Phil:
Hi, and welcome to The Underground, the official podcast partner of Glee 2025. I’m Phil Wright and together with my co-host Kate Turner we took our podcast booth to the Glee show in Birmingham to capture a snapshot of the industry and take the pulse of what’s going on in the garden sector right now.
Marketing for garden centres is the focus for this week’s episode of the podcast. First, we speak with Vanessa Cranford, who shows us how unlocking the potential wrapped up in a garden centres loyalty scheme can have a dramatic effect on the bottom line. We also discuss making the most of paid search and digital ads with Aaron Rudman-Hawkins from The Evergreen Agency.

Here we are with Vanessa Cranford from Spring Marketing. Welcome, Vanessa.

Vanessa:
Good morning. Thank you.

Kate:
Good morning.

Vanessa:
Good to be here. Thank you.

Phil:
So, it's fantastic to have you here with us this morning, Vanessa. Can you give us a quick intro to your agency, Spring Marketing, and just the kind of work that you do.

Vanessa:
Okay. Of course. So, Spring Marketing was established, in 2005, when we started working with our first garden centre, Old Barn garden centre, which is now part of Tate's, actually.

Kate:
Is that in Horsham?

Vanessa:
It is. Yes.

Kate:
Ah, I know it well.

Vanessa:
Yes. That was our very first. And we helped develop loyalty schemes and PR, with them. The agency grew to look after over 100 UK sites. Since that time, over the last 20 years, for which we've scoped, launched, managed grown loyalty schemes, amongst other activities, the time that we've been working with the centres has seen a shift now that it was very much about marketing communications with some loyalty. Now it's loyalty, is the marketing communications.

Kate:
So, you're speaking here at Glee on loyalty. Why do you think this is such a hot topic and often overlooked one in garden retail?

Vanessa:
I think it's often overlooked because of the misconception, the value of loyalty. I think a number of garden centres look at loyalty as a cost centre, rather than it being a revenue generator. I think it's a hot topic because they're starting to see benchmarking, as our business does, and case studies coming through where they're starting to see that there's a lot of intelligence in the data that they're recording. Previously, in loyalty schemes, it was very much a transactional: We know Mrs. Smith has been in she's spent this money on this date, but with EPOS integration now, which has exploded over the last ten years, we've seen a massive change in that, that we actually know exactly what the consumer is doing. And that's really powerful for the garden centres.

Kate:
Can I just interrupt you just to explain to people like myself, who aren't so good with, certain acronyms. What is EPOS?

Vanessa:
EPOS is electronic point of sale. So, it's the till system, which, records, obviously all the transactions that are going through, it's all linked into stock.

Phil:
And so the way that works is if you're a member of that loyalty scheme, you have your card or your app or whatever it is. And when you go to purchase, it's like your Tesco club card.

Vanessa:
Absolutely.

Phil:
You scan your card and then all your products are put through the till, but then they can all be attributed to you. So, they know exactly what products you've bought from the garden centre.

Vanessa:
Absolutely, yes. It's driven through their till system. But, I think that's where the whole subject of loyalty has gone. And also, because, there are really clever mechanics now of growing customers. And I think the loyalty, bubble is really, you know, out there in the garden centre industry now.

Phil:
So, where do you think that, most garden centre loyalty schemes are falling short?

Vanessa:
I don't think they understand customer data. They don't look at the customer data. They treat all customers generically. They have benefits. So, it could be points. It could be member only offers. And that's only part of what loyalty is about because it's a relationship. And I think that's where a lot of garden centres fall short.
It's almost they feel like they're servicing loyalty customers by just giving them points vouchers. And everyone's getting that. There's no surprise and delight often enough. And they're the things that make you feel a little bit special when you go into the garden centre. Thanks for visiting today, great to see you have free coffee next time you visit.
Knowing when people's birthdays are sending them a cake. I think also the poor onboarding that takes place as well. So, when customers are joining, there's not enough communication to get them involved and get them on board.

Phil:
So, it's that personal connection that you're trying to create.

Vanessa:
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Kate:
‘Cos I kind of remember, the only sort of loyalty schemes I was aware of with garden centres was kind of OAP Tuesdays. And that was it. And my parents used to love it. But that was kind of it really. And that doesn't help the whole kind of way people view a garden centre anyway, does it?

Vanessa:
Exactly. Exactly. I think that the problem is it could be a loyalty disconnect if you don't, take the data that customers are providing you with and doing something positive with it in terms of changing their behaviour.

Kate:
So, what are the common myths? And I'm sure there's going to be later common myths or misunderstandings you encounter when talking to garden centre teams about loyalty?

Vanessa:
You're right, there are a lot. I'll just highlight a few for you. So, I just mentioned about points. So, one of those, would be points don't work. Or. I'm going to give all my customers points: that will work well. Well points do work. They work in the basis that they provide a reason that the customer scans when they're in-store their card.

Phil:
What do you mean by points?

Vanessa:
So, that would be… so it could be two ways. It could be that they're given a point per spend, per pound.

Phil:
OK, so they're earning an account of points.

Vanessa:
Absolutely. Or it could be that they after a certain amount of time, 2 or 3 months, we look at the spend that that customer has made and we give them a rebate of, say, 2.5%, 4%. During that time, points is the currency of loyalty. Customers understand it, but they totally don't understand it. And we we all…

Phil:
I love that!

Kate:
I'm totally... My Clubcard points. I've no idea what I'm going to do with them.

Vanessa:
Exactly. And we really don't also quantify is that the true value and what is that value. We just see that and we just trust it. So, it's a trusted mechanism. But it also gives a good way for the for the staff, the frontline staff to give a reason to scan. So, for customers saying oh don't worry. Well, you're going to lose your points today. You know it's accruing for a voucher for you. So, it's good for the team and it's good for the tracking and the data. I think another one is: oh, our customers don't want apps. Our customers don't like tech. Well, the average customer is 56.

Phil:
Oh, OK. That's lower than I thought it was going to be.

Kate:
That’s younger than I thought.

Vanessa:
And it’s getting younger. And obviously we're also getting younger as an audience. So, the 50 is a new 40, you know a bit like 9 p.m. is the new midnight.

Kate:
Oh that's true.

