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Thought you might find this interesting. When you have a baby, various stores encourage you to sign up for monthly emails. Because the store knows the date of
by harrybr 16y ago
Thought you might find this interesting.
When you have a baby, various stores encourage you to sign up for monthly emails. Because the store knows the date of birth, they can send accurate developmental updates. e.g. "Your baby is X months old. You may notice she is starting to pay more attention to the world and is able to hold up her own head..." (etc).
This is fascinating for the parent due to the timeliness of the message. It is also a great sales opportunity, as lower down the message it suggests things the user might want to buy.
You could do the exact same thing. Don't just send a message saying "plant your seeds now" but send (opt in) periodical follow up emails that explain how the garden should be doing, common gotchas, and so on.
If you ever add any social aspects to the site, it might make sense to expose the 'age' of the user's garden. People at a similar stage of growth have something in common and may want to interact with each other.
Good luck with it!
- failquicker 16y agoI am not the OP, but that is an amazing idea. I remember those baby emails, and can just imagine screenshots of baby kale and turnips. Op, you really should do this. It would be amazing.
- harrybr 16y agoI guess one limitation is that gardens probably mature at slightly different rates (e.g. if you have a mild cold spell, development goes on 'hold' for a bit, which might put you out of sync). I guess Eric would have to interview some expert gardeners to ascertain the scope of the issue.
- hugothefrog 16y agoPresumably, to a first approximation, you could track the weather at your customers' location, and know what is going on with their plants. This would allow you to tailor your emails - and your product suggestions - over time.
- vessenes 16y agoGardeners are ferocious, ferocious competitors. They are compelled to post pictures of their plants. Believe me; squeezing as much out of your plot as you can can become an obsession. All that to say, bragging / help requests are going to be strong motivations for gardeners in the US, and I'm sure they'll be posting information if the OP wants to make a community out of the site.
- ramses0 16y ago...and boom goes the crowd-sourcing. Let everybody who is growing turnips send in turnip pictures, pick the best/representative few and promote those as exemplar turnips. That way you don't have to source "real" pictures of everything in every stage of the growing cycle, you just eventually get it all for free.
- jokermatt999 16y agoIf done right, you could also start a nice strong community, which would certainly help. I can imagine different users competing for the "best turnip of the month" spot. Love your users, and they will love you back.
- erikpukinskis 16y agoYeah, that's definitely where I'd like to head. It's a little more complicated because it's more like having 12 babies of 12 different species that were born at 12 different times, but yeah. On it. :)
- jmtulloss 16y agoLots of time sensitive information from multiple sources? Time for a feed!
- kixxauth 16y agoFantastic idea. I remember having a baby put my wife and I on a bunch of mailing lists. However, some of the niche targeting they used worked very well. For instance, my wife now subscribes to the parenting mags which were sent to her for free. A news letter seems like it would be spot on here, but I would take advantage of the two way internet and allow comments and reviews too.