Scotts Co. Offers Customized E-Advice

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – The Scotts Co. has announced plans to use a Web-based marketing program to send personalized lawn care advice to nearly 750,000 customers.

Using ExactTarget’s software, the distributor of green industry products will seek to address the individual needs of its clientele – based on varying geographic and horticultural conditions.

“Scotts is a striking example of how e-mail marketing is evolving from a one-size-fits-all approach of blasting the same e-mail to all customers, to a highly personalized form of communication that leverages vital information in customer databases to achieve true person-to-person marketing,” said Chris Baggott, founder and vice president of ExactTarget. “Scotts and other companies are recognizing the importance of this kind of extreme targeting, and the technology now exists to support these initiatives.”

ExactTarget’s technology allows Scotts to dynamically generate thousands of individualized recommendations from a single e-mail template, based on zip codes, grass and garden types, and continually changing variables such as weather and other local growing conditions. For instance, the e-system will ensure that Scotts customers with St. Augustine grass receive different care recommendations than those with Kentucky bluegrass.

In addition to prompting customers to fertilize, plant and perform other maintenance activities at the appropriate time for their geographic locations and their lawn and garden types, the company also plans to send special electronic alerts with treatment advice regarding pests, drought or other problems reported in a specific area.

“Ultimately, it will help our customers be more successful in their lawn care and gardening activities,” said Joel Reimer, manager of Interactive Marketing at Scotts. “From a service perspective, we can focus on developing helpful content, and ExactTarget’s software does the rest. This improved capability is just one more way that Scotts continues to strengthen its customer relationships.”
 
Scotts’ e-mail marketing program is based on the company’s extensive agronomic expertise coupled with information submitted by customers when they sign up for the services on the company site, www.scotts.com. Through integration with those customer-created profiles and sophisticated dynamic content functionality, ExactTarget's software seamlessly changes information in each message to correspond to each customer's particular requirements.

 ExactTarget’s software also handles all e-mail distribution, includes multiple features designed to improve deliverability of email messages, and provides tracking metrics that enable Scotts to analyze whether customers read their messages.