Isn’t that funny how so often we’re like, I have to have a perfect review. It has to be 5.0 on my own shop. But then when we go to make purchases, and we’re looking at reviews, if there’s a 5.0, what’s our first reaction? I can’t trust this. It’s not real.

It’s summertime in the Floral Industry, which means plenty of opportunities to grow your business. Our goal throughout this mini series is to not only help you get through the season, but also gain valuable insights from professionals in the industry, our Floral community and our Lovingly team.

Unknown Speaker 0:00
Isn’t that funny how so often we’re like, I have to have a perfect review. It has to be 5.0 on my own shop. But then when we go to make purchases, and we’re looking at reviews, if there’s a 5.0, what’s our first reaction? I can’t trust this. It’s not real.

Unknown Speaker 0:19
It’s summertime in the Floral industry, which means plenty of opportunities to grow your business.

Unknown Speaker 0:26
Our goal throughout this mini series is to not only help you get through the season, but also gain valuable insights from professionals in the industry, our Floral community and our Lovingly team.

Unknown Speaker 0:38
Welcome to Flower Shop Secrets: Summer Survival. Watch now on YouTube: like, subscribe and ring the bell for new episodes.

Quinn is in the house today to guide you all on taking some simple steps towards having your best summer ever. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself? Yeah, I’m Quinn Mortensen. I’m the Vice President partner success here at lovingly. And that means that I get have the great opportunity to work with our partners and work with a lot of shops to understand what’s working, what’s not, what are they seeing in the industry. And it’s kind of the best of both worlds because I get to work on the technology and software side. But I also get to interact with the shops, the owners and hear and have the finger on the pulse. They’re come from a long history of working in technology of software, and really working on those models that we help the partners who help their customers. So I’m excited to be here. What are some of the things our audience could do to thrive this summer? So in honor of this,

Unknown Speaker 1:36
oh, I’m ready for the summer

Unknown Speaker 1:39
interview to do it the whole way like this. Hey, all right. Well, yeah, you know, you want

Unknown Speaker 1:45
we kind of get into this point and love this was shops is it’s the recovery from for Mother’s Day, Mother’s Day is done, we love it. And then afterwards, like we got to take some time off, and then all of a sudden, the adrenaline kind of drops off. It’s like, Okay, now we’re getting into some things are starting to calm down a little bit. And one of the first questions that we find the shops are asking is like, Okay, well, I just survived. And it goes from survival mode to what can I do now? And and in that there’s actually a lot of different things that when summer hits that we always recommend. But one thing that I’m getting was we’re talking having this great conversation is consistency. That what we started the summer that some of that carry over through the busier months in the holidays.

Unknown Speaker 2:35
But really, when we’re looking at this one big area that we want to hit on, is kind of how we’re dealing with our reputation. So one of those is Joe, I know you’re a proponent of this, we’ve had conversations before about this online reviews. Right? What have you seen Joe, as we’ve kind of talked and we you’ve met with shops, what’s kind of the general attitude of online reviews? I think your reputation is incredibly important. I’m reading this book right now called the 48 Laws of Power. And one of those laws is guard your reputation with your life. Like It Is that important? Does that mean that you have to have a perfect rating on your online profiles on Google on lovingly on Yelp? No, that’s just that actually works against you. Because you don’t you know, no one’s perfect. People don’t trust perfect reviews, right? That just means that just screams out fake. Isn’t that funny how so often where like, I have to have a perfect review. It has to be 5.0 on my own shop. But then when we go to make purchases, and we’re looking at reviews, if there’s a 5.0. What’s our first reaction?

Unknown Speaker 3:40
on trust this laziness, I can’t trust this, it’s not real. And that that becomes a big piece when we’re talking about reputation management and online reviews. is how do we how do we deal with this? And what do we do? And there’s some good pieces to online reviews to understand. In fact, we have some kind of some top tips, if you will, but the first and foremost piece is to understand the why behind online reviews.