Vanessa:
It’s very much about a younger, tech savvy audience. And of course, that age group they are they were the pioneers of Facebook. You know, they had Facebook before the kids were on, Pinterest and, TikTok and all of those things. So, it's very much, you know, mythbuster and, and I've been in a garden centre, where the owner’s turn round to the restaurant, to me and some of the team and said, no, I don't think my customers are really going to go for this whole app thing.
And I said, well, actually, you know, you've got high engagement and, and he was of a slightly older age group, actually. And then there was a group of older customers sitting just on the table next to us having their cake. And, and obviously, you know, it's their happy place, they enjoy being there and meeting friends.
So, the owner asked one of the team to go and speak to the customers and say, well, if they like apps, see if those guys do. And I was a little bit worried, thinking please!

Phil:
It’s putting you on the line.

Vanessa:
Please have a smartphone!
And the team member came back to the table and said, yep, they're all downloading the app. And he says, well, are you not going to help them? No, they don't need it. And the kick in the teeth was that when they got their phones out, they said, oh, we didn't even know that you had an app because their POS was so poor.
And they had the competitor's app from round the corner.

Kate:
Oh, really? Interesting.

Vanessa:
So, yeah, that's a bit of a myth buster as well. But it's something that we do see a lot.

Kate:
And did that change the client’s mind

Vanessa:
Absolutely. So, I think really that they're the main sort of objections that we have from loyalty. And it's just if I'm giving loyalty to loyal customers, wouldn't they be loyal anyway? And that I think is a big question to ask. And it is true, your loyalty members will be your most loyal. Of course they will. They've got the most invested interest to have that relationship. But why would you not want to have a direct line of communication, a way to enhance your relationship with them, and loyalty allows you to do that. And that's quite significant in the customer lifecycle.

Phil:
Yeah, absolutely. So, you're giving a talk on the main stage here. And that's exploring how to use existing loyalty data to drive average transaction value, repeat visits and customer lifetime value. So, what does that look like in practice?

Vanessa:
Okay, I'll try to describe it because I've got a visual model. So, I shall try to describe it. So, what it means is that we, we recruit our silent foot-fallers. So, they're the people that come into the garden centre. We don't know what they're buying. We don't know what they're doing. So, we get them on board, into a loyalty programme.
We then engage with them, and then we start to get them interacting with us so that they are scanning their card, as we said or their app when they're in-store. We then start to see what they're buying, when they're buying, how often that they're in, and we start to learn about them. And as we're learning about them, we're able to give them more of what they want so that they have the whole: “this is something for me.”
So, it's more than, as we said previously, just one benefit. So, we start to learn. And because we interact on that basis and because we build that trust, and hopefully we also increase the times that they're visiting because we're giving them lots of vouchers to come back in a certain space of time to up their spend and up their visits.
They suddenly start spinning like a wheel. And it kind of does its own thing after a year, because they're so invested in the brand that they naturally will visit more. They may drop a competitor visit to visit the centre. They spend more when they're there because it becomes their happy place. They perhaps then go into other areas of the store because we've been talking to them and upselling them and cross-selling whilst that they've been visiting.
And then they tell their friends and they become advocates of the brand. But I think customer lifetime value works alongside something that we have as a slogan, if you like. And that is a loyalty programme is not an island off the coast of the brand. So, it's very important when we’re building the relationship which customer lifetime value is a relationship. It's you understand me? You give me what I want. I enjoy being with you. I'm committed to you. But in doing that, you really have to emulate your brand as a garden centre and you have to make sure it's in tune, because to build that relationship, it's all about trust. And if they're trusting the brand, you're going to grow them as customers.

Kate:
So, can you walk us through a simple example of how loyalty data can drive more personalised or effective customer communications?

Vanessa:
Of course. So, we look at it in two ways. The first one is based on what they buy. So, we've got full purchase data so we can actually talk to them in a personalised way. The second way is their buying behaviour. So, we know when they're visiting or like to visit and we know when they've been in.
So, if I look at targeting them by what they've been buying, then what we could look at is a recent case study. So, we, went out with an email, to a customer segment of anyone that had bought rose plants or roses.
We sent them an email, we said: we hope you enjoy your recent purchase of your rose. These are all of the ways that you can care for the rose. These are our top products that work really well with your purchase, and if you visit in the next two weeks, you'll get a voucher off one of those products.

Kate:
So, it's a really good way to upsell.

Vanessa:
It is. And you give them a short window, because 3.8 visits is what the HTA are saying the average customer makes. So, if we can get three visits in one season, we've already grown that customer. 45% of the people that had opened that communication visited within that time frame, of which 25% of those went on to do two more visits within the next month.
So, again, you know, it's very trackable. On their second visit, we then send them a communication to get them maybe into the cafe, for example, especially if they haven't been a cafe customer previously. So, we can change all those dynamics. But to the customer, they're getting two things there. They're getting a discount, so they're getting a thank you for your visit. And they're also getting that relationship where they're getting key information: we care as a garden centre, we want you to have the best opportunity of your rose being the best garden in the neighbourhood.
And then the other aspect of that is the buying behaviour where, they're coming in store and they're spending and they're visiting. So, we then look at data constantly tracking and monitoring for our clients what we call the high, medium and low visit. And a high, medium and low spend. By categorising somebody for example, that's high/high in terms of they visit high and they spend high right down to low visit and low value.
We can start to create five cohorts of customers. So, that's your bronze, your silver, your platinum, your gold, and your quartz.

Kate:
Ooh, quartz!

Vanessa:
Yeah. Quartz is your “protect at all cost.”

Kate:
Right.

Vanessa:
They can be very, very, destructive to a business profits line, if we lose any of those. So, that's very much where we look at in terms of that. So, for example, let's take, quartz. They haven't visited for a couple of weeks and they're normally visiting every couple of weeks. So, we think, they might need a little nudge.
So, we'll then send them a voucher knowing they spend high when they're in. Come and visit us in the next fortnight, we'll give you a free tea or coffee when you do, we'd love you to come in store and see all of the new material that we've got arriving. And then we go into silver, who's your one person, one visit, but very high value. So, it's likely to be perhaps a furniture purchase or somebody with a project that they're doing at a particular time frame. So, our goal there is to get them back again. So, we encourage them that if they spend a certain amount of money, they'll get a voucher that will be emailed to them the evening of their purchase to get them back.
And that's how you grow, your customers through those two approaches.

