Selling plant accessories online isn’t for everyone. It requires a lot of patience, care, and, perhaps most importantly, stellar packaging and customer service. Simply put, it has to be darn near perfect.
We recently caught up with Nikki McAteer, Marketing Manager at Perfect Plants, to find out how FeedbackFive has helped the company continue to grow on Amazon — and have they ever. As houseplants and home gardening saw an increase in popularity throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Perfect Plants had the products and expertise to help novice and expert gardeners flourish.
The Kantor family purchased 12 acres in the 1980s, starting a wholesale nursery that grew landscaping plants for Florida nurseries and garden centers. Perfect Plants Nursery was President Alex Kantor's vision. He and his team built on that generational knowledge, growing the business into an industry-leading eCommerce nursery.
“We’re continuously growing and wanted to sell plant accessories to people all across the nation, not just as a local supplier...we wanted to sell to consumers and help home gardeners get out in their yards more and beautify their lives,” said Nikki.
The nursery began with a few beds and has grown to over 60 acres in northern Florida. The company is growing right alongside the plants, having been named to the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing companies in the United States earlier this year.
Perfect Plants started selling online with its own website in 2015 and began selling on Amazon shortly after. Of the early days on Amazon, Nikki noted that the company didn't start selling plant accessories directly right away.
“We actually started with the bonsai fertilizer soil that we sell. We sell a bunch of other plant fertilizers and soils as well. So now it’s grown a lot, especially last year with COVID and people working from home. We saw a huge boom in sales last year, which is great. We love selling plant accessories on Amazon. It makes it really easy for the consumer to get it quickly and Amazon is such a huge supplier now that more people are able to see our brand as well.”
Amazon makes it easy for customers to receive items quickly. Perfect Plants provides quality plant accessories as well as knowledge and additional products to take the guesswork out of growing and maintaining greenery.
“There’s so much information out there and a lot of the people that maybe buy from us or follow us, they might not be experts in the planting world, so it’s really nice to help customers get better at growing plants and gardening," said Nikki. "I think that’s one of the most fulfilling things for me. When you start gardening there’s just so much information and you might not necessarily know what you’re doing, so it’s nice to be able to help people get better at growing plants.”
Amazon Brand Registry has been very beneficial in helping Perfect Plants increase brand visibility and recognition. The team is constantly testing new Amazon features to see what works best for their audience.
Nikki has used FeedbackFive since she started at Perfect Plants in 2018. She previously used custom email templates to request feedback and reviews, but she began automating the Amazon Request a Review message when FeedbackFive added the feature in March 2020.
That was around the same time that the Perfect Plants brand was really starting to gain traction on Amazon, and she noticed a significant increase in Amazon reviews with the Request a Review message. As sales continued to increase throughout the early days of COVID, the automated request sent via FeedbackFive helped generate more Amazon reviews and seller feedback.
Nikki said, “A lot of our listings now have a couple hundred reviews which is great for us because it improves brand loyalty. Personally, when I’m on Amazon, I only want to buy from a company that has good reviews. I don’t want to buy something that has bad reviews.”
She noted that for one particular product, changes were ultimately made to a soil's ingredient list based on customer feedback. “The Succulent Soil wasn’t draining well enough so we had to add sand as an ingredient to help with drainage. We knew it worked because the reviews turned positive.”
Since the Amazon algorithm considers both the recency and relevancy of reviews, it's important to continue to get new reviews. Getting reviews regularly helps improve or maintain a product's organic search rankings on Amazon. Being on the first page can mean the difference between making a sale or not being found.
Shoppers care about reviews, using them to compare products and make purchasing decisions. Customer reviews also offer direct insight into the customer experience, highlighting what's going well and what could be improved.
FeedbackFive’s negative review alerts help Perfect Plants catch customer concerns fast. While Nikki loves sharing positive reviews with the team, she spends more time focusing on negative reviews to identify trends and make operational changes to improve customer satisfaction.
If a customer experiences product damage during shipment or receives the wrong item, Perfect Plants Nursery wants to know so the situation can be resolved. As Nikki noted, "With plant accessories, anything can happen during the shipping process." Amazon reviews help the team pinpoint any potential plant health issues, shipping problems, and other concerns so they can be addressed as quickly as possible.
I use the negative review alerts to be able to find out if a customer is dissatisfied or maybe they had some kind of damage during shipment or maybe they were sent the wrong item. For me, that is the most useful tool that you guys have, and it’s helped because it can turn around a customer experience for the better.
Nikki went on to explain, "They might not necessarily know how to contact us through Amazon, it’s not the easiest thing to do. But, for us to be able to find those issues right after they’ve happened (after they leave a review), it can make or break the customer experience.”
In one instance, an FBA product was sold in two different sizes and the barcodes were mislabeled by Amazon, so customers were receiving the wrong size. Negative feedback alerts from FeedbackFive helped Perfect Plants identify the issue quickly so it could be resolved.
If you want to increase reviews on Amazon and continue to build your business, FeedbackFive has the features you need. Whether you choose to create an automated review request with product-specific messaging or to automate the Amazon Request a Review message, getting started is easy.
Plus, you'll get access to FeedbackFive's powerful scheduling and analytics, alerts for new reviews and feedback, and much more. So what are you waiting for? Give it a try today!
If you are a current FeedbackFive customer who would like to share your story in an upcoming case study, please contact us.