How do we inform and inspire florists to buy seasonal flowers?
About
Royal FloraHolland is the world's largest marketplace for flowers and plants. As an auction company, it facilitates the buying and selling of flowers and plants, with an extensive network of growers and florists. They also provide valuable market information and support services to their members. In addition, Royal FloraHolland invests in innovation and sustainability.
Challenge
Royal FloraHolland's ambition is to support its growers and buyers in keeping accurate knowledge about flowers in season. Royal FloraHolland concluded from research that the knowledge about in-season flowers among florists in Europe is limited and therefore the flowers are also insufficiently purchased.
- Industry Ornamental Horticulture
Observation
'Royal FloraHolland's current promotional activities do not sufficiently match its ambition to help florists turn inspiration into in-store sales opportunities'
From promotion to purchasing
The shift from "From promotion to sourcing" among florists highlights a change in focus, with them increasingly focusing on strategic sourcing rather than mere promotion. By carefully selecting where they source their flowers, florists can gain a competitive advantage and meet the growing demand for quality and sustainable flowers.
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01 Every day promotion based on sales data
"Every day promotion based on sales data" is a strategic approach in which florists use detailed sales data to continuously optimize their promotional activities. Through careful analysis of the data collected, florists can gain insight into trends, seasonal demand patterns and the specific preferences of different customer segments.
With this valuable information, florists can develop targeted promotions that match their customers' needs and interests. They can select specific flower varieties, arrangements or offers based on the most requested products, best-selling categories or popular seasons. By communicating the right message at the right time to the right audience, they can increase customer engagement and maximize sales.
This approach offers florists the advantage of a data-driven approach to promotion, allowing them to use their marketing budgets more effectively. By constantly monitoring and analyzing sales data, florists can adjust and optimize their promotional strategies in real time. This enables them to respond quickly to changing market trends and customer preferences, giving them a competitive advantage and maintaining a strong position in the floral industry.
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02 Market insights for growers
Market insights are an essential tool for growers as they provide valuable information on flower and plant market dynamics. By gaining detailed insight into market trends, demand patterns and consumer behavior, growers can make strategic decisions to optimize their crop planning, product assortment and operations.
Analyzing market insights allows growers to identify trends that affect demand for specific flower and plant varieties. They can gather important information about seasonality, popular colors and styles, emerging trends and specific consumer preferences. This enables growers to align their cultivation and production processes with current market demand, giving them a competitive advantage and increasing their sales opportunities.
In addition, market insights can help growers make decisions regarding pricing, distribution channels and marketing strategies. A deep understanding of market demand allows growers to keep their prices competitive and position their products appropriately. They can also identify effective distribution channels and develop targeted marketing campaigns to bring their products to the attention of the right audience.
Constant investment in gathering and analyzing market insights enables growers to improve their business performance and adapt to changing market conditions. It enables them to proactively respond to market needs, predict trends and differentiate themselves from competitors. Market insights are thus a valuable tool that growers can use to strengthen their strategic position in the flower and plant industry.
The question
How can we best promote the flower assortment of more than 1800 growers to florists in the Netherlands, Germany, France and Great Britain? With the aim of creating as much demand as possible at the most interesting price.
For this promotion, Royal FloraHolland had already developed various activities, but they did not yet lead to the desired success. A multidisciplinary team from BTTR, together with experts from RFH, examined the needs and areas for improvement. Important points of attention were branding, more digital attention, applying structure, increasing imagery on both capacity and variety.
In the strategic approach, we took into account the interests of the various stakeholders. This is what distinguishes our approach: working in partnership and being flexible to make adjustments during the process through continuous testing and prototyping.
Applying service design in a campaign ensures effectiveness
Read moreCollaborating on innovation
Strategy, design & technology
At BTTR, strategy, creation and technology are inseparable. That is why from the very beginning we work with multidisciplinary teams. A unique mix of thinkers and doers working on the case in all phases of the process.
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01 Strategy
Leading our approach for Royal FloraHolland has been to match the season's available flowers with promotion. This involves the supply of over 1,800 growers from 15 different countries. They grow over 150 different flowers, which are promoted throughout the year based on Royal FloraHolland's availability dates. The calendar approach has been implemented by BTTR in a 365 degree manner in multiple expressions. The 365dagenbloemen.nl platform is like a guidebook, both informing and inspiring. And ultimately encourages florists to order flowers from wholesalers. By visiting the platform daily, the target group is helped to add more variety to their assortment in order to keep surprising their customers in the store.
That inspiring and informing doesn't just happen on the platform, by the way. There is also a four-language magazine (in addition to the Dutch magazine, a magazine is also published for the German, British and French markets) and literally all 365 days of the year, social media is used to promote the flowers from the campaign in creative and inspiring ways.
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02 Design
Our creative challenge was to develop a recognizable branding that could be carried through in all communications.
That new look & feel gave the campaign a fresh look, modern and perfectly suited to both the target group and the strategy. Form elements are found on the platform in the navigation, but of course also in the magazine and on the socials. By using the branding in this way frequently and multifaceted, we load the brand and ensure recognition among the target group.
On the platform, usability is key: clear navigation helps users find the right information.
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03 Technology
The Member Data Platform was used for the platform of 365daysbloemen.nl. This is a suitable solution for Royal FloraHolland, because it allows the use of different front-end applications. This is because there is flexibility to roll out applications to different target groups. With a traditional CMS, the data is integrated into a system and the database of the CMS can be accessed through the front-end. This is not possible with a headless CMS.
From the MACH architecture, three different front-end environments (progressive web apps) were developed for the platform 365dagenbloemen.nl. One of the environments is for the subscriber/florist, one for public and one for the grower who can receive their own business insights behind a login. In this way, each user gets to see only the information relevant to him/her and matches personal information needs. The platform has a completely data-driven approach. This also means that everything has been made completely measurable.
