Passing the text with flying colors

In its inaugural year, The Burpee Garden Coach mobile text-messaging tool provided more than 67,000 user tips to home vegetable gardeners to help make their growing season a success.

Launched Jan. 1, 2011, by the award-winning Burpee Home Gardens program, The Burpee Garden Coach mobile tool sent custom tips to gardeners based on their planting date and plant choices. Nearly 75% of this year’s “trainees” stuck with their Coach throughout their entire 90-day season of messages received on their smartphones.

The Burpee Garden Coach reached gardeners across the United States via QR codes on tags and POP in stores, or by texting zip/postal codes to 80998. In reviewing this year’s statistics, data showed heavy concentrations of Burpee Garden Coach users in Texas, the Midwest and Northeast regions. Stats also recorded the top areas of interest from trainees: “Garden Bed Preparation,” “Watering,” and “Pest Control.”

Roughly half of the Burpee Garden Coach users chose to populate the “My Garden” portion of the mobile web tool. This online gardening journal tracks the progress of the plants they purchased, and expanded the advice of the Garden Coach to specific topics and varieties. And while tomatoes are the No. 1 home harvest item, the top “My Garden” entries this year also included Cilantro, Sweet Italian Large Leaf Basil, and the new RSVPea.

“We’re thrilled with the results we’ve seen for The Burpee Garden Coach this gardening season, and we look forward to expanding our mobile connection with home gardeners next year,” said Carolyn Dixon, National Sales Manager for Burpee Home Gardens. “Providing customized consumer interaction and all the resources for a successful garden helps build confidence and ultimately repeat gardening customers.”

To learn more about the award-winning Burpee Home Gardens program, visit here. To meet The Burpee Garden Coach, watch the video here.