Phil:
Right. All that you're telling me at the moment, it seems to be, one way communication, you're communicating with the customer. Do you ever see ways in which there's that two-way communication, where they're coming back to you, the customers coming back to you saying: I would like this or, I really enjoy this or whether you've got an issue.
You know, they may have said you may have noticed they haven't been for a couple of weeks and actually, they had a bad experience or they had something… there was a reason why they haven't been back, that the plant area was really messy. And there was old stock out. They didn't have what they wanted. So, they haven't been back. So, is there an opportunity for that two-way communication?

Vanessa:
Absolutely. So, we work with, our garden centres on Net Promoter Scores. So, that's to, to generate, their feedback to, to maintain, the five star, sort of feedback.

Phil:
So, a Net Promoter Score, that's sort of standard across many, many industries. And it's like, how well are we doing? How well are our customer facing…

Vanessa:
Exactly. Would you recommend us to your friends.

Phil:
Would you recommend us.

Vanessa:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, we have that as a vehicle. We also, ask our clients to have regular meetings with their frontline staff. So, we have loyalty champions within our garden centres, which will be responsible for, courting the customers in terms of: have you found everything that you needed today?
How have you found your shop? And that is then relayed back. Obviously, if there's issues with anything to do with, vouchers that are issued and perhaps the customer says, they haven't had long enough to spend it, all of that is fed back into the loyalty team and then obviously into us as well. We also run focus groups for garden centres that we work with.
And we run them at different times of day and different times of the week to obvioulsy get a cross-section of customers. And to just make sure that the benefits that we're offering are in tune with how they're performing. So, yes, it's very much about that.
Something that we're pioneering at the moment through, Corby + Fellas, who are offering an EPOS and are one of our preferred suppliers that we work with for till systems - is actually when you're visiting and you've got the opportunity of having, the chance to say how many stars you would give your visit, and is there anything that you'd like to discuss about your visit today? Is there a particular member of staff that's performed particularly well? So, actually, using the app as a vehicle to have known they've been in, but actually asking their advice because again, that's really important to customers. And a great question, thank you Phil, because, you know, it's very much about the relationship. And it's great to be able to give them a platform where they feel like they're being listened to.

Phil:
Yeah. So, what kind of metrics or KPIs should a garden centre be tracking to understand whether their loyalty strategy is actually working?

Vanessa:
Right. Good question. So, we benchmark for our clients. So, all of our clients, we're working currently with over 40 UK sites, that we take all the data, we monitor it weekly and we perform reports monthly. So, if I work on the basis of what we do within that, I think that's a good starting point.
The first one is an ATV: Average Transactional Value uplift. Because for loyalty to work, means that our loyalty customers should spend more. So, we look at the difference between our non-member transactions and our member transactions. And they can be anything up to 57 to 87% uplift. So, what we do then is we, we look at where that is and we monitor it.
So, I would suggest always looking at that data monthly to see if there's been drops. Now there will be seasonal shifts. But actually, if you're monitoring on a percentage basis you should see quite an even spread of that. The next one that we look at is your non loyalty conversion rate. So, that's the amounts of customers that are coming in that are not loyalty customers. That you are attracting to join your programme. So, that could be anything. We'd like it to be around 5 to 10% for our clients. Mainly because we got to think about the other aspect that we've got to monitor and that's churn. And churn is the people you lose. And there can be many reasons for it. Not always sinister: that they're upset with the brand, but that is one of them. The other one could be that obviously if they sadly passed away, they may move from having a garden to not having a garden. They may move out of area. But there are natural cases that they fall out of love.
So, we look at that and track that as well, but we don't track it to the point that we know we've lost them. We start to do that much earlier in the cycle to say, you know, 12 or 15 weeks, why are these guys not visiting us? And we look at that and we look at it as an industry as well, when we benchmark it to say let's sense check it. This is the “so what” of data that we… we’re the so-what-ers at Spring I think. It's like: is this a bad metric, is this a good metric. The other one is your percentage sales that members are providing you with, your percentage of transactions.
And there's a difference their value in, is the sales. So, what percentage of your turnover are they bringing. And then the percentage of the transactions that the business is having. We don't like our clients to be under 40, 45% transactions when they are a fully-fledged programme, because that's a performance metric that we feel is a sound.
Again, it is affected by staff, because if they're not asking to scan cards, we don't know that they've been in. And we'd like to see 50% of profit that a loyalty customer’s putting on to the company's lines.

Phil:
You mentioned about average, transaction value. So, can you put a percentage on what you see as the increase from a non-loyalty scheme member to someone who's actually in the loyalty scheme, they spend that much more on, on average on an average transaction.

Vanessa:
It can vary, and vary across departments. But overall, I think the industry stat is around the sort of 50% uplift.

Phil:
You see, that is amazing isn’t it? So, you're actually saying that, people who are member of that loyalty scheme are spending 50% more than those people who are not a member of the loyalty scheme.

Vanessa:
To be a well-performing, program. Yes.

Phil:
That is a amazing.

Vanessa:
We do see lower.

Phil:
I'm sure.

Vanessa:
Yeah, we do see lower.

Phil:
But that's what you're aiming for.

Vanessa:
And particularly in the cafe we, we notice that there can be a difference because of course you don't have the same level of offering. So, you know, again it's a lot smaller in that. But over the garden centre, you would expect to see that sort of uplift or that's what you should be driving for. So, you do cross-sell and you do lots of POS, and you do lots in your emails where you're talking up, projects and different products to get that basket spend higher.

Phil:
Yeah. So, as a garden centre, listening to that, you know, and then not maybe either not using their loyalty scheme and tracking things or they haven't even got a loyalty scheme yet. You know, those are sort of things which their ears should be pricking up and going well why aren't we doing this? Why aren't we making more of this?

Kate:
So, are there any brands or sectors that you, you know, think garden centres could learn from when it comes to loyalty?