Unknown Speaker 4:08
I don’t think that a lot of business owners realize how critical those online reviews are. In fact, in an environment where consumers have access to real time data as to what other consumers are experiencing. Even Amazon is starting to feel Hey man, this is one of the most impactful pieces of the journey of the customers. So you can manage my concern when it comes to summertime. Like what can we do with some of this downtime? What can we start to focus on? It’s let’s focus on the reviews and what are kind of some best management on those and especially for the summer months, which are you know, traditionally speaking there’s slower months during the in the floor industry. Concentrate on the housekeeping things that you know, normally they seem like a pain in the butt to try to you

Unknown Speaker 5:00
No execute. But these things are incredibly important in online reviews is one of those right? I do believe that most people do know that online reviews are incredibly important now. But there’s a lot, you know, the devils in the details, like, it’s not just about you getting reviews. I mean, that’s just like permission to play stuff. Of course, you have to have online, good online reviews. But it’s also how do you respond to those reviews? And how do you manage the reviews in general? What could you tell us about that? First off, be okay with having a negative review, or customers getting great insight into how you as a business owner are managing those reviews, and more importantly, the relationship that you have. So when you have negative reviews really focus on responding in a timely manner, that’s kind of the number one piece, whether it’s positive or negative, every review should be responded to, every every time, the response that you’re writing isn’t necessarily for the person who left that bad review is for everyone else that’s going to actually read that review your response when they read that review. And and people understand that, you know, life isn’t perfect. People also understand that customers are not always right, right. And they get that some customers are could be problematic, and that’s okay, that’s life. But how a business how your flower shop actually responds to the review says a lot more than the review itself. So not sounding defensive, making sure that you’re you cover all the points that they actually said, thanking them for their feedback and say, You know what, this is something that we need to work on. And I’m looking forward to working on this particular area in my business, thank you so much for leaving a review. I think that goes a long way. Oh, it absolutely does. And like you hit the nail right on the head is that the ability to really just stay professional in that situation and stake and stay courteous about it. And another important part is, you know, acknowledge their issue, hey, I understand that this is happening. And then provide them an offer to talk about it, this is something that is really good is Hey, please give me a call at the shop and and even provide your shops phone number in the review, I would love to talk to you more about this. And then also provides a dialogue where the conversation can go, you can learn it’s not in public, where everybody is seeing it, you’re able to understand that their issue. And many times even when you don’t ask that that individual be like, you know, what, I maybe was a little bit emotional, they’ll actually go back and adjust that and provide maybe a slightly better rating. But also they can go back and respond and say, Hey, thank you for resolving this issue with me, I really appreciate it. Basically take the high road, don’t be defensive, and touch on every point that they make, don’t run away from it, cover it, ask for feedback and thank them for their review, get the top of that is that respond quickly. If you’re responding two months after the fact, it’s done, the recovery is very unlikely. But if it’s like if it’s happened within the last two or three days, that’s really impactful. And I’ve seen that a lot of times when things get busy. This is usually the number two item that is pushed off to the side is Oh, I can’t do my reviews now. Because we’re because we’re busy.

Unknown Speaker 8:09
But really kind of keeping that on the forefront. Okay, I’m going to spend 10 minutes, every two days just going in looking at reviews and responding. What you resist will persist. Right? Yeah. So yeah, and I think I think we hit on some of the things that were negative there. But, um, Joe, should we be responding to the positive ones, too? I mean, it’s good, they’re happy, right? So just leave them be? No, I think you shouldn’t just let them be when you respond to reviews as a business, you’re letting your future customers know what kind of experience they’re going to have. So it’s a huge marketing opportunity, so that future customers can hear your voice, and they that’s going to want them to do business with you. So thinking the reviews, good reviews for their positive reviews. I mean, obviously, that’s a lot easier. Because you know, you know, it’s like, thank you for your wonderful review. But like go into detail there as well, a little bit, you know, just do one one a day, one a week, I don’t know, what are your thoughts on positive reviews? Yeah, like you said, do something. These don’t have to be long paragraphs. In fact, even the negative ones, you typically don’t want to make these long, huge posts, provide them a way to have that conversation. But like you said, make sure that you thank them that positive validation becomes really important because you want that loyalty, you want the customer to be very loyal to the brand, what you’ve been building. And they’ve already taken a great step forward saying, Hey, I’m loyal. Wow, let’s reinforce that even more. Hey, did you know that so and so the shop owner, they came back and they actually thank me for it and they knew my specific order and my situation. I really appreciated that. And it also shows future customers. The marketing piece on this is that you are local, and we know how important being local is when consumers are looking to buy. We’re talking reviews. It’s great to be able to respond to them, but how do we get more of them and that becomes a good

