GlobalRose Shows Businesses How To Tackle Their Busy Season With SMS

For some businesses, you know off the top of your head when the “busy” season is. Accountants in April, toy stores during December, pool cleaners in June. And while revenue might be generated year-round, the real action falls during that day, month, or season.

That means, by default, a majority of the marketing time, money, and resources will go towards promotion for that one specific period.

Alexey Chesnok is the marketing director at GlobalRose, one of the leading online flower wholesalers. For him, the two busiest times of the year are Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day.

So, how do Alexey and his team work to drive traffic to their site in preparation for the busy season and turn those visiting customers into return business?

You guessed it, texting.

How GlobalRose Reengages Customers Through SMS

When GlobalRose sought out a text marketing solution back in 2017, their main goal was simple: reengage customers who had previously visited their website. The timing was perfect as Alexey had just begun utilizing Google’s SMS extension, a tool that still plays a major role in their text marketing strategy (but more on that later on).

With a business that was already text enabled, their need for our software came from a desire to automate the tedious work they were already doing.

“It was extremely time-consuming to engage and reply back to people individually with things like coupon requests,” notes Alexey. They needed a better way to keep conversations organized and push out messages to all their contacts with just one click. Especially the folks who had found them on Google Ads, their main marketing platform.

They were already targeting potential customers, they just needed a way for people to quickly get connected to them —that’s where keywords came in.

Alexey was using Google ads “Message Extensions” which allowed them to send SMS directly from ad copy. All a potential customer had to do was click the ad and it would automatically text in the keyword “freshflowers” to their number. Immediately after texting the code, customers received an auto-response with a coupon thanking them for joining the list.

What resulted was spikes of new subscribers in the thousands. New leads around their busiest and most competitive time of year.

But for any seasonal business looking to take their cues from GlobalRose, what they did next was the most important step in keeping those new subscribers around and avoiding a mass exodus of opt-outs after the holiday.

GlobalRose’s Key To Keeping Customers Opted-In After Busy Season

While the team at GlobalRose sees steady orders from restaurants, businesses, and wedding planners, their huge spikes are undeniably during Valentine’s and Mother’s Day. As a result, Alexey’s team ramps up their marketing messages around one month before each holiday to cover preorders.

Customers who text in their keyword receive reminders, special offers, and discounts frequently during that time period. This strategy not only engages the existing subscriber list, but ensures that all new subscribers are receiving information regularly as well.

But then, when the holiday is over and the orders are delivered, GlobalRose stops texting.

Well, they don’t completely go radio silent. When the holidays are over and the orders delivered, GlobalRose decreases their messaging frequency. They only send occasional, highly relevant updates to customers.

Instead of trying to convert these customers into the kind of people that buy flowers regularly (a difficult task) they focus on respecting their purchasing preference and going dormant until the time comes again to order more flowers. Because subscribers haven’t been spammed over the last year with texts not relevant to them, they’re happy to receive a yearly reminder to send a bouquet to mom. This tactic, however simple, is the key to customer retention, and an incredible demonstration in the power and subtlety of text marketing.

Segmenting Customers Based on Preferences

Knowing what customers are interested in is essential for navigating seasonal purchasing behavior. Alexey makes it that much easier to keep customers organized thanks to the ability to segment contacts.

He and his team take advantage of the segmenting tool to sort their subscribers based on the sources of opt-in as well as interests. Thanks to their savvy targeted advertising techniques, Mother’s Day patrons are funneled right into an automation that ensures all their May needs are covered.

For Alexey, it’s this degree of personalization that he appreciates the most about SimpleTexting. “I love that you can directly communicate with a customer. If they text you, you can send them a message right back from your dashboard!”

GlobalRose and SimpleTexting, What’s Next?

With hundreds of positive reviews from happy customers, it’s clear that GlobalRose isn’t going anywhere. They’ll continue to have high-quality, fresh flowers ready for you all year long. They also plans to continue to diversifying their audience, and creating more segments. We’ll be right alongside them with new features that help organizations build better customer relationships.