Vanessa:
Yes, I think there are three I think I think grocery, I think grocery for the personalisation aspect. So, someone like Tesco Club Card we mentioned they do a fantastic job of knowing what we buy and giving us vouchers, and they do an even better job of selling us up to brands. So, if you're if you're a mid-level brand buyer, you'll often get vouchers for your higher brands as well to sell you up onto different ones.
The other one is coffee chains. They are one of the fourth now, largest loyalty offerings in terms of where they are. It's the app experiences that they do, the benefits that they have within that. And we see that all the time with hot drinks, loyalty cards that we do for the garden centres. It's high engagement. Customers love that. And they will sign up for that. And that gets people that just shop cafe and they go into the garden centre. You've got a good cross-section of customers that will be involved in that.
And then I guess airlines, it’s just their customer experience opportunities, their tiers that they do as well. So, as I spoke about the high, medium, low, customers in their groups, we have invisible tiers and we can treat them differently based on their performance.

Phil:
It's about making people feel special.

Vanessa:
Absolutely.

Kate:
So, is loyalty really about behavioural change?

Vanessa:
Yes, it is 100%.

Phil:
Oh, that was an easy one!

Vanessa:
And we see it in action all the time. Which is why, again, it comes back to the metrics, it is looking at average visits as well that the business has. So, when we start working with garden centres, their average visits could start where the HTA are at with 3.8 in theory, but we just don't know because we don't have the data at that point and we grow it.
So, that year on year you'll start to see that average visit go up and you're seeing the average basket spend increase. And we see it in action. And it's very it's very clear. For example, when a customer joins a programme, they don't get an immediate gift, at the point of joining. But what we do is we use it as a first purchase to get them back in again.
And you see 30 to 35% of customers coming back within two weeks after having joined and make their first purchase in store. So, very much you can change behaviour. The hot drinks loyalty card I spoke about just now, we see that.

Kate:
Oh, I know, I love that.

Vanessa:
We took a client that had a 0.8%, rate, of scanning in their cafes. They launched a hot drinks loyalty card. They're now up to 35, 40%.

Phil:
Right. That's big isn’t it?

Vanessa:
And that changes behaviour.

Phil:
Yeah. It does. So, if I'm a garden centre and, I have a loyalty scheme, but I'm not seeing results from it. What would be your advice? Where should I start?

Vanessa:
Okay. I think the first, area would be to look at how much you understand about your demographic. So, as I've suggested to you, we are seeing that younger people are starting to join. Actually, we're starting to see that younger people are visiting less, but they're spending more. So, they're at the big projects, you know, they've got the weekend, a bank holiday weekend. Let's get into the garden.
So, we're working hard on performance with those. I think staff team, that's where the struggle is, is getting them on board. When we work with garden centres, that have been struggling, their staff are disengaged. They haven't done any formal training with them. They haven't brought them into all of the information that's so key to the business.
How much profit these guys can put onto the business? What, the opportunities that are there. And when the team understand all of those attributes and the fact that the customers want it, customers like it. They like getting vouchers. And if you don't scan, they're not getting these vouchers. So, a lot of that is to do with the team as well.
I think also perhaps the wrong data is being looked at. A lot of garden centres don't understand about the data, and they perhaps look at it in terms of I've got 10,000 members. Brilliant. Well, from our side we'd say 10,000 members is vanity, 7,000 members are active is your sanity, and 3,000 of them are actually contributing 40% of profit to your business. And that's king.
So, it's again, I think, and without sounding disrespectful, they often don't have perhaps experience and measures in the garden centre to properly show the performance. They have staff in marketing in garden centres are very stretched in terms of what they do. So, having the time to look at data and make sense of it and put in strategies is often difficult for them.
And then, of course, you’ve got to monitor the strategy to know if they've worked and measure them. And of course, that is in itself, you know, almost a full-time position within garden centres, which you know, is again, difficult for them, them to have. So, those sort of things… and benefits as well, looking at the benefits that they offer.
So, actually, is the programme strong enough? Is it enough for the customer to go: There's a lot in this for me?
And, and often it'll just be: we send a points voucher out every three months. Why are we struggling with all loyalty. Well, because you're not talking to customers as individuals. You're not scanning enough when they're in-store.
You're not giving them enough reason to revisit. You haven't got a hot drinks card. You're not looking at your cafe customers. You know, there's all of those elements that I think, you know, is there.

Kate:
So, for a garden centre without any scheme at all, what's the simple first step they could take towards smarter loyalty?

Vanessa:
Look at the EPOS system that they've got, the till system, to make sure that it is, future proof in terms of the technology that that is being developed and the reporting that it offers to them. Coming back to what I suggested about the island. So, the loyalty programme is not an island that's separate from the coast of your brand to look at what your brand values are.
So, you can align that with how you talk to your customers. It's the same tone of voice. It's got the same offering. If you're very, very invested in plants and you're known for that, perhaps that forms part of what the programme benefits will be for the customer. And making sure that you have internally a good, solid programme for training staff.
You have a loyalty champion that's in store that understands all about the programme. You go through all of the objections, and negatives that customers have when you're asked if you have an app or you want an app and you look at the demographics of your audience and you look at the transactions that are taking place, they're all good starting points, for centre.

Phil:
So, looking further afield away from the garden sector, or maybe in the garden sector, but, across all loyalty schemes that you sort of obviously are aware of, what's one of the most surprising or clever use of customer data that you've seen in the loyalty space?

Vanessa:
I love that question, because I've got exactly the case study for this!

Phil:
Fantastic.

Vanessa:
Anyone that knows me knows how much I absolutely adore my dogs, even my kids know. They are my children. So, for me, we have a local vet, it's in a high street. It's a two-man vet, practice, with just a couple of nurses. And they send out their annual vaccination, emails with a picture of my gorgeous Jasper. And they talk about how it's important for Jasper to have his vaccinations and give me ideas on his age and his breed about how his health should be performing and recommendations for various foods, that are available.
And they also say that when he's had his vaccine, he'll get his dental stick, which is his favourite treat. And the engagement in that I think is huge. The emotional attachment and connection that that email brings is huge. And I wouldn't go anywhere else because I feel that they almost love Jasper as much as I'm loving Jasper, which is high.

Kate:
They know your dog.

