How many of us no longer shop at a place whose merchandise we like but whose long checkout times have scared us away from shopping there anymore? I have always wondered what the average person’s time tolerance is for waiting in line. For the most part the only two places I ever experience long checkout lines is at the grocery store (and most seem to be the same) and Home Depot (especially on weekends).

In both cases I don’t have much choice since I need groceries and sometimes Home Depot is the only place to find a particular item I need. This is why I only shop at Home Depot for something only they stock, otherwise I avoid the place like the plague. I simply won’t tolerate any other business where my purchase is optional or where I can find the same or similar item somewhere else.

So what actually constitutes a long wait in the eyes of consumers? The M/A/R/C Research and Consulting firm resently completed a survey of more than 13,000 shoppers and found that 79% of consumers would tolerate a wait time of four minutes or less. The only place where they were willing to tolerate a slightly longer wait time was at club stores where the wait was the price they had to pay in exchange for heavy savings.

After the four minute threshold, most consumers satisfaction level dropped considerably with 10% of those surveyed willing to walk away from their purchase out of frustration. The retail areas that satisfaction levels dropped the most were (surprise!) grocery, consumer electronics, department, drug, home improvement, mass merchandisers, and office supply stores whose average wait times are well above the four minute threshold.

The largest retailers who recieved the highest satisfaction ratings in the survey were Lowe’s, Publix, Best Buy, Target, Longs Drugs, Staples, B.J.’s Wholesale Club, and Kohl’s. The survey also found that long checkout lines affected 43% of consumers decision to shop at a particular retailer in the future. 21% would completely avoid a place if they new it had long checkout lines, and 19% said they would only shop at a place with long lines to pick up a specific item they could not find anywhere else.

In other words, if we are forced to shop at a place where we don’t have any choice for finding a particular item, we simply grin and bear it. I guess I’m not alone in the way I feel. So how long are your checkout lines? Unless you’re the only place in town, it’s something you had better pay attention to. And no, “it’s spring”, “the weekend” or “our busy season” doesn’t cut it for an excuse.

According to a recent article in CPGmatters, coupons offered online are receiving more attention from consumers than they ever have before. Online coupon users tend to be younger, have larger households, and are wealthier and better educated than newspaper coupon clippers. The most noticable fact was that eight of ten of these online consumers are more likely to print a coupon if it is relevant to their reading content. Some other facts are interesting as well.

Online coupon usage now accounts for more than 22 percent of coupon market penetration. Nearly half are between 22 and 44 years old. 61 percent have household incomes of $60,000 or more, compared with 56.6 percent for newspaper clippers and 52.6 percent for the U.S. adult population.

But what compells these consumers to actually print the coupons? Interestingly 77 percent said the value of the coupon affects their willingness to provide personal information. For a $1 coupon, more than half of online coupon printers were willing to give their email address and demographic data. For a $2 coupon, nearly two-thirds were willing to give anything from email address to postal address.

Retailer websites now account for over 30 percent of all coupons printed and used while half of the coupon printers said they were more likely to click on an add banner or open an e-mail if it is enabled with a coupon. Now I’m in no way advocating coupons as a marketing strategy, but if one were to offer them, I would definitely take some of this data to heart before embarking on a coupon campaign.

If you are having a hard time getting customers to hand over personal information or sign-up for an e-newsletter, perhaps a valuable coupon may be just the incentive they need to subscribe. It could also be a great way to increase customer visits.

Imagine increasing profits 40% on an 11% decrease of sales. That’s just what The Gap has done during the last four quarters of one of the worst retail environments in recent history. According to an article I found at AdAge.com, The Gap has put all of their effort into better merchandising and tighter inventory control while severely cutting back on their television advertising expenses.

Basically, The Gap has turned lean and mean. By focusing on tighter inventory control they have had to take less markdowns on slow moving merchandise which has contributed to an increase in net profits. There isn’t much merchandise sitting in a backroom or storage waiting to be marked down. It’s all out on the floor where it can be sold.

