Targeted Marketing
Know your customers, then work it!

Yesterday’s retailers came to know their customers by talking with them. Today, you have the advantage of even more options. You can get to know your customers sometimes even better by analyzing specialized data from your point-of-sale (POS) system. From there, you can come up with targeted marketing campaigns designed to bring those shoppers - and more - into your garden center to ring more sales at your registers.

Consider this success story. Every holiday season, using data extracted from his POS system, Dave Williams of Williams Nursery in Westfield, NJ, sends a postcard promoting Christopher Radko ornaments to customers who have purchased the pricey pieces within the last two years. Last year, a small mailing of only 150 postcards generated more than $6,000 in sales.

Where should you begin to realize these kinds of results? If you are keeping track of your customers through your POS system in conjunction with a loyalty or other similar program, the information gathered about each customer’s purchases can be extracted by a specific item or category for use in your target marketing.

In basic terms, as a customer presents a loyalty card or phone number at the POS system, data is gathered about that specific purchase. The sale of each item is then tied to each customer’s personal information in your computer system.

Your computer keeps track of the customer’s purchase behaviors automatically. The more data you put into your POS system, the more you’ll know about your customer so you can target how to market to them. The goal is to take advantage of each purchase and gather data for “mining” later.

Learning about your customer is an all-too-frequently neglected gold mine. It costs at least five times more to attract a new customer than to cultivate a current customer. It only makes sense to advertise to someone who has already purchased a certain product or service from you. By targeting existing customers, you’re not only making an intelligent marketing decision, you’re building a relationship with them.

What customer wouldn’t appreciate expert advice about how to care for the plant they bought a month, or even a year, later? Consider sending a postcard mailing to your customers who purchased roses to remind them to feed their plants each month, spray for insects and diseases, and water during the hot summer months. A specific coupon offer could be tied to the products featured, along with other related items, to entice them to come back to your store. Now that’s customer service they’re not going to get from a box store.

Compatibility Issues

Williams purchased his Radiant CounterPoint POS system specifically because of the capabilities the software offered for loyalty programs and target marketing.

Although he found it a “little trickier getting the information out” of his POS system at first, he is now successfully exporting more than 4,000 customer files and manipulating the data in Excel.

Specifically, he exports his entire customer database and sorts the report by customer and inventory item. Once he has this information, he manually goes through the data, putting an additional column in the report with a “1” to indicate the specific category he’s looking to target.

After completing this task, Williams can easily see the line items that do not interest him for his campaign and manually delete the data. He says CounterPoint’s version 8.0 resolves this data export challenge, unlike the earlier 7.5 version he uses now.

Wilson’s Garden Center in Newark, OH, realized the benefits of target marketing long ago. “My advertising budget spreads much farther by identifying my best customers and those with specific interests,” says Owner Ned Wilson.

Using the SimPOS retail system, Assistant Manager Brian Wilson formulates various queries to narrow specific target customers for select advertising campaigns. Simply, Brian exports the data gathered from his POS into Access. From this information, a query is written to sort the data.

For example, this past holiday season, Wilson’s wanted to mail to a select group of its customers to promote wreaths, arrangements and greens. Wilson exported customer data from the previous year’s holiday season. To narrow his target, he sorted the data by those who purchased live greens, arrangements or wreaths the year before, and customers eligible for “Merry Money” (a “bonus buck” type of marketing program offered by the garden center to get customers to come back and shop during the holiday season).
When he realized he didn’t have as many customer records as he was hoping to obtain for the mailing, Wilson expanded his list by adding another criteria for his mailing: those who had previously spent $140 or more but not necessarily in the “greens” category.

After generating the targeted data, Wilson is able to print labels or put the data into an Excel file to e-mail to his mailing house for the promotional piece.

This past fall, Wilson’s utilized its computer database and Access sorting capabilities to promote a special fall event. The garden center decided it was best to market this type of promotion to its loyal rewards-program members in hopes of drawing more customers. Utilizing the database, Brian sorted the information to create a mailing list of those who had made purchases at the store during the last 18 months. Specialized Sorting
Another IGC retailer, Feeney’s in Feasterville, PA, uses its Activant Solutions system for similar campaigns. Office Manager Barbara O’Connell frequently utilizes its POS system’s database to target mailings to Byers’ Choice and Department 56 collectors, as well as to pond enthusiasts and those with a passion for perennials.

The Activant system has an Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) feature that provides access of the computer’s database to other software programs. With this capability, O’Connell can utilize Crystal Reports software to export the data from Feeney’s loyalty program. After the sales history file is linked to the customer file, the data can be sorted many ways to target customers’ buying habits. O’Connell sorts by inventory, department, class, category, dollar value, number, frequency of sales or by vendor.

A past campaign at Feeney’s included sorting the store’s rewards program database by total sales, then by inventory department for specialized mailings to customers who purchased patio furniture. This could then be taken a step further by sending this group a letter to thank them for their patronage and recap their category-specific purchases with a special offer to stop by the retailer to pick up another piece or two to add to their set. These types of targeted mailings show you care about your customers and their needs, and will keep them coming back.

By first identifying your loyal customers, then targeting even smaller, more profitable customer groups within this gold mine of data, a sales message can be effectively created for maximum results.

By integrating your POS database to generate highly targeted campaigns, you will greatly reduce your advertising expense while increasing response and, ultimately, your sales.