Vanessa:
But for small vets practice to do that with very limited resources. They've obviously got very good at MailChimp, which is one of the email programs, to bring in all of the fields. But I think that is absolutely, a great customer experience.

Phil:
I think that's really interesting because, you know, that it's all an algorithm and it's all someone putting all the stuff together, but it still has a personal impact and engagement to you.

Kate:
It still affects you.

Vanessa:
Absolutely it does. And also, because I can from having been in the profession myself, I can see the time involved, and the cleverness of the idea. But for my mum, she thinks it's absolutely for her - and someone who's actually, you know, thinking this through, just for her.

Phil:
Oh, Absolutely. Yeah.
Well, listen, Vanessa, thank you so much for coming in to see us today. It's been really fascinating.

Kate:
Really Interesting.

Phil:
And something which I think lots of people aren't really aware of. So, thank you for highlighting it and bringing it to us today.

Vanessa:
It's an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much,

Kate:
Thanks Vanessa.

Vanessa:
Thank you.

Phil:
So, I'm here with Michael from Gardena. And, Michael, why don't you tell us a little bit about, how things are going at the show this week?
Michael:
We've had a very good day today. We've had lots of new customers on, and it's been great to talk about some of our new innovations from the Gardena brand.

Phil:
Okay. And so have you brought lots of new products this year that you're showing off?

Michael:
Yes. We bought over 50 new products, to the show, for these few days. And, you know, with Gardena, we're always proud of our innovation.

Phil:
Okay. So, have you got any favourite products that you've that you've just launched?

Michael:
Yeah. I really like our new, spray guns that we have over in the Gardena range. They have a five-year guarantee. They're frost proofs, they're leakproof, and they're made in Germany.

Phil:
Anything else is that if you got any power tools or anything that you're that you're particularly excited about?

Michael:
Yeah. We have an area, of the market, which is, probably a little untapped for us in the UK, which is on garden pumps. So, we have some, garden pumps that are ideal for clearing out ponds, clearing out flood water, clearing out swimming pool or paddeling pool, so that they're new to us and, doing really, really well as well.

Phil:
Okay. And how's the show going in general, are you seeing orders and customers excited by what you're bringing?

Michael:
They're always excited by Gardena. Yes. But we we're seeing orders. We've got some show deals. Some Glee deals that we're doing. And we're also getting some meetings booked in for customers for pre-season and things like that.

Phil:
Fantastic. Well, just want to wish you all the best for the rest of the show.

Michael:
Thank you.

Phil:
I'm joined this afternoon by Aaron Rudman-Hawkins, who's, the owner, MD?

Aaron:
Correct.

Phil:
…of the Evergreen Agency. Welcome, Aaron.

Aaron:
Thank you for having me on. Pleasure.

Phil:
Okay, so let's start off with the right. Nice easy one. So, Aaron, for anyone who doesn't know the Evergreen Agency, what problems do you solve for home and garden brands?

Aaron:
We help them get more leads and sales, primarily from their website.

Phil:
Well, that's nice and straightforward. So, how does that work? You do that, with ads or what?

Aaron:
Sure. So, we do a lot of ads. So, we have five services. So, we describe ourselves as a growth marketing agency. Okay. We only work with home garden lifestyle brands. And we have five services paid search. So, think Google ads, YouTube ads, Bing ads, stuff like that. Paid social which is more meta. So, your Facebook, your Instagram ads.
We have a creative studio. So, and that is split in half. So, video and motion. And then graphics and print. Primarily that is for ads. But in addition to ads, it's all the offline stuff. And then we have email marketing as well.

Phil:
Okay. So, what kind of products, or businesses are you most effective for at the minute?

Aaron:
We do, it's a real mix. So, we have a lot of products for the home. So, I kind of say, if you were to take a house and a garden and turn it upside down, everything that would fall, we market. Is one way to think about it. So, that's just a random way of describing it. So, we do, everything we, we doing more and more in the garden centre space, hence being at Glee, and we're just. Yeah, helping them with generate, the sales leads and then with a lot of our business, specifically garden centres. Footfall get people through the door.

Phil:
So, you didn't quite a lot of work with garden centres is that right?

Aaron:
More and more, we do a lot of… we work with some garden centres and we’re finding there is a real interest - intrigue into how do we leverage online channels, how do we do this marketing in an online way to drive people into our garden centres?

Phil:
Okay, so if I'm a garden centre and I come to you, you said you do a lot of consulting. What sort of things are we going to be talking about?

Aaron:
So, we're going to be looking at what are you already doing. So, a lot of garden centres are doing the same marketing that they were doing 20 years ago. The world's moved on. And a lot of garden centres are wanting to engage the younger demographic. They are looking at how do they get young families into the garden centres?
They are looking what does their offering need to look like and how do they stay top of mind. And how do they get their key seasonal messages, in front of their target audience when they're not physically in the garden centre? We use advertising and various marketing tactics and platforms to get their key marketing messages in front of that audience. And so we would be having a conversation around, what do you currently doing and what are you not doing?

Phil:
Okay, that's really interesting. So, in home and garden, which product types tend to win with paid ads?

Aaron:
Oh, that's a good question. I think it really… That is a very good question, let me think about that. I think what we find with… there's certain criteria with paid ads. If you are selling a product that from experience, I know that if your average customer value the sale of that price, if you're selling products on average below between 30 and £40, I think ads are very difficult to start. They work when you get real volume, but below a 30, 40, even £50 market average customer value very difficult.
So, when we're looking at a brand at a business that wants to… well, it's we're utilising ads. If you've got volume, it can work - economies of scale. If you're wanting to get started, very difficult. Now it works. If you have a repeat customer. So, if you're a subscription business and your customer value is only 15 - £20, but you know someone will transact with you again and again and again, then it can work because the lifetime value is going to be 100, 200, 300, £400.
Similarly, if you've got lower ticket items, but then you've also got some higher ticket items, then it can work. But if your product is just, we only sell products under 20 or £30, I think ads becomes very difficult.

Phil:
Yeah. And so, presumably if you've got a product with that higher price tag, you're driving them to that brand's e-commerce site, you're not driving them somewhere else. Is that right?

