 9:55

I think I follow. They do a good job. Yeah. Your tag in Austin, I followed them. There, they always send out.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

So anyway. Okay, so we're doing emails, and now I should have a lot of social posts, right? Yes. Social and Google.

SPEAKER_03 10:12

You should do those every day, um, starting now. Make sure with Google, you really want to make sure you're capitalizing on keywords that people search for. So it's really SEO. So you got to make sure you're not just advertising the Mother's Day bouquet. Make sure you're using words like Mother's Day delivery in Phoenix, Arizona. So you have all those keywords in there. So when people are Googling, your profile is going to be showing up. And then social media, you want to make sure you're doing several of your stories. Always have stuff in your stories and then have a post and have a video. And more than once a day.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

Come on. I'll do a lot of work. Gee. A lot of work.

SPEAKER_03 11:02

You know, it is probably the hardest part, is really the videos. That's the hardest part. It's really easy to do a post. I have really enjoyed learning some AI stuff. If you're on Instagram, Instagram, when you go into the stories, you can upload your photo. And it had they have this cute little tool, and it's an AI background. And I I used it a lot at Christmas time. I had like the telefloral penguin mug, and I set an ice skating rink in the background, and it does the background, and then you can like download the image. So I can post it, but then I download the image first, and then I create a post with it separately. So that's kind of a fun little trick. I use AI a lot to just generate ideas if you don't know what to post about and videos. A lot of people overthink it, but whatever worked for Valentine's Day, it's gonna work for Mother's Day too. So at Valentine's Day, um, I saw a lot of big social reaches on our videos of the big bouquets being made. Yeah. Um, like the hundred roses or the $500 bouquet. And we actually sold more because of featuring them because it gives those wow factors, it gets them to watch that video longer because they just are amazed how big that bouquet is being made. So use your camera on your phone and do a little video of someone arranging something. Everybody loves watching something being arranged.

SPEAKER_02 12:49

Yeah. I saw a really cute one around Valentine's Day, and it was a fast forward one, the real fast one. And it was just one of a delivery driver that kept taking huge arrangement out the front door. Out the front door. It was like a different arrangement each time, but they were really big ones. Oh, and I talked to a guy at that shop, and he said, Yeah, that got so many views, and people literally would call them. They're like, the third one he sent out. I how much was that one? I want that one. Like, so wow, do your big stuff, like feature your big item, and it was as simple as that. And some of the stuff, like, they didn't really sell, they were just making it and walking out the door with it, you know, just showing this is what we got.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

But it was super cute, the way the way it's a great idea, and always do the the higher end. Yeah, I mean, that's most impressive anyway.

SPEAKER_03 13:47

Right, right. That's the most impressive. That's what's gonna get you the most comments and the most likes and the most shares. You may not necessarily sell very many of them, but you are getting your name out there more with the social media. So I always say every shop should post their hundred rows bouquet or their queen for a day bouquet once a month because it is always the number one shared post.

SPEAKER_02 14:18

Right. Always well, and with Mother's Day, you know, my selling point if I was working a shop would be if if someone calls and they have three other siblings, go in together and buy that queen for the day for your mom.

unknown 14:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:33

You know, each of you pinched in 50 bucks, and it's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 14:38

Yeah. If you have cute little containers, you know, show a video of a book, hey, being made in the teacup or in the watering can, or there's so much that you really can do last minute. I know you only have a couple weeks left. You're in the home stretch, but you got your flowers ordered, they're coming in. Now your job is to sell them.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

Right. Right. And they could be doing videos early on, right? And just hold those and then post them, you know, that last week. That was what I'd be doing. I'd be taking videos of my staff and designing, and I'm like, hey, hold these until the last minute. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:15

Yeah, definitely. Like, if if you already have videos that you took last year at Mother's Day, even if you don't have the product, you can still share it and say, hey, you know, I reuse content all the time.

SPEAKER_02 15:32

Right. Right. No one's well, you mentioned the word selling. So what do you do right now to get your front of house staff ready for Mother's Day?

