The Plant Friends Journal 003
Hey plant friends,
First off, another huge thank you — loads more people have subscribed to the newsletter, and the open rate has jumped from 51% in week one to 58% in week two. It seems like this is a feature most people are enjoying, and I’ve had quite a few replies too. I can’t promise I’ll be able to respond to every single one, but I’ll do my best! I’ll keep tweaking the newsletter as we go, adding new features just like I do on the other platforms, but I just want to say thank you for a really successful launch.
Just like that, here we are already at week three! Now that we’re into April, the plant market season is in full swing. Usually, I kick things off in the last week of March, but this year I gave myself a bit of a head start and began on March 22nd. It’s been great catching up with some familiar faces and meeting new folks, especially those who’ve since joined the Facebook group. This past weekend I was at a local shopping centre, and let me tell you — it was a bit of a rollercoaster. Friday was alright, Saturday was absolutely flying, but Sunday? The sun must’ve tempted everyone to the beach because it ended up being one of my quietest market days ever. Grand total for Sunday was £50 — I nearly packed up early to join them by the sea! Still, total sales for the weekend came in at £752, so I’m happy with that overall.
Another small personal victory this week: I am finally caught up with online orders! As I write this on Monday afternoon, every single order is fulfilled and with the post office — bar one. That one person knows who they are (and I’ve asked them to check the site later tonight). Why? I’ll be uploading new perennials to the website! If I had a team this would be easy, but it’s just me doing everything — from taking pictures and writing descriptions to setting the prices and making sure everything looks tidy and consistent across the site. Online sales are definitely the bread and butter of this business, but compared to markets — where I just chuck down a few trays of plants and have a good chat — it’s a whole different ballgame.
Anyway, let’s keep the theme going — each week I seem to vent about something! This time it’s tech (don’t click away, this will relate back to plants). So you might’ve heard me mention that the Plant Friends website runs on Shopify. Now when you sign up, you get a basic store, and if you want to add any sort of real features — reviews, syncing with Amazon/eBay, loyalty programs — you have to bolt on extra ‘apps’ made by third-party developers. These apps compete on price and features, which is great in theory because it means there’s loads of choice to build out a proper customer experience.
Earlier this year in the group I mentioned I wanted to start a loyalty program — something like “plant points” where you earn rewards for orders and interactions. After a bit of snooping (aka competitor research), I landed on an app called AI Trillion. It looked ideal — one platform to handle emails, reviews, loyalty points, a fancy banner, the lot. Great, I thought — let’s set it up.
Enter Kelly Penrose, last week’s newsletter competition winner. She got her store credit for being the first to guess correctly… then suddenly it vanished. Turns out these systems are crazy complex. You earn ‘points’ by placing orders, signing up, liking pages, then redeem those points for a code, then paste the code into checkout — it’s a whole complex process. I ended up spending two days on and off Zoom with developers trying to fix it. And the kicker? They didn’t use Shopify’s native customer accounts — they built their own layered on top, meaning customers had to click multiple times just to see their points. It all felt clunky. And if I found it frustrating? I knew customers would too.
So I took a different path. Most of my competitors have cute names like “plant points” or “leafy loyalty” but I’m keeping it simple: 10% back in store credit on every purchase. No points. No codes. Just a straight-up system that shows credit right on the product page and in your account. And most importantly — when you go to checkout, there’s a simple checkbox to use your credit. That’s it.
The new system runs through an app called Remeedly. It’s tidy, integrated, and lets me do something important — add store credit manually. So if you win a competition, I can just pop some credit into your account directly. The only thing it can’t do (yet) is notify you by email when I add it — I’ll sort that soon, but for now, expect store credit to be added within 12 hours of a competition win (usually much sooner).
Oh, and if you’re wondering — yes, the discount codes from the group still work just fine. So if you're reading this and not in the Facebook group... well, I might've just leaked a little perk. Use the code FRIENDSWITHBENEFITS for 10% off.
You’ve probably noticed I don’t rush these things — I’m slow to implement changes, but that’s because I’m building something long-term. Not a quick flash-in-the-pan, but a sustainable business. There are loads more apps I could add — things like customer reviews, exact delivery dates are next on the list — but I’m doing one thing at a time. I think this new loyalty system reflects that — it’s clean, useful, and ready to build on.
See you next Monday!