Aaron:
We for the most part, yes. We want to be ultimately brands that they want to be transacting on their own website. So, they're not paying fees to a third party, to a marketplace, etc.. So, absolutely, that's for the most part what we want to be doing. But it's not only e-commerce sales, you know, a lot of the… as I say a lot of what we do is about lead generation, for service based businesses, or it might be that we are like as with Perry Wood, the goal for Perry Wood is to get people through the door

Phil:
It’s footfall.

Aaron:
It’s footfall, to get people into the garden centres. And so that's the key driver.
Now that can't always be tracked. You can't always go, well, every click is going to translate into, someone walking through the door. So, it can't always be tracked. But there are certain ways you can measure that. And that is the overarching goal.

Phil:
Okay. So, the garden sector is by its very nature, seasonal. How do you plan around peaks and those sudden weather swings?

Aaron:
There's not much we can do about the sudden weather swings. I think from a from a marketing perspective, from an ad perspective, what we can do, what we've done very recently with the amazing summer that we've just had is we can… with ads, you can be very reactive. So, you can double down very quickly. So, if our client is reporting to us that this is selling like hotcakes, then great, we can increase the budget, we can increase the reach, we can get more visibility on that ad, that key message, that event that you're doing, that whatever it might be, that key offering that you want more people to see.
So, one of the benefits of ads is you can be very reactive. And similarly, if the weather just turns and it goes against you; very easy, very quick, you can react and you can scale it back and say, well, I'm not going to spend that budget because it will be wasted because we've had to cancel that event or we're not going to do this, or we know we're not going to get the footfall. So, that's one of the benefits is we can be very reactive. And, the way we work with our clients is that they have open communication and they know we can dial things up, dial things back down.

Phil:
Okay, cool. So, we know that with garden centres, their key demographic or majority of their audience are the older generation. So, what, channels are you finding that convert best for them. So, being able to reach that older generation that might not be quite as tech savvy as the youngsters.

Aaron:
Two ways you've got search and social. So, they're the two key online drivers. By search I mean Google, YouTube, Bing these are search engines. We all use Google every day pretty much. And now ChatGPT which effectively we use a search engine as well. So, on the search side, it's about ensuring that you're visible when someone shows intent.
So, they are looking. If someone is searching for, and your target demographic, if they are actively searching, we would describe them as in-market. They are looking for a garden centre near me. Great. We want to be popping up. Very powerful, they're showing intent, we want to give them the key information and then ultimately get them in, get them through the door.
The flip side of that coin, social, By social, social media, what we are utilising for that target demographic: Facebook. Instagram as well. But Facebook is the primary driver. So, we use… what we tend to do is use search to capture the intent and then social to retarget, which essentially just means state of mind.
We describe it as nudge marketing, because if you've searched, you said, I'm looking for a garden centre near me. What I want to do is on the next day on Facebook, I want a little ad that pops up that says, hey, I essentially I know you were looking at coming to a Garden City, did you know, we've got this event going on or we're running a little 10%, or why don't you book and come to the restaurant or whatever it might be?

Phil:
Yeah. So, that's so freaky stalking ads that you see…

Aaron:
Oh yeah.

Phil:
…following you around

Aaron:
A little bit.

Phil:
Okay. So, if a brand isn't direct to consumer can paid ads still work, do you think?

Aaron:
Yes. So, long as to… Again, there's a there's big differences between search and social, again. So, from a search perspective, the prerequisite of search working, regardless of what your product is, what your services is that you can articulate and identify how your customer searches. As long as they search… whether it's search because they're searching for, a solution to a problem or they have a need. As long as you can articulate, okay, this is how my customer searches, whether they're B2B, B2C, Direct, it doesn't matter. Then search potentially can work. Obviously in the test, experiment.
With social regardless of whether you're D2C, trade only, what that can be very powerful for is retargeting, keeping your brand, your key message, whatever that might be top of mind.
And you can get very creative with that, and have it done in a way where you only show certain messages to certain audience demographics. So, you can be fairly confident that only the right people are seeing that key message and not if you're say, trade, not Joe Public on the street, but only that trade audience is going to see that key message, that key offer that reason to get in touch, to reach out.

Phil:
OK. So, how can you, ensure the effectiveness of a campaign like that? Is that measurable? If there's no purchase at the end or nobody's clicking on something, how do you measure the effectiveness of that?

Aaron:
It really depends on what the business is and what their goal is. There's some really creative ways that you can measure things. So, for example, we would might setup… you might incentivise, you might be running a campaign that is to drive footfall into a garden centre, and you might incentivise it with, visit this page and maybe you click a QR code or there's a download, or they have to input some information to get a discount code. And so, whilst the goal is ultimately for them to visit in-store, we ask them to take an action and it can even just be as simple as a page view or a download, or a watch of something, or a taking some sort of action.
And ultimately there is a point - I mean, we live in a data driven attribution world, which essentially does mean that you cannot, track every user. You are never going to be on a track and record every click. So, don't try because you will go insane. And do you know what? What I love about marketing these days, is it can be complicated, and I think there's a real art to keep things simple. And there's a quote, I forget who it's by, but it's from many, many decades ago is, you know, most businesses know that half of their marketing works, they just don't know which half. And I think we've come all this way, all these technical, technological advancements, the same is pretty much still true. You know, a lot of brands, they know the collective sum of their marketing works. But can they pinpoint, okay, that ad generated exactly this revenue and that generated this number of leads? No. And don't try, just look at it as the sum of the whole and I think that's a more… certainly how we do it.

Phil:
Okay. So, that's really interesting and what I think, that quote was that you were sharing was talking about actually, you need to look at things as an overarching whole. And there's that marketing mix, there's a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and you're doing all these things.

Aaron:
Exactly.

Phil:
So, imagine that I'm a brand, a garden brand, and I'm thinking, I quite like to get into this, it sounds interesting. What would be a sensible starting budget for me? What would be a sensible time scale for trialling it? And, you know, a plan to really gain confidence that this is going to work for me.

