Stop Asking "What Should I Email About?"
It's probably one of the questions we're asked most often: "What should I email about this week?"
Usually, when someone asks us that, they're looking for ideas. A calendar full of awareness days, seasonal talking points or something interesting that's happening in the world.
And don't get us wrong, we love all of those things. In fact, every month we put together a whole Content Hive packed with awareness days, seasonal opportunities and conversation starters because they absolutely have their place.
But we think it's the wrong question.
Not because there's anything wrong with the calendar, but because it encourages us to start in completely the wrong place. Rather than asking "What should I email about?", we'd encourage you to ask something quite different.
"What do my customers need to hear from me?"
It's a subtle shift, but it changes everything.
When your starting point is the calendar, every florist has access to exactly the same ideas. Everyone knows Father's Day is coming. Everyone knows autumn is around the corner. Everyone can send an email saying, "Our Christmas wreath workshops are now on sale."
The difference isn't the event. The difference is the customer.
A florist whose customers are mostly young professionals buying thoughtful gifts will tell a very different Christmas story to one whose business revolves around weddings, or one whose strength is corporate work. Even if the email is promoting the same thing, the conversation should feel different because the people reading it are different.
That's why we spend so much time talking about understanding your customers in Own Your Marketing. Their motivations, worries, buying habits and the little things that make them choose you. The better you understand the people you're talking to, the easier marketing becomes because you stop trying to write emails for "everyone".
But there's another layer to this that often gets overlooked. If you're asking yourself, "What do my customers need to hear from me?", one of the best places to find the answer is in what they're already telling you. Through their enquiries, their orders, their bookings, their repeat purchases, their spending patterns. It's all information.
Not in a creepy, Big Brother sort of way. In a genuinely useful, "this helps me be more relevant" sort of way.
Your order history isn't just a record of what happened last year. It's full of clues about what might happen next.
Who's likely to book a wreath workshop again?
Who's been buying anniversary flowers every June?
Which customers only ever buy for birthdays?
Who's quietly disappeared after ordering regularly for years?
Those aren't just reports inside your florist software. They're potential conversations.
Imagine sitting down to plan your Christmas emails.
One approach is to think, "Right... it's September. What shall I write?"
The other is to ask, "Who bought Christmas flowers from me last year? Who came to a wreath workshop? Who always spends well in December? What might those customers like to hear from me next?"
Suddenly you're not inventing ideas. You're responding to patterns that already exist inside your business. That's why we don't think the question should be, "What should I email about?"
We think it should be:
"What do my customers need to hear from me?"
More often than not, the answer is already sitting inside your business.
If you'd like to get better at spotting those clues, our next Worker Wing Workshop, in partnership with Strelitzia Software, is all about turning your customer data into better email marketing. We'll show you where to find those insights, how to interpret them and, most importantly, how to use them to send more relevant emails that your customers actually want to receive. Find all the details below: