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GREENHOUSE INTERNSHIP
Internship Summary
I started my Greenhouse Marketing internship in April 2019. I reached out to the business because I love the store and wanted experience working with a lifestyle retail store. After several meetings and discussions it was decided I would join the Greenhouse team as their marketing intern. My main role would be to create online content as needed. I would create content for sales, events, and holidays. I created content for Mother's Day, Father's Day, Bellingham Wine Walk, Glassybaby Pop-up, Pozie by Natalie Pop-up, weekly newsletter, graduation and Memorial. My main project would be promoting their wedding registry. The promotion of this service included content creation as well but expanded farther into marketing including community outreach, promotional booth management and gift basket curation.
Greenhouse Home: Welcome
OVERVIEW
My internship at Greenhouse included a lot of various tasks. I was brought on as a marketing intern to help promote their wedding registry. My main project was developing a marketing plan to get more people to sign up for the registry. I created and executed a marketing strategy that boosted sign up significantly. The marketing strategy included partnerships with local businesses, gift baskets, brochures, flyers and a promotional booth. My other large project was content creation for Mother’s Day weekend. Greenhouse hosted three different events that weekend. I ran a booth at the Wine Walk event, made content for the Glassybaby and Pozie by Natalie events as well as developed the newsletter for that week. I adopted several mini projects including content creation for their Memorial Day sale, graduation, Father’s Day and a sofa sale. I took on smaller office tasks such as fixing Excel issues or utilizing Constant Contact to create email newsletters.
ORGANIZATION DESCRIPTION
Greenhouse Home has been a staple in Downtown Bellingham Washington for 45 years. It experienced a change in ownership in early 2018 . The new owners are BreAnne and Eric Green. The business sells home decor and lifestyle items. They also offer staging services. The store provides great service and products for the people of Whatcom County.
Greenhouse Home: Services
MOTHER'S DAY PROJECT
Project Description: Greenhouse Home wanted to capitalize on Mother's Day and promote events that they were hosting for that weekend. My job was to create content for the Greenhouse website, email newsletter and Instagram. The content would be posted in order to let Greenhouse customers know about the events. The project consisted of promoting two events and curating a newsletter to be emailed to the subscribers.
Project Objectives
Create promotional material for Glassybaby Pop-Up Shop event
Create promotional material for Pozie by Natalie event
Create Mother's Day newsletter on Constant Contact
Project Process
I started this project by meeting with my supervisor and collecting as much information as possible. We discussed the events, the dates, times and implications. I inquired regarding preferences in color and design of the content. I learned Greenhouse wanted a pink theme for their Mother's Day content. Once I had the specifics on the deliverables they wanted I began the content creation process. I started by researching and selecting images from both Glassybaby's and Pozie By Natalie's website. Once I had several images that corresponded with the pink theme requested I started drafting. Canva was the program I used to create the banner and Instagram posts. I utilized the business's requests and developed several versions of potential content for Greenhouse to choose from. When I was satisfied with the prototypes I sent them to my supervisor. My supervisor then selected her top choices and requested edits that she wanted. I completed final edits before the content was posted.
Once the content was finalized, I moved on to the newsletter. Greenhouse uses Constant Contact for their email newsletters. I spent several hours watching tutorials, researching and testing the application. I did not have any experience or training in using Constant Contact so the learning process took some time. Once I felt comfortable I began drafting the newsletter. I tested out several templates that the program provided however, I ended up building my own. I utilized the request for a pink theme and carefully selected images with corresponding links. I used images from the Glassybaby website, logos for the Wine Walk as well as Pozie by Natalie. I typed out short blurbs to explain the events. I included links to the appropriate products on Greenhouse.com, Wine Walk tickets and wedding registry sign up. My supervisor approved the newsletter when I was finished and sent it out on May 9th.
Project Outcome
There were several outcomes due to the fact that there were several smaller projects wrapped into one. The content I created for the Glassybaby event and Pozie by Natalie event were posted on the Greenhouse website. I was unable to attend these events however, my supervisor informed me of their success. Glassybaby is hugely popular in Washington so the participation in those pop-ups is high. It is essential to promote the event due to the consumer traffic it attracts. Partnership with Pozie by Natalie is important to promote because they do not have a store front. Marketing the Pozie pop-up is essential due to the local partnership the two businesses have cultivated. The turnout was strong for both events which not only encouraged business for items featured in those events but also the whole store.
The outcome of the newsletter was positive. The open rate was 19% which was average for Greenhouse newsletters. The click through rate was 7%. The newsletter was sent to almost 9000 subscribers. Glassybaby was the most popular link and the one that was clicked on 40% of the time. The second most popular link was the Mother's Day Gift Guide blog post that was included. The wedding registry link was utilized the least however one person did use the link to sign up which was a success.
