Flyline Search Marketing

2020 Valentine’s Day Sales Results Dazzle

Flyline Search Marketing delivers comprehensive marketing solutions for florists all across the United States. We serve some of the nation’s top family owned and operated flower shops. Our comprehensive program was originally created back in January of 2009. We built it for a flower shop known as Carithers Flowers. They operated their floral design business in the Atlanta area.

When I first met Charles Carithers, my first reaction was that he was warm, friendly and energetic. Charles had recently taken over management of the family flower shop business from his mother and step father. When I signed on to help, Charles had just closed all but one of the 6 flower shops they had been operating. Turned out that Charles was doing all he could to prevent the family business from going out of business! As my team engaged in the project, we quickly realized that Charles was going to need a sustainable lead stream. We were also going to have to rebuild brand recognition, fully optimize his website, build and deploy various social media platforms and create the tools to effectively index information with the major search engines. In addition, we were going to need to set up the proper tracking technologies so progress could accurately be measured. From all that activity grew the foundational elements of the comprehensive marketing program Flyline delivers today.

Over the next 10 years, the Flyline team helped Carithers Flowers transform their business. Online revenue grew from $174,000 in 2008, up to more than $3.5 million in 2018.  During that 10 year period, we continued to refine our program. We deployed it in market after market. Each time we deployed with a new flower shop, the program delivered eye popping results. We now have a long track record of turning small to medium flower shops into large shops that dominate the markets they operate in.  The 2020 Valentine’s Day holiday marketing campaign provided another great example of how impactful our marketing program really is.

During the first 14 days of February 2020, our flower shops far out performed their industry counterparts. Every flower shop in the Flyline floral group achieved record online revenue numbers. One of our newest shops, Hall’s Flower Shop in Atlanta, actually finished at 231.56% of their Valentine’s online revenue objective.  They also achieved 197.46% of their Valentine’s online sales objective. We have been working with Betsy and Ken at Hall’s since June of 2019. They are easily now one of the fastest growing flower shops operating in the Atlanta area. The good news for them is, the program is just getting started. The program is designed to build long term sustainable growth. Those building blocks are clearly in place for Hall’s Flower Shop. We predict many years of sustainable growth to come.

During the 2020 Valentine’s Day marketing campaign, we had several shops establish new all time performance highs. One example. Pugh’s Flowers generated more than 540 online orders in one single day, during the Valentine’s Day campaign. You can count on one hand the number of independent family owned flower shops who achieved a 500 plus online sales day during the first 14 days of February 2020. In fact, I would argue that you wouldn’t even need all five fingers to complete your count. The 2020 Valentine’s Day campaign was arguably the strongest ever for Pugh’s Flowers. The Pugh’s family operates 3 floral design centers in the Memphis, Tennessee area. They have another flower shop located in Southaven, Mississippi.

Another performance benchmark was established by Allen’s Flowers.  I have argued for a number of years now that Allen’s Flowers is the fastest growing independent family owned and operated florist in the United States. They set an all time high for most gross revenue during the 14 day Valentine’s campaign period. It wasn’t always this way for Allen’s. Back in 2012, their total annual online sales were less than $175K. Today, they are easily one of the top 20 – 30 largest independent florists in America.

We support the Ozment family. They operate 4 Flowerama floral design centers in and around the Columbus, Ohio area. This year, they took in more than 350 online sales orders on February 14th. There are only a handful of flower shops in America who accepted 350 online orders on Valentine’s Day. Especially in light of the fact that most flower shops are completely swamped with Valentine’s orders long before the 14th. The really amazing thing about this performance high was the fact that they already had thousands of orders on hand that needed to be filled, prior to accepting another 350 on the 14th. We are always amazed with the way the Ozment family handles all of the production, delivery and customer opportunities that come with the Valentine’s holiday. These folks are truly some of the smartest and most talented floral operators we have ever met.

Lets talk about Veldkamp’s Flowers for a moment. Want to hear an amazing 2020 Valentine’s campaign fact about them? They delivered more than 2,700 orders on Valentine’s Day. That’s right, I said more than 2,700 orders delivered in one single day. Again, if you start counting fingers as to how many Independent family owned flower shops delivered 2,700 orders in one single day, you won’t need all five fingers to complete your count. John Veldkamp is the CEO of Veldkamp’s Flowers. He is one if the brightest minds in the floral industry. You won’t meet a floral operator with more grit, determination and intelligence. Keep in mind, Denver experienced several major snow storms during the first 14 days of February. None of that bothered John and his team. They powered through it, like they do with all challenges they face. So proud to be associated with John, his beautiful family and his talented employee team. Great folks for sure.

We use paid search as one element of our comprehensive marketing program. Just looking at the data from Google. We generated more than 415,000 ad impressions for our flower shops during the first 14 days of February. That is a lot of eye balls looking at Google ads relating to our clients. More than 31,600 people clicked on one of those Google ads. Conversions from all those impressions and Google ad clicks were up by more than 50%, over the previous year. Mayfield Florist operates 2 flower shops in the Tucson, Arizona area. They enjoyed an overall online conversion rate of 10.46% over the first 14 days of February. Even though 10.46% is amazing, they didn’t achieve the highest overall conversion rate in the floral group. That honor went to Pugh’s Flowers. In Memphis, we achieved an overall online conversion rate of 12.93% during this year’s Valentines campaign. You won’t find many shops in America that have an overall online conversion rate in the 10% range or higher. More than 30% of the shops in our floral group achieved overall conversion rates that were 10% or higher.

Here are some interesting trends from Adwords that might be helpful for you. During the first 14 days of February, impressions were only up by 1.87% over the previous year. Clicks were a completely different story. Clicks were up by 47.01% over the previous year. We attribute much of that improvement to the efforts of our PPC management team to further strengthen an already ultra productive platform design. It could also be argued that people are also getting more comfortable with shopping online. A few years ago, there were many in the industry who said people just didn’t trust PPC ads. We never bought into that argument. Our team always knew the truth. People who click on a listing or ad are simply looking for the most relevant answer to their question or issue. With that knowledge in mind, our staff has always expertly designed PPC ads that provide great information to shoppers considering all their online options. Click through rates on our ads improved during the Valentine’s holiday season by 44.30%, year over year.

The impressions signaled strong demand this year. The clicks and improved click through rates provided further evidence that demand this year was high. Knowing that we were achieving world class conversion rates for our clients, we felt very confident in recommending higher ad budgets for our clients this year. They listened to the facts we provided and all agreed that the signs were pointing towards increasing ad spend. During the first 14 days of February, we increased overall ad spend for the floral group by 41.60% over the previous year. The results achieved by the floral group provide direct evidence that our more aggressive approach was a very smart move.

We get asked all of the time, what is the top selling product during Valentine’s. Based on the data from the shops, I think a strong argument can be made for roses. More specifically red roses. For example, the top selling product during the first 14 days of February for Pugh’s Flowers was 12 Long Stem Roses. We display that particular product on the site with Red Roses. The Pugh’s 12 long stem rose design is a more traditional rose arrangement. Contrast that with Allen’s Flowers. Their top selling product also included red roses, however the Allen’s product also included white lilies and beautiful white gerbera daisies.

Even though the floral industry as a whole worried about Valentine’s Day falling on a Friday, our flower shops remained steely eyed focused. They didn’t even consider the possibility that this year wouldn’t produce the best Valentine’s Day results ever. Turns out that our flower shop owners were right to think that way. Virtually every shop in our group enjoyed a lucrative and financially productive Valentine’s Day campaign. For the majority, it was the best in their history.