Improve your bottom line... online
CEO Lisa Remato explains the Diggers Club transformation from mail-order catalogue forty years ago to website wunderkind: “As soon as shopping carts were invented, we were there!”
The Diggers Club’s biggest online market segment is 45 to 55 year old women, mostly home-owners or buyers. Older members generally want to grow a “beautiful” garden. Younger members with families purchase mostly edibles as they are interested in organic food and teaching their children how to grow it. Many people purchasing Diggers Club plants and seeds online come from rural regions where there are no local nurseries or “big-boxes”. Others are purchasing specialty plants that are not locally available, e.g. orchids.
A successful online business needs to plan their delivery schedule carefully to ensure plants meet customer expectation upon arrival. Do you really want your plant sitting in an Australian Post warehouse over the four-day Easter weekend? The Diggers Club slows down over summer to avoid plants being in transit during the hottest part of the year. Their last print catalogue for the year is distributed in November, generating traffic until early December, after which they take a “break” until March.
The Diggers Club uses “seasonal triggers” to provide timely information to their customers. An email and print catalogue is sent to their customer database providing information about seeds and seedlings ready to go into the ground now, not in three months time. This communication then drives traffic to their website where customers can make their purchase. Remato says selling dormant perennials online can be a real challenge, especially to first-time buyers. Educate your customers to ensure their expectations of what they will receive are what they actually get in the mail.
Read more at NGIA (Gabrielle Stannus)