By focusing their efforts on better merchandising, customers are more inspired to purchase clothing while they are actually in the store. This only makes good business sense. According to a Harvard business Publishing Blog, there are a number of other anti-inflation strategies retailers can use to survive this economic downturn, especially if they don’t want to (or can’t) pass on price increases to their customers.

In addition to The Gap strategy, consider reducing part-time staff hours, look for ways to conserve energy, buy more local goods to save on transportation and offer customers incentives to keep them engaged. I know some retailers who have responded to increased costs by reducing full-time hours so that full-time employees no longer qualify for health insurance and retirement plans. While this may be effective in reducing costs, it’s a terrible way to treat hard working, loyal employees who helped them be profitable in better years. It also won’t help you retain them either.

Consider reducing print, TV and radio advertising and increasing the use of or starting an e-newsletter. The greatest thing about an e-newsletter is that you actually reduce your advertising cost as your subscriber list increases and you run more editions. No other advertising medium can claim that. Best of all, your advertising is targeted specifically to consumers that have already purchased products in your store and have a desire to return and spend more money.

Our current economy is no walk in the park. But by combining effective business and advertising strategies, retailers should be not only able to weather the current storm but be profitable in it as well.

Responding to a recent National Gardening Association study that showed half of all gardening consumers have no education on environmental stewardship, the Scotts Miracle-Gro Company has partnered with Keep America Beautiful, in an effort to educate homeowners on the benefits of sustainable lawn and garden practices.

They have created a new Water Smart section on their website that educates homeowners with tips on how to conserve water and prevent chemicals from finding their way into rivers, lakes and streams. The section comes with a water Smart Pledge registration section that invites consumers to make a public pledge to help the environment. In return, consumers get sent email product updates, tips, reminders and special offers. They can even win gardening prizes each week.

So what are you doing to not only educate your customers with your green-friendly products but also getting them to visit your website more often and viewing it as a gardening resource? Combined with a well-written and strategic e-newsletter filled with monthly tips and product updates that includes a going green section; you could have a pretty clever marketing and consumer awareness campaign.

You can do your part and not only help increase awareness for the environment but increase your sales and business exposure as well. Give us a call, and we’ll be happy to come up with an environmentally effective business marketing strategy for you!

Potential customers sometimes ask us what type of results they can expect from sending out an e-newsletter. We normally tell them that results vary from customer to customer, the time of year the newsletter is sent and the content included in each edition.

We tell customers that a newsletter’s greatest purpose is to create a dialog that keeps their company in the forefront of their customers minds. While sending out a newsletter will certainly lead to increased sales of plants or products mentioned in it, the greatest purpose of an e-newsletter is to create an increase in return visits.

We were recently asked by one of our customers to create a survey to measure the results of the e-newsletter we produced for them on a monthly basis. And the results were very affirming. First of all, more than 400 customers took the time to participate in the survey. Out of all the questions we asked, what we were most interested in was the open rate, the read rate, the amount of times they forwarded the newsletter to a friend and how much the newsletter motivated them to visit this particular garden center. And here are the results:

How often customers opened the newsletter e-mail:
50% of the time 12.1%
75% of the time 18.4%
100% of the time 62.7%

How much of the newsletter was read:
50% of the newsletter 21.4%
75% of the newsletter 34.5%
100% of the newsletter 35.5%

How many customers forwarded the newsletter to non-subscribers:
19.6%

How frequently did the newsletter motivate them to visit the nursery to learn more about a featured product?
Occasionally 52.3%
Frequently 36.7%
Almost Always 6.8%

If you add up the results, they are pretty amazing. Most siginificant in our minds were the increased visits due to the article content and the amount of customers who forwarded the newsletter to a friend. The garden centers customers were promoting the company to almost a 20% potential increase of customers! Imagine having your loyal, existing customers endorsing your company for free to 20% more customers!