Aaron:
Yeah. I think most… a lot of people that come to us say that essentially is what's it going to cost, how long does ittake, etc.. And I think what… I could pluck a number out the sky and I could say: it's going to take three months and you need to spend a minimum of £50 a day. I absolutely could say that.
I think the better question and the better conversation that I try to encourage any brand that I speak to, to have is I say: well, what are we trying to achieve? Let's put ads to one side. Let's not talk about google ads, because people say, we want to do some paid media, I want some ads. I say, no you don’t. What you want is sales. That's what you want is sales or leads. That's what you really want. So, let's understand what you actually are trying to achieve. And when they when we then break that down and we say, okay, so we want to generate, we'd love to generate an extra quarter of million in the next quarter or the next year or whatever it might be.
And I say, well OK, great. Well then we look at… okay, now we know what our North Star is. Now we know where we're going. Now let's look at how are we going to get there. Now let's take that bare acronym and look at well, okay. In order to generate that extra quarter of a half million, million pounds of turnover that you want to achieve. How much of that is going to needs to come from ads? That's how much of that is going to come from email? Is there more we can do with brand, with referral or with repeat? If that growth is solely going to come from ads – and you can say no, we want to add a half million to our turnover, but it's the only dial we've got to move is ads. Then I'm going to say okay, so we need to we need we need paid media to generate extra half a million to meet your overall business goals. And you say yes, I'll say okay. Then we look at your data. We say, well, so what are you doing with that? And you say, well, historically we've only ever got our ads to do, a four times return.
And I say, okay, so on a four times return, we need to if we want to do half a million, we need to invest 125,000 into ads. That's we can work the calculation back. But I can say, well, let's try and let's aim to make some efficiencies and get from a 1 to 4 to a 1 to 5.
So we get you a five times return. You've only ever got a four, let's try and get your five. But even at a five, if we want to hit half a million additional revenue, that's only going to come from paid media, well then we still need £100,000 to go into ads. And so that's the way we can remove a lot of the guesswork. And that's a very frequent conversation that I will have with brands. And we will work it backwards for them to understand, okay, that's what we're going to do.
Now it doesn't mean you have to start day one and go, okay, we're going to give you a pro-rata equivalent £100,000, but we might look at it go, well to test the water. Let's not aim for half a million from paid media. Let's aim for 100,000 from paid media. And so, we then scale it back. But we've run the economies of scale and we know what - in order to achieve our revenue goals, what we're going to have to invest based on the previous performance. And so that's the approach we take to work it out. And that does the job of removing much of the guesswork.

Phil:
And it's all on that performance really, isn't it?

Aaron:
100%

Phil:
Working out what the performance is. So, if you've got, a portfolio of products that you're wanting to advertise. And, you are running this process and you're sort of looking at the effectiveness of the ads and you're going, this one works really, really well. So, you double down on that one, does that come at the expense of the other products?

Aaron:
I hate to use the marketer's cliched answer of it depends, but it kind of does depend. I think, a mistake we see a lot of brands making is they identify a front runner and then they put all their chips on that and they just go, we're going to double down. If you try and do that for the most part, too aggressively, that can often result in throwing the baby out the bathwater. It can, upskittle. And the reason for that is very simple. Because the algorithm takes time, whether it's Google ads or metal ads, whatever. It takes time for that, algorithm to understand who's buying, with what frequency, how are they buying, when are they buying, who's… All of that, it needs to understand that. Once it gets into its rhythm and it starts to understand, if you then say, great, I'm seeing a return, this works, I'm going to dial this thing up, as is often tempting to do, it kicks the algorithm back into learning. It says, oh well, you've moved the goalposts. I need to now re-learn. I need to go back to day one and relearn everything. And that's often what we see. So, the better solution is to just incrementally nudge it. The temptation is, well, we'll just roll this thing right up, particularly if the weather's shining and lovely. But the better solution is just incrementally dial it. You'll get more reliable and predictable performance, that will last longer because otherwise what you tend to see, you might see an immediate upshift, but it will very likely be followed by a big drop off.

Phil:
Okay, you were saying about test and measure, are you continually doing AB testing?

Aaron:
All the time. I mean, it never stops. Because you have to understand, because every time you know, you think you've cracked it, something will happen. Because if you're… what you've got to remember is if you're winning, your competition are probably losing. And it's unlikely that your competition are just going to stand still and go, well, that's fine we like losing. They're going to double down, exactly like you've doubled down to win again. And a good way to think about it is like a running race. If you're winning, you know you've got to go look over your shoulder to realise there are people trying to chase you down. They're trying to catch you up, and then they will catch you up eventually if you let them, and then they'll get ahead and then you've got to play catch up.
So, and that's why you've got a test to measure. You've got to iterate. You've got to look at what's working. Because if it's working great, embrace it, love it, do as much as you can with it, but just know that won't last. Because if you're winning your competition are losing.

Phil:
So, I can tell that you're absolutely passionate about this. And that really comes across. How does it feel to know that you are, a slave to an algorithm that you don't actually control?

Aaron:
That's… I've never heard that question before! How does it feel? Erm, do you know what? I think the way to not feel like you're a slave to the algorithm is what I said earlier. Is, we encourage our brands to not be… I don't want any brand, any business that we work with, I don't want them to be reliant on a single channel. You know the good old saying is don't have any more than 10% of your business reliant on any one customer. I like the same approach and philosophy for your marketing, whatever that looks like. You don't want to be over reliant, because that way you don't feel like you're a slave to the algorithm because you're leveraging it. And ultimately, if you're doing this type of ad and that type that and these type of campaigns and you're doing all these different things, you've got lots of plates spinning. And if those plate spinning plates, know they're all profitable for you. If, you know, you can put a pound in, but you can generate £5 back out, or whatever that might look like, that's a good thing. You don't feel like a slave to the algorithm. And you know, as a business, you're not entirely reliant. I think, where it gets scary and you feel a little bit like you're treading on thin ice is where you’ve got a business that 70, 80% reliant on one channel, whatever that channel might be, then you feel a little bit more, oh, okay, this this doesn't feel great.

Phil:
Okay. So, that this that might lead into my next question. So, is there a mistake that you still see too often in this sector. And what would be the fastest fix for that?

