Phoenix Flower Shops promoted their Cyber Weekend sale via e-mail.

Hoping to either meet or exceed the success of the business’s Cyber Monday promotion from the previous year, Phoenix Flower Shops sent out an e-mail to customers promoting its 2-day “Cyber Weekend Savings” online sale, on the Saturday and Sunday after Thanksgiving.

Phoenix Flower Shops’ Ken Young, AAF, says "the 15 percent off" e-mail promotion was less successful than the shops’ one-day sale in 2006. Young suspects customers didn’t open it until they got to work on Monday, and the sale was mostly over by that point. “We were trying to sneak in between Black Friday and Cyber Monday ... to catch people early,” he says. Next time around, he says, he’ll try the promotion as a Saturday, Sunday and Monday sale.

Lackluster success doesn’t stop the shop from sending e-mails. Young says the company will send out an e-mail every five days, on average, through the end of the season.

But they’re not always about pushing specials. On Monday of this week, an e-mail from the shop highlighted the history of the mistletoe — a soft-sell approach that drives recipients to the Web site through various links — and is less likely to get picked up by a spam filter than a straight sales promotion.

Read more about e-mail marketing in Floral Management magazine.

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