SPEAKER_03 15:46

So you want to make sure you kind of have a sales meeting. If you're part of sales prep, you want to go back and review some of those scripts. Sales prep has a great module on pre-calling. Like right now, you could be pre-calling. You're not going to really be busy till like those few days before, right? But you can pre-call and it's a lot of voicemails, but people really actually like the pre-calls. They really do. And they may not call you back, they may go to the website, but take advantage of the flower click scripts, create your own scripts, do the pre-calling, make sure you have kind of your set items of what you want to sell, get your descriptions down, what the color is, what the container is, what the size is, so that you can be confident in your selling, you know, get your bundles together. People love bundles now. And that can be really pulled together last minute. It really can. I at Valentine's Day, I think a Flower Click member had a romantic package with rose petals. And this shop had extra rose petals. And so we quickly put together their romantic, and it literally was the top selling bundle that they had. So you can create those bundles last minute and you can put them on your website using Canva with the bundles. So people don't like to get nickeled and dimed. Right. Sometimes bundles is the best way, like, oh, your mom can get the chocolates and the balloon and the bouquets and the greeting cart. So work on all those things now so you can have confidence so that you can get through the cell quicker. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 17:35

I always tell flower shops people, that's why we love a value meal. We love everything in a value meal. You know, I want everything and the diet coke. I want it all one-stop shopping. So have that ready for them. You were talking about pre-calling, and I have a question. Do you have your employees do the pre-calling, or do you do it, or do you hand pick certain people that have a good tone of voice? Or how do you do that?

SPEAKER_03 18:00

It's all a team effort. They all have to do it. Really? Yes. And you know what? Honestly, if you have a new hire and they're part of the sales prep and they're not real confident, pre-calling is a great way to get them kind of used to being on the phone because they're just calling them. And I have found that they're really nervous in the beginning of doing it. But once they start getting the practice, then they realize it's not bad because they're not necessarily selling them. They can look at last year's order. Now, I always make a suggestion. You look at last year's order and try to upsell it. You know, if they ordered a $75 bouquet, make sure you offer them the $200 bouquet. Right. And if they say no, then that's okay. Right. But at least you offered, at least you tried. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

That's right. I think that pre-calling nowadays isn't as uncomfortable as it was a few years ago, right? Because we're all getting reminders of doctor's appointments, dentist's appointments, anything that's coming up. And and so having that mindset for an employee to say, hey, we're just reminding them. Mother's Day is coming up. We want to let them know that we're of give them that service to get the flowers to their mother or somebody who's like a mother to them again this year. So I think that's helps you become more comfortable making that call.

SPEAKER_03 19:30

Yeah. And you know you're doing voicemails. For the most part, you're leaving voicemails. Yeah. Right. If somebody answered, I think I might kind of freak out. Another great tip is I mean, if you haven't implemented it yet, I don't know if you have time to do it by the time you listen to this podcast, but there are some shops that have been really successful in texting. I was gonna ask you if you do text reminders. You can't do it just like, oh, there's some laws, but LaToya Ferguson has talked a lot about text them all. And so you can put in your phone number list in there and you can send out text alerts. And I think I get annoyed by all the ones that I get, but I get a ton of them because I want the deals. Right. So I think if there's a purpose for it, if you want to do a like a little blast of a deal, you know, you can try it out if you have time. It it's a great time for you to try it out. Right.

SPEAKER_02 20:38

There's a shop here that I go to and they do it and they'll do pre-order now and get five dollars off. Five dollars is not that big a deal, but it's a deal, right? It's to motivate me to click. Yeah. And it saves them because they know Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, pre-order, it's worth five bucks to them to have people pre-order. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

Okay, so after I get my pre-calling list complete and I have my bundles, and now I just have to make sure my staff knows what they're selling every day. And they show up. There you go. That's a good point, Laura.

SPEAKER_03 21:17

You really have to make sure you feed them and you give them lots of moral support so they show up every day. I always say you're in the home stretch. You're in the home stretch. You've made it through the proms, you've made it through the spring holidays, Mother's Day. You might have graduation after that, but I always say, like, you're in the home stretch. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:37

Do you sell a lot of plants on Mother's Day week or mostly flowers?

SPEAKER_03 21:44

Mother's Day is, I would say, the number one holiday for plants for sure. You sell a lot, a lot, lots of plants. I don't know how it is with every shop, but it's really important. Whatever you sell, you pull the order, you pull the plants. Plant off the sales floor. So whatever you promise to your customer, make sure you pull it because by the end of the week, you will be sold out. At least I hope you're sold out of all your plants. A lot of shops have a hydrangea, like all those outdoor plants. If you're lucky enough to have those outdoor plants, people love sending those. And that's great to make a post about. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. And even like videos, they don't really have to be that long. You can just like do a little video of your floor with all the different plants and then post it. And the reason why I say that is the videos are more engaging. It outreaches a lot more. So yeah, make sure your staff is ready and trained and they know what to sell. Make sure you stay communicated with them about what you're running low on, what you have a lot on. A lot of shops are producing. So if you've overproduced something, move it to your homepage of your website. Tell your sales staff, hey, push this one. And that's how it will make it a more successful, profitable, more efficient holiday for everyone.