Unknown Speaker 10:00
big piece to this is, you know, how can we get more reviews? Because we don’t have reviews to respond to what what are we supposed to do. And so as we work with shops before, some things that are relatively easy, and it’s just consistency really plays that out is if you’re in shop, and you’re you got that interaction one on one, I know that’s not happening as much for a lot of shops for COVID. But it still is occurring to have a simple card, a lot of times people will print out a business card, have a bunch of printed out, and they just have their right by the register. So after they have a good experience, and we can see that then you go ahead and say, Hey, you know, we’d love to hear your feedback, if you get a moment, we’d love you to, you know, go ahead and post a review of what your experience was, that’s going to start driving more reviews. And of course, when we’re looking at it, number of reviews, and what’s the average review rating. And then some people may go a step further and say, Okay, I want to look at the most recent or the worst reviews, but at least we’re starting to really generate more reviews coming into it. You know, for most businesses, there’s only there’s only one opportunity to get a review or to get a testimonial or to get something or to advertise or to market to that one person after the sale. The gifting industry is very different because you have two entities, right? You have the customer and the recipient. So you have that you have to use that to your advantage, you should be asking your customer, not only your customers for review, but also the recipient, right? After all, they’re the ones who are actually getting the flowers. And one of the ways we do that is by getting the recipient to lead to say thank you back to the customer. Yeah, so we’ve got super tickets that are fantastic. It’s a format, actually have a super ticket here. And the very top shows, maybe you

Unknown Speaker 11:47
you know this better than I do. What is this dude? Right? Yeah, we’ve got we’ve got the QR code right there. which is fantastic. It’s easy. When you use the super ticket, the recipient, that’s getting the gift, they see that and one your messages on there, they know exactly who it’s from, whatever note you’ve got, but then also it has say thanks to the giver. And so they can actually snap a photo of themselves, use that QR code and they can show themselves and their arrangement that they received. And that will actually go right back to the gift or the person that gave that. And then also it will prompt them to provide feedback and leave a review as well. And so what you’re doing is completing that circle because you’ve got the gift or the went to the florist the went to the receiver. And then it stops there, we’re missing that critical step. But let’s finish finish the loop. If they if we use the super tickets, then it gives the receiver that opportunity to say hey, gift her Thank you, I appreciate it. This is awesome. And they actually you know, all of a sudden, you’ve got the gift or the receives more because now they’ve just given a gift and it’s been reciprocated back. And then also provides the shop the opportunity to get a review as to Hey, I really enjoyed this, this great fact, I want to share my experience when I came on with lovingly, I actually received flowers my first day here with with the company, and somewhat familiar with the industry and with lovingly, but I got one of the super tickets, and I thought it was the coolest thing. And to this day, I will look for shops that hopefully use super tickets, because I love to see that back. And my wife loves to see the feedback after we send flowers. We did that on Mother’s Day. And it makes us feel good. And I’d also man, when I’m going to order flowers in that local area. Again, I want to use that same shot because I understood what the receiver what their experience was, I was part of that journey as a as a consumer. And that was really cool. Very cool. And you mentioned a photo right, the recipient gets to take a selfie and write a message back to the sender. And what what we do is create a web page, where we host the photo along with that message send the customer or the gifter the customer a link to that the customer comes back and sees that the fact that the recipient said thank you, and a photo of them and what you mean that’s the best is not just about the arrangement is about seeing the smile on their faces once you send a beautiful arrangement.

Unknown Speaker 14:18
And on top of that, on that same page that thank you page, we have tools that allow the customer or the recipient to actually share that, that experience right. For example, I can quickly just show

Unknown Speaker 14:35
you know and we use the hashtag give lovingly where you actually see

Unknown Speaker 14:41
the recipient share this information. So like a Andrew sent me flowers and you know 16 people commented on it. And this is important to 16 people possibly looking at your brand from one transaction. And this is what the thank you page looks like.

Unknown Speaker 15:00
And it actually tells it promotes the name of the business artistic flower box here in this case. And when someone is here, it gives them the opportunity to go ahead and check out the florist. So they could potentially order flowers too. So there’s a social proof element to all this, which works great.

