It’s fall and you know what that means. Yes, school is starting … but it’s also Salary & Benefits Survey time! Now available for you to fill out and benefit from is the GrowerTalks/Green Profit and AmericanHort Salary & Benefits Survey, in partnership with Industry Insights, who’ll be crunching the data for us.

We’re partnering with AmericanHort again on this decades-old survey to help us provide you a high-level and more useful tool. Companies like yours that take the survey can better understand salary and benefit trends, and see how their businesses compare to other survey participants. The survey includes company demographics, staffing and benefits and salary data on up to 34 different job titles across full-time, part-time and seasonal employees.

But in order for us to provide the best data to you, we need you to participate!

And you don’t have to be an AmericanHort member to benefit. All survey respondents will get the full report prepared by Industry Insights. Company size doesn’t matter, either—anyone and everyone can participate! Also, if you’ve participated in taking the survey in previous years, some data will automatically be populated for you, saving you time. Convenience is key for making this survey work for everyone.

And, of course, key parts of the data will be published in the December issue of GrowerTalks and the January issue of Green Profit.

GO HERE to fill out the survey, which by the way is confidentially collected and maintained by Industry Insights’ professional data team and securely stored. Privacy is key, too!

On the topic of AmericanHort, they are hosting a webinar on Wednesday, September 24, that will enlighten you on the importance of advocacy in the horticulture industry. “Connecting Your Career to Capitol Hill” will feature panelists who are fresh from AmericanHort’s Impact Washington Fly-In Summit and will share their experiences of meeting with lawmakers, building relationships and championing the needs of the entire green industry.

There’s a lot going on in D.C., and what happens there impacts your business. Advocacy is critical. This webinar will help you understand the importance of advocacy, how policies impact your work and your business, and how young hort professionals can get involved. You do have a voice for the industry and these panelists will give you the confidence to find and use it for your hort career.

The “Connecting Your Career to Capitol Hill” webinar takes place at 12:30-1:30 p.m. Eastern on September 24. Learn more about it and register HERE.

Also, if you missed the State of the Industry presentation during Cultivate’25, you have another chance to listen to the speakers on the key challenges and opportunities facing our industry—the market climate, political landscape, the economy, labor and policy issues. You’ll hear from AmericanHort CEO Ken Fisher, VP of Advocacy and Government Affairs Matt Mika and AmericanHort’s Chief Economist Charlie Hall—all of whom are at the top of their game in their respective specialties. Access the State of the Industry HERE.

The following item is from my awesome colleague Jen Polanz—thank you, JP!

SMS, or text, marketing helps keep retailers in front of customers. The founder and CEO of TapOnIt, Katie Castillo-Wilson, recently held a fireside chat with Kate Terrell, owner of Wallace’s Garden Center, and Bobby Lewis, vice president at Meadows Farms Nursery & Landscaping to talk about how text marketing has helped them communicate directly with customers.

I sat in on the call, and there were some really interesting nuggets of information that came out of it. Both Kate and Bobby offer welcome offers to customers who sign up for the text service, and Bobby said they can glean a lot of information from those initial sign-ups, like their average spend versus the company’s average. Customers who redeem the text welcome offer, he said, have an average sale of $151, which is considerably higher than their typical average.

As an example of using text for promtions, Kate alternates offers with one week focused on houseplants and the next week focused on pottery, driving engagement and traffic into the store. She also has a way for customers to share so if the person they send the text to signs up, the original person also gets a bonus offer.

Kate noted she wanted to move a good portion of her marketing to text, so she offered great deals for the welcome offer, and gave her best deals and made first announcements through text, encouraging customers to jump on board.

They talked about a whole lot more, too, like text frequency and contests; If you’d like to see the full fireside chat, CLICK HERE!

A new study by YouGov has found that younger consumers are not as “forever online” as you’d think—especially when it comes to shopping. YouGov found that Gen Zers prefer a balance of shopping online and in store.

The study’s key takeaways are:

• 50% of Gen Z discover new products through personal recommendations and in-store browsing.
• 35% of Gen Z discover products through influencers or bloggers, nearly twice the rate of older adults, and 64% use social media to research products.
• 33% of Gen Z use forums to learn about products, compared to 21% of non-Gen Z shoppers.
• 31% of Gen Z choose email as their preferred customer service channel, but as the study mentioned, they are “also more likely than older consumers to use social media, forms or avoid contact altogether.”
• 29% of Gen Z discover an item online but purchase it in-store, while 21% do the reverse.

In other words, having your marketing messages in every channel is the optimal way to connect with your younger customers.

A Think With Google piece discussed a Kantar study that found Gen Z is more of a video-first demographic. According to THIS ARTICLE, the Kantar study shows that video “increasingly informs, influences and educates consumers.” The study found that 70% of U.S. viewers would rather watch a video to learn how to build something than read text or listen to audio about it, and 63% would rather watch a video to learn how to cook something.

The piece also indicates that U.S. video viewers find YouTube to be the preferred video platform (big surprise there) with the best shopping-related content, instructional videos, unboxing videos and product reviews. This same article cites a different study that found that “YouTube’s influence cuts down the average online U.S. video shopper’s journey by six days.”

Like I said, you’ve got to be in every channel.

When a garden center’s email newsletter strikes me as interesting or informative or “hey, that’s new!”, I tell you about it. And it looks like I have inspired others out there to do the same. Friend and colleague Katie Elzer-Peters was recently inspired enough by the e-newsletter from the folks at Piedmont Feed and Garden Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to forward it to me so I can share it with all of you.

‘I thought this was a good email for preorder,” Katie wrote to me. “’YOU get to preorder before everyone!’”

The “this deal is just for you!” message makes you feel like part of a special group, doesn’t it? And it makes the deal seem rare, encouraging the recipient to act on the message. And as a bonus, I really like the cartoon rendering of what I presume is Jake Scott. Make a note—commission someone to create a cartoon rendition of yourself. Could be fun!

Back to the “this is just for YOU!” message. Just a day or two after Katie sent me this Piedmont newsletter, I received an email from the folks at Fulton, an insole company from which I recently made a purchase. Same sort of message: Here’s an exclusive link for your own 20% off deal, and it’s our last sale of the year so you better hurry.

Urgency and personalization—are you including these vibes in your customer communications? And is it working? Drop me a note about it HERE.

Kudos to the folks at Lowe’s Greenhouse in Chagrin Fall, Ohio, for including this in one of their recent newsletters:

Teachers deserve a TON of thanks and appreciation. And at Lowe’s they can come in to receive a free 7.5 in. annual! And a fresh annual, at that—mums, ornamental cabbage, etc. “This is our small way of saying thank you for everything you do,” the message says. Teachers deserve our support and respect for educating and protecting this nation’s children. I encourage you all to support them as schools open this fall.