Hands up who’s guilty of getting wedding enquiries, sending them your beautifully curated price list and then never chasing, hoping they get back to you? Well, our hand is definitely up when we consider our florist, Flower by Nattrass; we have been guilty of this in the past. In this Bramble post, we are going to discuss the steps we have been making to market effectively to wedding enquiries that come in, and convert more into confirmed wedding orders.
A big problem that many of us have, is that enquiries come in left, right and centre. Emails, your website, Instagram DMs, Facebook messenger, comments on posts and on bits of paper from wedding exhibitions to name just a few. The big question is, how to keep track of them all?!
Collating Enquires
When we started testing Strelitzia’s new Wedding and Events software at the beginning of this year, it meant that all our enquiries could be organised in one place. Enquiries are created directly in Strelitzia during wedding exhibitions, and all other wedding enquiries are created in Strelitzia as soon as they come in. Consequently, we can see at a glance where each wedding is in the customer journey: enquiry, proposal, confirmed or completed.
So, I hear you thinking, that’s all great but how does that convert more enquiries to confirmed weddings along with the 400 other items on my never-ending to-do list? Time for Amy, our resident spreadsheet and data geek to step in with her trusty marketing funnel:
When a client has enquired, we are at the interest stage of the marketing funnel. The client is aware of us and interested enough to get a bit more information, meaning the hardest part is completed and our marketing on socials, website and wedding exhibitions has worked. The next step is to create the desire to make your brides want your designs more than your competitors and for this, I want to create trust with the couple. Trust that our designs are the best they can find. Trust that we will be reliable on the day and trust that they will get value for money. (By value I do not mean being the cheapest I mean that we are worth paying a premium as our designs are over and above what they can expect from our competitors.)
In order to do this for Flowers by Nattrass, I have created a Wedding Portfolio Blog. It is simply a page on our website which showcases the very best of our weddings. I have used pictures brides have shared with me, to display our designs, showing the moodboard we create for each bride and the individual flowers, developing the couple’s vision of the day. This is then followed by images of the day when the couple’s vision was brought to life.
Tips for a Wedding Blog
- Make sure you have the couple’s permission to use the photos of them and their guests
- The photographer holds the copyright for all the photos shared so make sure to have their permission too and backlink the photographer on the blog. (This will help with the photographers and your SEO.)
- Try and use a variety of images showing your flowers close up so they can see the details of each design as well as shots during the day so your designs come to life in the context of each wedding.
- Create a link to the venue where the wedding was held so clients know where you have created all your wonderful designs. (Again this helps with SEO.)
- Once you have got going creating one blog a month (or whenever you have the time), this is enough to keep it up-to-date and fresh. (Plus new content on your website will help with your SEO)
- If you have a review or a thank you card from the client, include it. There is nothing better than reviews for creating trust.
MailChimp & Email Marketing.
Once you have created the blog you wanted all the couples who have enquired to see it! This will display your wonderful designs, allowing them to see first-hand how you can make their day unforgettable and understand how flowers can weave magic throughout the day & coordinate the scheme bringing the couple’s vision to life. Ultimately creating that all-important trust and desire to book with you.
In comes MailChimp, or a similar email marketing tool. The first step is to export all your enquiries out of Strelitzia and import them into your email marketing tool. Having collated all your enquiries in Strelitzia Wedding & Events means this is simple and easy, and having gained the client’s permission to market to them means you can start and send them lots of gorgeous inspiration.
Below is an example of Amy’s latest email, showcasing the highlights of her latest blog and encouraging all Flowers by Nattrass’s enquiries to click through and see the rest of the images.
The Results
The first rule of statistics is being able to compare your dataset, otherwise, how can you see how well you’ve done? So I sent out 2 campaigns. One to our wedding enquiries database created in Strelitzia Wedding & Events, and one to our full marketing database created in Strelitzia Shop & Studio. The results in engagement to the email above speak for themselves:
Within a 24-hour period, almost half of the wedding enquiries opened my email and 17% clicked through to read the full blog. If you compare this to our main Shop & Studio database, 17% opened and only 0.7% clicked through.
What these stats mean is that 44% of the clients we have already engaged with, sent the price list to and then hoped they would get back to us have been reminded of who we are and what we can create for them & 17% of them have further engaged with our content. This is building trust and increasing the likelihood they will get back in touch and confirm their wedding order.
Finally, and most important of all, one of the enquiries rang us off the back of our email to let us know how beautiful Karolina’s flowers were and asked for an appointment to discuss her and her partner’s wedding which was brilliant!
The Takeaways
There is no getting away from the fact that this blog and e-marketing are another job to create each month. However, at Flowers by Nattrass, we will definitely be spending the time to complete the task. The engagement speaks for itself, and the task has taken me around an hour. If you’d like to know more about how I have created the blog or get anymore hints and tips please don’t hesitate to contact me: at amy@strelitziasoftware.com
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