April 2021 - 8

HEADLINES/CALENDAR
5 Surefire Ways to Make More Money with E-Commerce
By Celina Young, Marketing and Communications Specialist, AmericanHort
As consumers continue to move
more of their buying online, garden
centers are adapting by bringing
e-commerce into their business. But
for many independent garden centers,
it can be hard to know where to start.
In AmericanHort's recent threepart
e-commerce Mastery series,
Katie Elzer-Peters and her team at
the Garden of Words worked directly
with participants to create actionable
plans for kick-starting e-commerce
platforms, curbside pickup, and
online marketing.
" Just putting up an e-commerce
store doesn't automatically add to
your bottom line, " Elzer-Peters says.
" In fact, it can take away from your
bottom line unless you're squeezing
every drop out of each sale. One
place I see horticultural industry
businesses leave money on the table
is with email marketing, specifically
for e-commerce. But, even if someone
didn't attend the Mastery Series,
there is always some 'low hanging
fruit' they can choose to improve their
e-commerce sales. "
Recordings of all three classes are
now available for purchase at www.
AmericanHort.org/Mastery-Series,
but Elzer-Peters has also left us with
five surefire ways to make more money
with e-commerce:
1. Sell kits and bundles to raise your
cart value. For instance, don't
just sell a tomato; sell a kit with
everything you need to grow a
tomato - a self-watering container,
soil, plants, fertilizer, etc.
2. Stage upsells at your curbside
pickup point and give a mobile
POS terminal to the person
loading. Try staging soil, mulch
and fertilizer for easy additional
sales. You could also add some eye
candy with gorgeous pre-planted
container gardens.
3. Send weekly marketing emails with
links to your e-commerce store.
Many garden centers have a weekly
newsletter, but nowhere do they
ask people to buy. Give customers
a call to action and link directly to
products you want them to buy to
make for as few clicks as possible.
4. Streamline your e-commerce order
fulfillment process in order to lower
labor costs. This is a way to hang on
to more money from the sales.
5. Set online prices to reflect online
labor costs. You don't have to
charge the same price in-store that
you do online. It's more expensive
to fulfill e-commerce orders, so
make the price reflect it.
Check out the full e-commerce
series by purchasing it on-demand
at www.AmericanHort.org, and stay
tuned for a new marketing mastery
series from AmericanHort coming
this fall.
Want to learn more about
Circle 105
8 | LAWN & GARDEN RETAILER | APRIL 2021
e-commerce and online marketing?
Join us July 10-13 in Columbus,
Ohio, for Cultivate'21. Register
for an All-Access Pass and attend
any of the 100+ education sessions,
including 40+ programs specifically
for garden retailers. You can also sign
up for exclusive opportunities like
the Garden Center Retail Tour and
Garden Retail Workshop: Taking it
to the Next Level. Register today at
www.AmericanHort.org/Cultivate.
http://www.AmericanHort.org/Mastery-Series http://www.AmericanHort.org http://www.AmericanHort.org/Cultivate
April 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of April 2021