Now you don’t have to wait for your customers to see a friend to promote you by word of mouth. With a simple click of their mouse button, they can promote your company at no extra charge to you. That’s advertising you don’t have to pay for!

For better or worse, going green has become significantly trendy these days. According to a new report by Mintel, a larger number of consumers are purchasing green products as a “feel good” experience, provided that the product does not have any inferior qualities, and is not more expensive.

Driving this market are younger consumers who want to be identified as responsible consumers. In fact, 51% of 18- to 24-year-olds report “regularly” purchasing green products. As a point of comparison, only about one third of older adults said the same was true for them. Perhaps younger consumers are a little more idealistic about green products, while older adults are a bit more jaded and resist buying into green claims.

There are many companies that tout all-natural, reproducable or regenerating ingredients, but by the time you factor in the carbon foortprint it leaves getting the product shipped to market from some foreign country, it may not be that green anymore. That Toyota Prius isn’t so green when you factor that it it takes more energy to manufacture it than a Hummer, and it creates far more toxic materials to dispose of it at the end of its life.

But there is definitely significant interest in adult consumers and perhaps they would buy more green products if they understood the nature of a product claim and trusted it more. It seems that every time a good product or idea starts to catch on, it is eventually exposed for not being as green as originally thought or promoted, and one is left wondering what to buy next. There is major confusion everywhere and major companies have jumped onboard the green train, changing the message of their products to promote some type of green angle for everything they sell.

Nevertheless, this is a trend that is not going to go away and most consumers want to do good and are actively seeking ways in which to accommodate their good intentions toward the environment. Consumers are still at the very beginning of their green learning curve and the companies that take the time to investigate the products they sell to make sure they can substantiate the claims they make, and educate their customers about them will be successful in tapping into this trend.

I’m reading an interesting book called Accidental Branding by David Vinjamuri. It tells the stories of eight entrepreneurs who built brands such as J. Peterman, Columbia Sportswear and Clif Bar without really having any experience in branding or marketing. Among the many interesting points in the book is the difference between people (or companies) who collect and rely on reams of data and analysis to run their business and those who don’t.

The one’s who didn’t (all the companies mentioned in the book) were solving a problem they had experienced themselves and had created their companies based on their desire to make something better as opposed to the potential rewards of owning that company. Businesses that do rely on reams of data often do so to make up for a lack of personal understanding about their company in the marketplace.

This is music to my ears considering the amount of garden centers who are convinced they need all the data POS systems potentially provide in order to run successful businesses. Many become so dependent on analyzing the data, they forget the most important aspect of running a business which is paying attention to their customers needs and desires.

Let’s stop here and think for a minute. Just how did all those successful garden centers (and other retail companies) prior to the advent of POS become so successful without the use of a POS system? Was it just luck before that? I mean really, how easy is it to forget that there were tons of successful retailers in the last century who never had a POS system but knew how to make their customers happy?

Now there will be those who think I’m bashing the use of POS systems, but I’m not. POS systems can definetly provide some valuable information to a business. I just want to make the point that when we start paying more attention to “numbers” and “data” than we do on improving our brand and pleasing our customers, we stand to lose position in the marketplace.

What is really interesting about the “accidental branders” profiled in the book is that they had a unique understanding about customer evangelism that most typical businesses do not. They were forced to rely on their customers word of mouth because they did not have the resources that larger companies do. And along the way they discovered that the way they treated their customers, employees, vendors and friends went a long way in those people being messengers for their company. They were the people that created a “buzz” about the company.

The key lesson here is that for a company to be successful it needs to learn how to tell it’s story well. The story needs to be dramatic, easy to remember and share and it has to have a lesson contained in it that differentiates it from it’s competition. This “story” is what enables your customers to convert more people to your company brand, not the “data” your POS system provides.

