Customer Story
How Petals used SMS to drive stronger engagement for seasonal campaigns
Overview
Challenge: Keep up with shifting customer behavior on mobile and find more effective ways to engage consumers during key seasonal campaigns.
Solution: Use SMS, MMS and mobile landing pages to deliver branded, mobile-friendly promotional campaigns that link customers directly to key pages on the Petals website.
Results: Higher campaign engagement, repeat visits from customers, and lower opt-out rates compared with other campaign formats.
“Now more than ever it’s important to be present in mobile in every aspect: emails, mobile websites, and now with text messaging. SMS is another channel we can use to get in front of consumers when they’re on their mobile devices.“
Online florist network Petals operates in a highly competitive digital market, where customers can browse and order flowers from almost anywhere. As mobile usage continued to grow, the team saw a clear need to show up more effectively on customers’ phones — not just through email and mobile web, but through text messaging as well. Gene Nubla, General Manager of Teleflora International/Petals Network, said mobile had become too important to ignore, especially as more customers were browsing on their devices. With that in mind, Petals expanded its mobile marketing approach with Sinch Engage (formerly MessageMedia) to better support key seasonal campaigns.
Building a stronger mobile campaign experience
Petals had already used SMS and MMS for major campaigns such as Mother’s Day, but for its Christmas campaign, the business wanted to create a more engaging mobile experience. Using mobile landing pages through Sinch Engage, the team was able to send branded campaign content without needing developer support or website changes. The landing pages included calls to action that took customers directly to relevant pages on the Petals website, while also giving recipients the option to call in a single tap.
That approach gave Petals a more flexible way to support its broader digital strategy during peak retail moments. Instead of relying on a standard text message alone, the team could create a richer mobile experience that felt more tailored to the campaign and easier for customers to act on. According to Nubla, SMS became another important channel for reaching consumers while they were already on mobile.
Driving repeat engagement during seasonal campaigns
The Christmas campaign was sent to 18,000 recipients and delivered stronger engagement than comparable campaigns, according to the case study. Petals saw 1,000 unique visitors, with an average of two visits per user. The repeat engagement was especially notable: 50 consumers visited five or more times, and 150 visited between four and 17 times. For Petals, that kind of behaviour showed that customers were not just glancing at the message and moving on — they were coming back to consider a purchase.
The team also saw lower opt-out rates with mobile landing pages, suggesting that customers responded well to the more visual format. While Petals described its SMS marketing strategy as still being in the early stages, the business saw enough value to make SMS and mobile landing pages an ongoing part of its seasonal marketing mix, particularly around major sales moments like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and Christmas.