Aaron:
There's a few mistakes that we see regularly. I think, yes, the overreliance on a single channel is, you know - Google Ads, Google Ads is it is a good example. It's a drug. It's like a drug. And I think a lot of brands… it's so easy to market it. It's very easy to do Google ads to a very average level.
It's very difficult to do it to an expert level, which is why company brands work with agencies such as ourselves. Because it takes time. It takes, you know… with Google ads, you can if you want very mediocre performance set and forget - you could just set it up, it looks like it's okay and I'll leave it be. So, we see that as a mistake, an overreliance on any one channel.
I think a big thing to make it super relevant for your audience, and a big opportunity and a mistake that a lot of brands, a lot of garden centres are making in this sector, is not leveraging their data. What I mean by that is if you have, a data, an email database, if you have a website that is somewhat visible, if you have social channels that you're active on, you should be capturing that first party data and then retargeting that data, because in the grand scheme of things, it will cost you pennies and it's hugely effective.
And it's a way of keeping your brand, your business, top of mind across an omnichannel marketing mix. If done well, in a very effective way, it's a warm audience. And so you want to keep that warm audience. You want to stay in front of that warm audience, to drive your key marketing messages. And we speak to brands, garden centres every single day who aren't doing that. And they are sitting quite literally on a goldmine of… I say, wouldn’t it be nice if I could give you a way to get your key message… you're planning for Christmas right now, at the time we're recording this. A lot of garden centres are out there putting their Christmas in stores. And what I'm saying to them is, wouldn't it be nice if you could get… if you… that email database, you could say, hey, we're launching Christmas pre-book now and you could get that in front of that 20,000, that 50,000 database you've got. And if I said you could do that in the grand scheme of things for pennies, would you do that? And I think that is something that so many businesses are just not doing. They're not realising the power.
And a common recurring theme we hear is, oh, but we can't do that because of GDPR or we can't do that because, you know, we don't know how, we don't have the expertise.
Well get the expertise and GDPR, as long as people have transacted with you, you've got I mean, I'm not a lawyer or a solicitor on this stuff, but as long as they have transacted with you and they've given you their details, you have legitimate interest. You're perfectly fine to communicate with them.

Phil:
Right. So, with retargeting, are you saying that retargeting is actually cheaper than, normal ads, or are they the same?

Aaron:
It's going to be cheaper simply for the fact that with retargeting you are only going out to those that know you, and so you're going out to a very select audience.

Phil:
Yeah, so it's a smaller pool.

Aaron:
It’s a smaller pool, but it's a pool of people that know you, have most likely bought from before, they’ve transacted with you. And so, it's a warm audience. So, we always… every business lives and breathes by its new customers, new customers are hugely important. But the retargeting piece to re-engage and stay top of mind with your existing customers to encourage repeat. A recurring theme right now - you know times are tight. So, what we've got getting… acquiring new customers is becoming increasingly expensive. So, what businesses need to do, is and on that recognise, is actually if we were to take a little bit of our money and in a very effective way, put that towards re-engaging our current audience. That is a far more cost-effective way of getting our key messages out there, rather than always think about the next new customer, the next new customer, because new customer acquisition is becoming very expensive.

Phil:
So, we're here at Glee, I'm looking around at the products on display here at the show. What products or categories do you think are under leveraged online and maybe ripe for your kind of performance marketing?

Aaron:
I mean, I think the obvious one is garden centres themselves. You know, it's… I did a talk on stage here at Glee yesterday, talking about garden centres and getting future ready. And I think it’s everything we've discussed, I think garden centres themselves have a massive opportunity, to leverage online channels, to drive in-store footfall.
And they're just, you know, some are doing it, there are some there are increasingly so garden centres are realising it, and you can see it is palpable. I can feel them waking up to… because us and others are out there saying, you know, you're missing a trick here. And that is a huge opportunity. I didn't think there were there are various… I mean… most categories of products, it's competitive. And I think what you've got to do these days to win online, is be smart with what you're doing. And what I say is, you need to be famous to a few. Most businesses don't need to be famous to everyone. And there's everyone thinks you need to go viral. You need to be known by everyone.
You don't. Most businesses, if you are a bricks and mortar business as garden centres are, you need to be known within a ten-mile radius. Win the postcode, you win the weekend. It's as simple as that, right? You know, localised clicks fill car parks. It's as simple as that. And that's true for local business.
If you are an e-commerce business, so if you transact primarily online, then locality, that's not a thing for you. So, in that scenario, just simply having the products, that makes it very difficult unless it's an incredibly niche product. So, in that scenario it's about okay, what do you do? And who do you do it for? What's your niche within a niche? So, I'll give you an example. One of our clients, they sell wooden furniture.
Beautiful stuff. Really really nice. We've been working with them period of time. When we first engage with them it was; this is what - you transact online. You sell these products. Fantastic. But why you? Why am I buying from you? Why is your customer coming to you, and not the 101 other retailers that sell largely the same products?
It took some digging. It took some, working with them to articulate it. But essentially, they wanted to be famous, and they were known and their passion was a specific type of wood, it was mango wood. So, that was their niche. So, suddenly we took them from being just a furniture retailer. Now we’re the leading mango wood furniture retailer. It’s a niche within niche. And so, if you're ecommerce, that's how you approach it. You think, what's our product, who's it for and why us?
If you're a local business okay, what is it we do and where do we do it? Where are we known for providing the product or service that we have?

Phil:
Brilliant, right, well, I think that wraps it up. Thanks so much Aaron for coming and sharing a bit more about what evergreen do and also your enthusiasm and passion for the subject too, thanks very much.

Aaron:
Thanks for having me.

Phil:
Please do subscribe, like and review us on your podcast platform of choice – it only takes a moment, and it helps us to make the podcast possible. If you found this episode useful, do spread the word and share it with your colleagues. Signing up to our mailing list at theunderground.fm will mean that you’ll receive insight and news and new episodes, straight to your inbox.

The Underground podcast is produced by WrightObara a creative marketing agency for home and garden brands. The production at Glee doesn’t happen without a team of people behind it, so my thanks goes to:
Matt Mien and Keterina Albanese from the Glee team for their help and assistance.
Technical production Paul Withers
Production Assistant Josh Wright
Onsite Videography Ben Holmes
Graphic Design and Marketing Support Claire Appleby
The Underground logo was created by Jan Obara
The podcast booth was constructed with the support of Toby Noyce of Xtreme Graphics
And of course, my thanks goes to my brilliant co-host Kate Turner, the gardener guru.
Thanks for listening.