Gardening is like email marketing. It nurtures and lets crops grow. In the same way, email marketing nurtures subscribers so they can grow into customers.
In gardening, you have to segment plants so you can address their unique needs and water them so they don’t wither. You also have to tailor your gardening according to the plant’s life stage and use proper gardening tools to get the best results.
Email subscribers, like plants, need special care, too.
They need to be segmented depending on relevant characteristics. You need to sprinkle nourishing content to nurture your relationship with them. Subscribers are also at different stages of the customer journey so you need to tailor your marketing accordingly.
So how then can you grow a secret garden of newsletters that will bear fruit to conversion?
You are in luck because we’ve analyzed some of the best direct-to-consumer brands in the garden industry to discover interesting campaigns and email marketing insights.
Without further ado, let's start digging for inspiration!
- Promote customized products and bundles
- Offer subscriptions and highlight their benefits
- Share informative content
- Showcase your customer service
- Create a sense of urgency to your offers
Remember that your email strategies will require regular review to ensure success for your business. Where can you get the best inspiration and hints that you're on the right track?
Your competitors!
They will help you find out what emails your competitors are sending and what you should do.
Promote customized plans and product bundles
Take the guesswork out of growing a beautiful backyard through custom plans and bundles. This will address common concerns of customers, especially new gardeners who want their dream lawn but find the process too complicated.
With a customized plan, you want your customers to be confident in choosing your offer while promoting the plan’s convenience.
Sunday takes this strategy a step further with a well-crafted promotional email during one of their Labor Day deals.
Here, Sunday's general offer of providing a custom lawn plan is introduced with a gift which is kept secret to create curiosity.
Follow Sunday’s lead and give away free products (in this example, the secret gift and a two-pack of wildflower seeds). You can also increase the perceived value of the product by displaying the total value of the custom plan (here, it’s $70)
Sunday also offers bundled products in a buy-more-save-more promotion, which is a classic and effective way to upsell products.
Offer subscriptions and highlight their benefits
Marketers know that subscriptions are mutually beneficial.
Buyers get more bang for their buck and convenience while the business can enjoy recurring revenue and customer loyalty.
Plant subscriptions offer convenience, guidance, and a variety of delightful surprises delivered to the customer’s doorstep. The gardener doesn’t have to go through the hassle of looking for new plants or worrying about their care.
It’s no wonder then that a lot of garden lovers opt into subscription plans.
That’s why if your brand offers subscriptions, you need to make sure to highlight the benefits. One way to do this is through a simple, step-by-step email guide.
Here's a good example from The Sill.
The Sill has a "Plant of the Month Club" membership. To help customers understand how the service works, they give a step-by-step guide including the options for duration, type of plant, and colors. On top of that, their email uses GIFs to add visual interest.
Plus, they emphasize other benefits such as free shipping, a “happiness guarantee”, and no auto-renewals (which helps to ease the customer’s worries about being charged without their consent).
Most customers like getting these extra perks on top of the main deal so it’s a good practice to emphasize these benefits in your emails.
Share informative content
Keep your audience engaged by sharing informative emails.
Some of the topics we've seen garden brands send to their email lists are plant care, gardening tips, product usage guides, and common garden problems like pests and different plant diseases.
Make your emails more read-worthy by thinking of other unique content to send such as creative garden DIY ideas.
Arber sends regular emails containing guides, tips, and answers to their customers' questions. It’s a brand worth examining to see how they manage their email content.
Take a look at some of the emails they send:
Showcase your customer service
In any industry, customer service can spell the difference between a brand’s failure and success.
To acquire and retain customers, your business must show that you give value and importance in meeting their needs.
Take note that this customer service includes the support you provide before and after the purchase.
Garden brands should serve customers from pre-sales to when they begin gardening and even until their efforts bear fruit.
Gardening is a difficult endeavor. Your customers will have to deal with several problems and these issues might discourage them from pursuing their dream gardens.
This is where your powerful customer service is more needed.
Your email marketing can be part of your brand’s commitment to a customer’s satisfaction.
The following email examples take on brilliant approaches to showcase customer service.
Rooted sends an email in the form of an FAQ where they share common questions and their answers.
The subject line says Scared to commit? 🥺 while the preheader follows with Us too. Or we used to be anyway. The good news? Anyone can be a great plant parent.
With this copy, the brand addresses the initial issues and apprehensions new gardeners might face.
This email creates a friendly vibe by using lively illustrations while tackling common questions and easing concerns about plant care, safety, and transportation.
Furthermore, they note where customers can get in touch with their support team (whom they call “plant doctors”) and they invite subscribers to their community.
Equip your customers with knowledge to embark on a gardening journey, and address hesitations.
Here’s another excellent approach you can take.
Sunday organizes live webinars to get their customers’ questions answered by their experts.
With this email, they position themselves as go-to experts who are ready to help.
The brand enhances the customers’ experience by providing a full month of free lawn support with different topics to choose from.
Plus, the subscriber can view the calendar of upcoming activities hosted by the brand so they can plan ahead.
Create a sense of urgency to your offers
A sense of urgency, when utilized through productive channels has been proven effective in grabbing the audience’s attention and compelling them to make a purchase.
It also lets you position your products as unique and highly sought-after.
Vego Garden, among the dozens of garden brands we analyzed, is the best in terms of promotions. Within 90 days, 90 percent of the brand’s emails were promotional and used urgency.
Drive email opens early on your subject line and preheader, like these examples from Vego Garden.
Encourage people to act fast lest they lose their chance.
As seen in these emails, a simple way to leverage scarcity is to integrate urgent copy and elements.
The use of a huge timer at the beginning of the email underscores the urgency of the timed offer.
Additionally, you can take advantage of marketing holidays and events like Labor Day and back-to-school deals to promote flash sales.
You can also offer seasonal promotions to align with planting seasons, drive sales during peak demand periods, and manage your inventory effectively.
And that’s a wrap!
Seeds, much like your audience, are full of potential, but you can’t just scatter them on the ground and hope they grow.
You need to craft an email marketing campaign that allows those humble seeds to flourish into a beautiful garden of loyal customers!