Unknown Speaker 15:17
Yeah, and when we’re understanding the online reviews, and then kind of closing this, this gift or cycle, if you will, everybody wins in this situation, everybody has a good experience. And again, customer loyalty, you get that return customer later on. And you probably hopefully gained a nother customer, by the receiver of that knowing what your products are, and what the shopping experience was like. That’s fantastic. So that’s, that’s less cap off reviews, online reviews, I think we gave you enough. What else? What other tips do you have for the summer? Yeah, so another one here, if, earlier on, I mentioned that a lot of times, reviews kind of becomes one of the first things to fall off, like I don’t have time. And so we talked about ways to help with that. One of the areas is social media, there’s so many different platforms out there. And of course, we think of the big ones, Facebook, Instagram, and so forth. But it’s creating that online presence. And often we feel man, there’s so much, I may not understand it. I don’t know what the lingos are, it’s very complicated. And so what we want to do is really kind of remove some of the myths and talk about how easy and how it doesn’t take a lot of time to be able to do that. So using social media to really build your online presence and expand your customer base. One of those is literally you’re already in the shop, you just had an opportunity to create something new, it’s a beautiful arrangement, 10 seconds, or Saturday, right? Take a picture with your cell phone, and then post it to your Instagram, just that quick, 1015 seconds, all of a sudden, that is going to be going out to those that are following. And it’s the consistency of doing that regularly, hey, we’re having a great day at the shop. And you take a picture of you and your team working hard stems on the ground, having a good time, it’s basically being able to help everybody see what you are as a company and build that brand. And showcase your artwork, it becomes your online portfolio in some regards. exposure, as we all know, is incredibly important. Social media has given us the necessary tools and path to be able to expose ourselves as much and as loud as we want. So it’s a matter of of effort, right. And what you’re saying is, it doesn’t take much, you just need to be as consistent as possible. Start with just one post a day, maybe one post every two days. But just start, this is something that I highly recommend. This is an easy one for most shops, and most shop owners to kind of delegate, because inevitably, there’s going to be people out there that are already doing this. They’re very passionate. And as I’ve talked with shops, that exact same thing, Joe, that you find that individual that they are naturally drawn to this to Hey, can you take a few moments and snap some photos and then post some things that helps to humanize your shop? This is what’s great about this using the super tickets, because it’s automating the process, right? Because the recipient is the one doing it for you if they actually get to share, and you promote yourself. So it’s there’s a lot of benefits of using super tickets. It’s good timing, because it’s post Mother’s Day. And that’s really optimizing the website. And that really, when we’re looking at it, there’s a couple of different pieces here. Let’s talk a products first because this becomes a big piece post Mother’s Day is what do we do with our products? What can we do over the summer? How can we make some grand worth with what we’re doing with products? First off, let’s take some time to sit down and review your product selection. Understand what is it that you’re offering? When was the last time that you sat down and went through and looked at the different products, especially with some of the inventory shortages that have been happening, you know, throughout North America and so forth? to sit down and actually start looking at what are we offering what is selling what is not why? That goes hand in hand with a second piece product pricing. What we do know from a lot of consumer habits is product variety, and pricing variety are absolute key to high conversions of those that are visiting your online shop. You’ve got to be able to have both of those. And Joe, what do you think one of the biggest items that we sometimes forget to do post Mother’s Day as shop owners adjust our prices or adjust our homepage? Yes, adjust them back post Mother’s Day.

Unknown Speaker 19:51
So what we have found we’ve been doing a lot of outreach to a lot of partners to see how their mother’s day went. One of the things that our staff is trained to always ask us