SPEAKER_02 23:18

Right. One more thing I would add, just because I've already gotten emails about this for email marketing. If you are going to be open on Mother's Day, Sunday, and you're not normally open, you need to post about that. You need to make sure the world knows it. Post it on your social media, make a little graphic, or have somebody in your shop who is good on Canva, make a little graphic, post it on Instagram, post it on Facebook. Hey, guess what? We're open. Bring your mom, bring your dad, bring whoever, and come see us. We're open or whatever your shop hours are.

SPEAKER_03 23:51

Make sure, make sure it's also on your Google. Yeah, Google profile. You can always like add because people will search your store or flower shop, and you want to make sure Google shows that you're open and post it on your storyline every single day that you're going to be open on Sunday. Also, like if you have extended hours. So last year, my family's business, we cleared, I think, like three or four thousand dollars by 10 a.m. in DoorDash. So if you offer DoorDash, make sure your hours are set for DoorDash as well. So it's all those people that woke up at eight in the morning and realize it's Mother's Day, and that was the only way they could get flowers.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

That's crazy. That is crazy. That's that's really a good little tip, though. If you're not on DoorDash, I'm not sure this would be the time to try it out, though.

SPEAKER_03 24:52

No, no, it's not. No, no, no. No, you definitely have to have a whole separate, that's a whole nother podcast. Yeah, you have to have you have to have a plan for DoorDash.

SPEAKER_02 25:02

Maybe try it when there's not a holiday. Yes, right. Agree around with it then, but all right. Any last minute words of wisdom?

SPEAKER_03 25:12

Mothers are I think in the current economy, people want deals. Yeah. So if you can create a deal or even an illusion of a deal, you're gonna probably get a higher conversion rate. My family's business at Valentine's Day offered free delivery on all the bundles. And therefore, we sold a lot of bundles. We we figured we were already going to most of these areas that we have a thousand deliveries going out to. It really wasn't costing us anymore. So we put that on there. Or I know a lot of people get containers at a deal. And so show it what that bouquet would be at full price and then slash it. So you're getting your full markup on it, but it looks like the consumer is getting a deal on it. And so do that. You're still getting your profit. It's okay to market that it's a higher value. And those are typically the ones that you'll sell more of because people are looking for deals, and that's gonna get that quicker sell as well.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

Yeah. But remember that a deal doesn't mean it has to be a lower price. You know, it can still be a hundred and forty-nine dollar deal. Right. Right? It doesn't have to be a $50 deal. And I think that's what some people were like, oh, I have to have a low end. Well, yes, you do have to have a low end, but you also have to have a high end and you have to have a deal that maybe isn't that low end. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:50

Those bundles were all $150 or more. That the deals that our shop had, it was all $150 or more. So the other tip, I realized I had it written down. Don't forget Mexican Mother's Day. It is Friday. So Friday's already a crazy day. But if you have a Hispanic community around your store, don't be surprised by this holiday because it is massive. And this year it's the Friday before Mother's Day, which tends to be bigger. When it actually falls before Mother's Day, it always ends up being bigger versus we have found when it falls afterwards, people will still celebrate on the American Mother's Day. But when it falls before it's bigger, you are gonna sell a lot of flowers. Make sure you merchandise red and white, sunflowers, have it on your website. If you don't have Mexican Mother's Day on your website or know about it, you still have time. You still have time. It's only the 30th. You have time to pop it on there.

SPEAKER_02 28:00

Friday, May 10th is Mexican Mother's Day. There we go. All right. That's great, great tips. That'll be huge around here in Houston. It's always very big. So all right. Everyone needs to get to work, get to planning, get to planning.

SPEAKER_00 28:17

That's right. Thank you very much. Good luck, everyone.

SPEAKER_03 28:23

Yeah, you're almost through it. You're almost through it.

SPEAKER_02 28:27

Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We hope you enjoyed spending time with us because we enjoy spending time with you. If you did, make sure you hit that subscribe button or add the business and pleasure of flowers to your Google morning routine or your flash briefing on Alexa.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

We look forward to seeing you next week. So please come back and join us to discover how a bit of knowledge and one small change in your mindset can take you to new levels in your life and business.