The Challenge

To create a more cohesive omnichannel experience for our customers. Consumers ingest thousands of pieces of content a day. How do we break through? It’s a challenge all brands are facing. 

The Execution

Amanda Scarnechia, Manager, CRM and Consumer Data, The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, told MediaPost’s Email Insider Summit in December 2018, that, although Scotts started direct-to-consumer sales a few years ago, most of its sales are through retailers like Lowes and The Home Depot. A key part of breaking through for Scotts is the multi-touch experience. We are making sure we’re touching at different points. 

What do we want consumers to do? We want them to become aware of our brand, engage with our brand (email, website), purchase the brand, advocate for the brand, and be loyal customers.

How do we get more conversions? We deliver personalized content in the channels preferred by our consumers. We look at our brands, the audiences of our brands. We have six brands, each with a different audience. For example, for Miracle Gro, that audience is gardeners who prefer social channels where they can get inspiration for projects so our Instagram and Pinterest pages.

1. At our large retailers, we look to see when our products are on sale throughout the year and align our content for mobile and email for those sales. We make sure we’re talking about seeding, fertilizing at the same time Lowes is having a sale on seed, fertilizer, etc.

2. We enable multice touchpoints through journey. To get through a gigantic block of content, there has to be a cadence. You don’t want to send not too many or you lose subscriber. It depends on the brand what cadence is. We don’t send messages every day; that would turn customers off. 

3. Create a seamelss user experience. Breaking down silos of channels. Work with other teams: Social, email, and our customer call center, especially for email. We make sure our call center knows what we are sending so they can respond and answer questions. We also make sure our technical team knows so when an email goes out, so our site doesn’t crash. 

To establish awareness, we deliver personalized content using personas. Take Robert, 34, male, a new homeowner, he wants to have the best lawn on the block but he’s never done it. The first thing he does is go to the web, search, maybe he comes across Scotts. He could download our MyLawn app, get personalized bundle of information about how to go about managing his particular lawn, and he gets a personalized plan. The app is also a source of email acquisition.

For engagement and purchase purposes, he is served ad on Faceboo by Scotts. He clicks on it and it takes him back to the website. Maybe he puts something in his cart. But then he abandons his web session. If he left an item in his cart, we trigger an abandoned cart email to ask if he is still interested in purchasing. Maybe he’s not sure. He goes to Lowes to check out products. Still interested? Not sure. He goes in person to Lowes to check out and compare products. At Lowes, with our mobile app downloaded, he gets a push notification: Here’s a 20% coupon, it’s a good time to fertilize your lawn. We deliver content at the point of purchase and he makes an instore purchase.

To create an advocate, Scotts builds loyalty with a seamless post-purchase experience. We follow up with content on how to use the product that was purchased. We recommend other products of interest based on purchase (does he need seed?). And we provide excellent customer call center response (we make sure they know our products and how they work). Finally, we ask for a review 30 days post-purchase.  

At Scotts, some personalization is in progress, some is coming out next year. We use analytics tracking across channels. Use Adobe so that web, email, mobile app, social all feed into one place. But there was a disconnect: Are they talking to each other? So we are implementing a #ID, identifying a consumer across channels with one tag. We have to integrate all channels. Now we have email and web. We’re not yet in social, not in email acquisition. We are working on that integration. When we go to Adobe, we can see where customers are dropping off, where they’re converting. We can connect the dots.

In January, Scotts will begin geofencing in its MyLawn app. When someone goes into Lowes or Home Depot, they get triggered messages, a) a coupon and b) a marketing reminder (it’s time to seed lawns) or, if there is a sale on a Scotts prodcut, we give them a push notification. It is highly effective in creating conversions at POP.

Direct mail: We have a specific use case. For products that only can be purchase D2C, we look at the website, maybe they put it in their cart but there’s no email address, so can’t retarget. How do we recapture that person? Through direct mail. We can see the IP address that we don’t have the mailing address for.  In 2 - 3 days, we can retarget at the mailing address. We send a postcard or a brochure. Our customers love to get information, an educational piece. Our brochure shows how our products work; this will help to drive conversion. We can get 3 -7 times the revenue using direct mail method. We’ll be trying this next year.

Granular segmentation: Sometimes, an email blast can be good. We’re going to try a new tactic, specific to Scotts, based on weather. We’re a seasonal company, our products are used not the same around U.S. so we are triggering messages based on weather. Doing it on the mobile app. By ZIP code and integratimg with weather API, we can understand preciptaiton, then push notification. Hey, you have a 0% change of rain, you need to water lawn by one inch. Reminders. Doing it on app, and now we want to bring it into email.