Greenhouse Home: Services
WEDDING REGISTRY PROJECT
Project Description: The project that Greenhouse wanted me to take on was promotion for their wedding registry. The store recently released their online platform for wedding registration. Greenhouse had not spent any resources marketing the service so they wanted me to focus my efforts there. The purpose of the project was to boost the number of people signed up and let customers know the service is available to them.
Project Objectives:
Develop a marketing plan
Boost wedding registry users
Create promotional content online and in-store
Build partnerships with local businesses
Project Process
The project process for the wedding registry promotion was quite extensive since it was my main focus.
Research: I started off researching wedding registries online to better understand their use and how other businesses marketed them. I investigated on sites such as Sur la Table, Williams and Sonoma and a comparable small business store called Kitchen Kaboodle. I took notes on what their sites looked like and how they presented their wedding registries. Once I had a stronger understanding of the purpose and presentation of wedding registries I moved on to statistics. I wanted to understand the wedding cycle including the most popular months for weddings, how many months before the wedding a registry created, what is the average price of a registry etc. The last piece of research I did was a simple Google search on how small businesses promote their wedding registries. This search proved somewhat unfruitful so I decided to go with what I know and have learned in school.
Promotion plan: The next step I took was creation of a promotion plan. I used the research I conducted to produce a list of ideas that could be used to boost the number of registries at Greenhouse. The list was extremely comprehensive because I wanted to provide my supervisor with options. The ideas selected included flyer creation, website banner creation, partnership building with local bridal services, Wine Walk promotional booth and complimentary gift baskets.
Content Creation: The content creation application I used was Canva. Since I was dealing with a small local business they wanted me to utilize a free program to create content. The application is easy to use and took me only a few hours of exploration to get an understanding of how to work it. After I was able to use the program I created several drafts of the flyer and banner. I created three different color themes for each and utilized different layouts so my supervisor would have options. Once I showed my supervisor, she chose the color scheme and layout she preferred. I adjusted the edits to her liking and after a few back and forth edits we created the final flyer and banner.
Local Partnership: In order to spread the word about Greenhouse wedding registry I found it important to build a relationship with wedding services in the Bellingham area. I spent some time researching bridal salons, wedding venues and wedding planners. Ultimately, I ended up reaching out to 5 local businesses that I believed would be interested in collaboration. Two got back to me and wanted to partner with Greenhouse. One was a local bridal salon and the other was a wedding planner. The terms of the partnership included that Greenhouse would put the business cards of those establishments in their complimentary gift baskets. The bridal salon agreed to hang the Greenhouse wedding registry flyer in their store. The wedding planner agreed to include Greenhouse registry in her recommendations and portfolio.
Wine Walk Promotional Booth: Downtown Bellingham hosts a Wine Walk every May where attendees go from store to store shopping and tasting wine from local wineries. The event is quite large and tickets sell out every year. I thought it would be a perfect event to set up a promotional booth. Over a hundred people come in the store so the exposure for the wedding registry would be huge. I used the booth to display the gift baskets as well as the flyer and utilized it as an opportunity for people to ask questions and even sign up. Several attendees showed great interest and promised to keep us in mind when they got married. The biggest success was getting one person to sign up in.
Complimentary Gift Baskets: The idea behind the complimentary gift basket was the marketing theory that word free gets people in the door. Everyone loves a deal and getting things for free is a huge incentive. The gift baskets were offered to brides or grooms who sign up for Greenhouse’s wedding registry. My supervisor and I spent several hours curating and perfecting the gift baskets. We designed three each with different themes. One was a wine theme with a white color scheme. It contained a wine tumbler, wine glasses, napkins, portable flask and a wine theme apron. The second basket we created was yellow and morning theme. The basket included coffee mugs, a “tie the knot” towel, candle and a Swedish dish towel. The final gift basket was outdoor theme and turquoise. It contained beeswax wrap, tea lantern, bee dish towel, outdoor wine glasses and an outdoor wine flask.
Project Outcome
The wedding registry promotion turned out to be a huge success. My efforts increased the number people signed up for the wedding registry 300%. The goal had been to increase signups 400% however, I am still proud that I was able to increase the registry by a significant amount. One registry alone was over $6,000 which is a huge potential revenue for Greenhouse. Wedding registries have the potential to bring in a lot of money to a business so seeing my efforts pay off felt amazing. Another success was three brides signed up during the gift basket promotion I created. One posted her gift basket to her Instagram story with Greenhouse tagged in it. Positive word of mouth is huge especially for small business and it was great to see that at work.
Greenhouse Home: Services
PROJECT PLAN
Greenhouse Home: Welcome
Greenhouse Home: Portfolio
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