It seems like everyone is trying to get on board the Eco-train these days. More and more companies are adding “green” to their loyalty and reward programs in an effort to let their customers know they are serious about improving the environment. The problem is that many corporations without eco-roots risk being accused of green washing, or adopting eco-friendly practices only for commercial reasons.

The other problem is that many companies think they are giving customers the opportunity to “invest” in green products or companies, but at the expense of giving up their hard-earned rewards points to do so. Wells Fargo Bank launched their green rewards last April enabling credit and debit card holders to donate reward points toward renewable energy projects. But it only appealed to a select group of customers.

According to the Colloquy 2007 Demographic Loyalty Study, green reward programs are most effective when they give back to consumers, as opposed to those that offer the chance to donate points toward green causes. The study found that more than 95 percent of consumers used earned points to reward themselves and showed little interest in using points to reward others or projects. Interestingly, this past Earth Day, Wells Fargo enhanced their program to allow customers to also redeem points for any of 20 eco-friendly products, such as organic pet toys and personal air purifiers.

The garden center industry is uniquely positioned to offer a green rewards program because we have been at the forefront of the organic moevment for quite some time (well, most of us anyway). Why not build your loyalty program around the exclusive use of organic and environmentally safe products and then allow the accrued points to be used specifically on more of those same products?

In this way you would build a sustainable loyalty program whose entire focus and reward would be on eco-friendly products. And there’s no need to take it in the shorts profit-wise either. Customers already expect to to pay more for organic and enviro-safe products, so don’t disappoint them. Mark the products up accordingly to cover the discount that a customer would gain from participating in the loyalty program.

And by all means, still stock all of the other products customers expect to find in your store. But by creating a green loyalty program, you are doing your part to focus customers on products that are good for the environment and rewarding them for helping to create a safer world in which to live. Done correctly, a program like this should be very successful at weaning customers away from the more toxic chemicals and fertilizers you sell. Your customers will feel better about themselves, you’ll feel better about yourself, and the profits you generate won’t hurt either!

Getting customers to sign up for your e-newsletter can be the most difficult part of actually sending one out. Many employees (especially cashiers) are bashful about asking. But one of our clients, The Greenery in Turlock, California has found a solution to the problem and is sending in sign-ups at triple the rate of all of our other customers.

I spoke with Adria, the Marketing and Display Manager and she was happy to share their secret. They created a two-sided template with 10 business card size messages per page on regular colored paper that they cut into separate business cards. On one side of the “card” is a message encouraging their customers to sign-up for the newsletter on their website along with a few bullet points of what they will find in the newsletter.

On the other side of the card is a message that says visit our website at: and their website url in large letters. A “card” is stapled to every receipt that leaves the store and an additional one is added to any bags conating indoor purchases. Cashiers are still encouraged or required to ask customers if they are interested in signing up, but the card takes some of the pressure off them especially during busy periods.

This clever idea not only helps promote newsletter sign-ups but also exposes customers to their website which can lead to additional plant and product awareness and more importantly, additional sales. The additional newsletter sign-up’s sure aren’t hurting business either!

As a person with a foot in the IT world, and the Garden Center business, I see a trend for organizations that commit to being the best service companies in their class.  As our products becomes a commodities it is the delivery of those commodities that will seperate the winners from the losers.

 Ease of doing business is as much a differentiator as best quality and best price.  If you make it easy for customers to get in and out.  If you realize that too much information is as distasteful as no information.  If you offer unbundled services, if you can get it delivered today.  If you can remove cash register speed bumps, load a car, pot a planter you are building value.

I read a post called “What’s Remarkable.”  It reminds me of how standards have sunk in so many industries.  We expect the plumber to be late, the cheesburger to be luke warm, and the flight to be delayed.  The collision of  unprofitable low prices with shorter employment cycles has left a vacum of quality service for the courageous to fill.

I am asking our team to consider “How can we make ourselves the most convenient company to do business with?”  I suggest you ask your team the same question.