Unknown Speaker 20:00
Hey, did you adjust your pricing during Mother’s Day? And almost always? Yes, we did. Great. Did you adjust it back? What do you mean back and like, well, it doesn’t mean you have to bring it down. But usually there is a difference if you go back and visit that. And it’s, it’s Oh, I forgot, of course, there’s so much going on. So a good reminder is, you know, go back, look at that pricing. And also look at some of that pricing variety. Joe, in, in your experience, why is pricing variety, so critical, you know, especially during the summer months, you have to be able to stay on top of the demand and supply chain, right, because of Mother’s Day, the demand is high, and therefore you can afford, and it’d be really smart, and everyone does this to to adjust their prices to a higher rate because the demand is high. But if the demand is low, if you keep your prices high, that doesn’t doesn’t make any sense. Sure you make a little bit more money in the short run. But I really believe that it’s going to hurt you in the long run, because these are customers, that will probably not come back to you because you’re so high because you don’t match the current demand. So you have to adjust to the market as a business, you the market is not going to adjust to you. Right, it’s almost like common sense to adjust your price based on the demand that’s out there. Because you’re not the only one offering these products, there are a lot of other actors offering those products, and they’re adjusting their prices. So if you’re not adjusting your prices, is you’re putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage. By not doing that. And something that I recommend an easy kind of reminder with this is one of two things. If you tend to work from a written calendar that’s in the shop, pick a day of the month. And honestly, it really doesn’t matter what day in the month, just pick a day of the month, it’s going to be the 15th of each month, write a reminder on that calendar, check pricing, and then do that for every month, do it sit down, spend five minutes doing that or on your phone. If you’ve got a smartphone you put in there, I want to remind her on the 15th of every month, something that just says checked pricing, just that reminder of Oh yeah, go in, spend 10 minutes researching looking at it, adjusting it. And the same thing with your product selection, that product variety is really important. That’s just something easy. That’s just all it takes is a reminder, just doing that on a regular basis. I always recommend every few weeks, but I know how busy individuals are. So just a monthly reminder minimum to just go in and spend 10 minutes checking pricing and adjusting accordingly. It doesn’t have to be this monumental task, right? You don’t have to change your prices for all of your products, you can just look at your top selling products, and you know, change those adjust those 2030 products more often than you do the rest of the products, but at least you have your core products are more reflective of what the market is, it doesn’t have to be any to change hundreds of product pricing. Like because that seems monumental. And that’s really difficult, like so you don’t have to do it all, you can just take it in chunks of segments start with the most popular products, obviously. Yeah, and this is very one off looking at product by product. And, you know, hopefully, we know what our top 20 arrangements that are selling are. And we know and those are the first ones to start with on lovingly we do have a new feature that you’re able to adjust your pricing across the whole lovingly selection guide by a percentage amount as well. And this is a relatively new piece that helps that if you’re seeing some changes in the market, you’re like, you know, I think probably a 3% decrease in my prices, because of you know, availability is now much more open. So my prices are kind of dropping, you can actually do that really easily and adjust your whole pricing guide. So I think it’s looking at all of them, but also looking at those core ones and saying, Okay, I’m going to look at these 21 by one, okay, adjust a few and then move forward, and then go back and check next time. Hey, I know I adjusted this. How did it go? Oh, wow, we’re selling more or less. And it starts to give an idea as to where your sweet spot is for arrangements and pricing. So what else can you give us? Yeah, another one for website optimization.

Unknown Speaker 24:18
And anecdotally, let me tell you is we’ve had about 150 to 200 conversation with partners so far that we’ve reached out saying how was Mother’s Day? Another thing that our staff has been been trained we ask regularly and this is probably the number one thing that has helped florists the most is we ask them okay, what are your pickup times cut off times and what are your delivery cut off times Okay, and ordered an order cut off times. And what we had found that a lot of people during Mother’s Day Of course, kind of backed off on those because of the high volume so they dropped to like 11am is our order cut off time we actually recommend it lovingly that you have a 2pm order cut off for same day.

Unknown Speaker 25:00
Every. And there’s a lot of reason behind this and a lot of data behind it. Because if it’s 2pm, most people are taking lunch right around noon, one o’clock. And it’s like, oh, I’ve got to send an arrangement to mom or to my girlfriend, oh, this person struggling get well, it’s during those lunch breaks, it’s during that time where we see in, in the majority of shops, an increase in orders. So if we have a same day delivery cut off, that’s at 11am, we’re missing the prime time. And so looking at those cut off times and saying, Okay, can we manage to do a two or a 2:30pm, we know those are the prime times between about 1130 and 2pm, you want to make sure you can capture that same day delivery items that are happening there. So those cutoff times, and also the pickup times with COVID. Now, opening, a lot more shops opening for pickup and so forth. We’re finding that some shops, forget about that, because it was set so long ago, they’ve not been able to do it. So check that cutoff time when’s the cutoff time for pickup so that people can come in, because again, going to go back here, somebody is able to pick up I have a good experience, you give them a card for review. Now, not only have you gotten more business because of pickup, you now have an opportunity to get an additional review. So those cut off times become really, really important post holiday to sounds like something that, you know, people should be aware of. I mean, I think they are for the most part, but they may not be aware of like, you know, for every I mean, we haven’t done the math on this, but maybe we should, for every additional hour that you push your delivery cutoff time to what does that mean in annual revenue, right, because there’s a number there based on your previous orders, there’s definitely a number now some shops, obviously, the cut off is the cut off, they used delivery services, there’s no way they don’t have a choice, right. And that’s okay. But if you if you do have a choice, increasing it to even three o’clock or four o’clock, or even even by a half hour

Unknown Speaker 27:02
would would mean a significant amount of more revenue in your yearly revenue for your shop. The good to work on and focus on during the summer is that is free delivery, we got to start to remember that we’re going to be competing going into the summer with vacations, being outdoors, on activities, athletic leagues, hiking, everything else that is now competing for time. And that’s why we see a lot of you know, some drop in volume. So then it becomes what really differentiates you from those in your local area. But overall, and that free delivery becomes a really important piece to that. Not only does Google loves free delivery, but consumers love free delivery, too. I mean, Joe, from your experience, what has been some of the reasons as to why somebody would maybe choose not to do free delivery. There’s a lot of reasons. But what are some of those top ones that you’ve seen in? You know, during your time, some shops believe that they don’t have to offer it like they’re designed speaks volumes, but people may not be aware of that. So, you know, by having a free delivery offering, you basically are saying that you can compete with everyone else who may be offering free delivery, florists are the only business in the fourth industry that can really offer free delivery, right order gathers can offer it because they need to send they’re not in charge of the delivery part of it. Wire services certainly cannot do it. So free delivery is a weapon that only local florists can use, if they so choose to. So it’ll be wise for them to choose. So we do notice that the conversion rate of shops who offer free delivery, it’s higher than those who do not. free delivery is not for everyone. But it’s definitely in our checklist for florists to do in order to actually increase sales. It absolutely is and and that’s been become evident by how we provide different options with how they somebody can do free delivery. I often recommend individuals that are thinking well, should I or shouldn’t I have traditionally not done free delivery do a trial basis because your lovingly account is set up really easily where your conversation we can adjust some of those delivery, delivery areas. And we can actually look at and say okay, miles from your shop, how far from your shop and miles or kilometers? Can somebody go to be able to get free delivery and you can control that you can say oh, I only want three miles all I want five miles or no one mile. At least it does provide some different options or if you know specific areas within your customer base. Hey, I know I know this neighborhood. I know this city or town. They’re really prevalent too. We get a lot of volume there. We could definitely help with free delivery. So you can set parameters based on miles. Or you can also do it based on postal or zipcode as well. And so you can start to play with that and say okay, I really want to do it up until five miles and then up

Unknown Speaker 30:00
Miles, let’s go ahead and start Dylan charging a delivery fee on that. And then you gotta you have complete control over your delivery fee as well. But having some portion of free delivery, we typically recommend that and again, try it, see, look at the results, and then adjust. And again, good time during the summer to kind of try this and see how well it works and what you’re seeing and what you’re hearing from your, from your customers as well. Sounds like the free delivery module is very flexible very much. So you can you can set it and forget it. Awesome. Cool. Anything else? Did we miss anything? You know, just the last thing is that, keep it keep it simple and consistency. Don’t overthink a lot of the things that we’ve talked about today. Most of them are not major time investments. It’s just the consistency of doing it on a regular basis, you will start to see a difference because we know that this has come in the months where volume typically dips for a florist so let’s go ahead and be proactive and how we’re doing this and consistency, consistency consistency. And we’re definitely here to help any conversations or you know, any other advice, our partner success managers would be more than happy to talk to you about some different things that would recommend. Thank you for joining me today.

Unknown Speaker 31:16
This was my flasher. And should I put this on as we’re finishing up because I’m getting ready to go go into the summer here. looks absolutely look at your nerves. It’s

Unknown Speaker 31:28
awesome. Thank you so much.

Unknown Speaker 31:31
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai