Home & Lifestyle
·
Mid-market
How Great Garden Plants launched their first loyalty program in days and turned peak season into their best retention quarter
50%
higher CLV, members vs non-members
50%
higher CLV, members vs non-members
50%
higher CLV, members vs non-members
50%
higher CLV, members vs non-members
36%
higher purchase frequency, members vs non-members
36%
higher purchase frequency, members vs non-members
36%
higher purchase frequency, members vs non-members
36%
higher purchase frequency, members vs non-members
1,411%
higher Gold VIP annual spend vs base tier
1,411%
higher Gold VIP annual spend vs base tier
1,411%
higher Gold VIP annual spend vs base tier
Your team took initiative on parts of the setup we would not have had the developer resources to handle ourselves. Even when there wasn't an immediate solution, you communicated that you were working on it. That is not always the norm for a third-party app, and I genuinely appreciated it.
Tori VanTimmeren
Great Garden Plants
Your team took initiative on parts of the setup we would not have had the developer resources to handle ourselves. Even when there wasn't an immediate solution, you communicated that you were working on it. That is not always the norm for a third-party app, and I genuinely appreciated it.
Tori VanTimmeren
Great Garden Plants
Great Garden Plants is an online nursery selling 1,000+ plant varieties
Industry
Home & Lifestyle
Platfrom
Shopify Plus
Merchant Size
Mid-market
Smile Features
Points
VIP Tiers
Integrations
Loyalty Hub
Checkout Extension
Analytics
Region
North America
The Story
Fivefold growth and 40% of orders from returning customers
Great Garden Plants is a direct-to-consumer online nursery shipping over 1,000 varieties of perennials, shrubs, trees, roses, hydrangeas, ground covers, and hedge plants to gardeners across the United States. Founded in 2008 by Mary Walters and acquired by Jeremy Deppe in 2019, the company has grown its West Michigan greenhouse operation roughly fivefold on Shopify Plus and built one of the most loyal customer bases in the category.
Operating across multiple greenhouses, the business spans the full range of e-commerce horticulture: a flagship storefront at greatgardenplants.com plus category sites at hydrangea.com and butterflybushes.com, a TapCart mobile app, and an in-house team that grows, ships, and supports the product end to end. Roughly 40% of orders come from repeat customers, and the brand's reputation has been built season after season on quality, consistency, and a genuinely personal relationship with the home gardeners it serves.
The Challenge
A lean team, an older customer base, and a peak season deadline
Great Garden Plants had evaluated loyalty platforms in prior years but had never found the right combination of ease and sophistication. The business operates with a lean team and no in-house engineering capacity dedicated to merchandising tools, and a meaningful share of their customer base skews older and less comfortable navigating new digital experiences. Any program they launched needed to be effectively zero-friction on both sides of the storefront.
The team needed a platform that could be configured without developer support, a customer-facing experience polished enough that a non-technical shopper would never need to think about it, and the operational confidence to launch into the busiest weeks of the year without disrupting the storefront.
Great Garden Plants' loyalty hub
The Solution
Live in five days, no engineering required
Great Garden Plants selected Smile.io and launched the program on March 16, 2026, just five days before the first day of spring and the start of their peak season. Setup ran on Smile's standard configuration tooling: no custom development, no engineering tickets, no theme work. The Smile team took the initiative to handle integration tasks that the in-house team did not have the capacity to handle, and their lifecycle marketing plugged directly into Smile's pre-built Klaviyo Flows. A few branding adjustments, and the loyalty emails were ready to go.
On the customer side, the Smile Loyalty Hub surfaces points, rewards, and tiers inside the Shopify customer account with a single click, replacing the multi-step navigation common to legacy loyalty tools. Rather than launch every feature at once, the team established a deliberate foundation: a points program with VIP tiers calibrated to reward high-volume gardeners without making the top tier feel out of reach. Referrals, TapCart app-exclusive bonus points, and a seasonal points strategy for the slower fall and winter months are planned for the off-season, when the team has room to build on top of what is already working.
Great Garden Plants' checkout with checkout extension enabled
The Klaviyo integration is where the program quietly compounds. Loyalty members are now the most engaged segment across every measure that matters: the highest open rates, the highest purchase frequency, and the segment most likely to reply directly to lifecycle email. Connecting the two systems consolidated two parallel programs into a single retention strategy, with live point balances and reward reminders showing up where customers already pay attention.
What changed after standing up Smile heading into spring:
Rapid time-to-value: program configured and live in days, with no engineering lift and no storefront disruption ahead of peak
Native Klaviyo integration: pre-built flows branded and shipped without a heavy lift from the lifecycle team
Intuitive customer experience: the Smile Loyalty Hub puts points, tiers, and redemption one click from the customer account
Zero support burden: not a single inbound ticket about the loyalty program from a customer base that skews less technical
Sequenced roadmap: referrals, TapCart app-exclusive points, and a seasonal points strategy staged for the off-season
The Results
Members spend 57% more and buy 36% more often in their first peak season
Smile is delivering a 64x return on Great Garden Plants' loyalty investment, with 52% of the active customer base enrolled inside the program's first peak season. Members are materially more valuable than non-members across every benchmark that matters to a repeat-purchase business.
Members deliver 50% higher lifetime value, spend 57% more per year ($191 average vs non-members), and purchase 36% more often. The VIP structure compounds the effect: Gold tier customers spend 1,411% more than the base tier, and Silver customers spend 581% more. Among customers who actively redeem points, annual spend and frequency climb higher again.
Beyond the dashboard, the program has changed how the team experiences peak season. The customer service inbox has been at full volume for every reason except loyalty: not a single ticket has come in about the program itself, a notable outcome for a customer base that skews less technical. Tori recently used the points system to recognize a longtime customer who had written in about how much she loved the plants, granting a discretionary 500-point bonus on the spot. The program runs reliably in the background while the team focuses on product, brand, and the next season.
52%
of the customer base enrolled within first peak season
57%
higher annual spend, members vs non-members ($191 average)
52%
of the customer base enrolled within first peak season
57%
higher annual spend, members vs non-members ($191 average)
Why Smile.io
What a launch looks like when the platform does the heavy lifting
Great Garden Plants' program shows what a loyalty launch looks like when the platform does the heavy lifting. The team went live in the highest-stakes window on their calendar without engineering support, without a custom build, and without a single customer complaint about the new experience. Smile delivered the polish customers expect, the operational reliability the business required, and the analytics and segmentation depth required to scale from foundation to mature program over the seasons ahead.
Smile.io powers loyalty for over 100,000 commerce brands worldwide, including leading Shopify Plus and Enterprise operators. The platform is engineered for scale, with the integrations, segmentation, and analytics required to compound revenue program-over-program.
Great Garden Plants is an online nursery selling 1,000+ plant varieties
Industry
Home & Lifestyle
Platfrom
Shopify Plus
Merchant Size
Mid-market
Smile Features
Points
VIP Tiers
Integrations
Loyalty Hub
Checkout Extension
Analytics
Region
North America
The Story
Fivefold growth and 40% of orders from returning customers
Great Garden Plants is a direct-to-consumer online nursery shipping over 1,000 varieties of perennials, shrubs, trees, roses, hydrangeas, ground covers, and hedge plants to gardeners across the United States. Founded in 2008 by Mary Walters and acquired by Jeremy Deppe in 2019, the company has grown its West Michigan greenhouse operation roughly fivefold on Shopify Plus and built one of the most loyal customer bases in the category.
Operating across multiple greenhouses, the business spans the full range of e-commerce horticulture: a flagship storefront at greatgardenplants.com plus category sites at hydrangea.com and butterflybushes.com, a TapCart mobile app, and an in-house team that grows, ships, and supports the product end to end. Roughly 40% of orders come from repeat customers, and the brand's reputation has been built season after season on quality, consistency, and a genuinely personal relationship with the home gardeners it serves.
The Challenge
A lean team, an older customer base, and a peak season deadline
Great Garden Plants had evaluated loyalty platforms in prior years but had never found the right combination of ease and sophistication. The business operates with a lean team and no in-house engineering capacity dedicated to merchandising tools, and a meaningful share of their customer base skews older and less comfortable navigating new digital experiences. Any program they launched needed to be effectively zero-friction on both sides of the storefront.
The team needed a platform that could be configured without developer support, a customer-facing experience polished enough that a non-technical shopper would never need to think about it, and the operational confidence to launch into the busiest weeks of the year without disrupting the storefront.
Great Garden Plants' loyalty hub
The Solution
Live in five days, no engineering required
Great Garden Plants selected Smile.io and launched the program on March 16, 2026, just five days before the first day of spring and the start of their peak season. Setup ran on Smile's standard configuration tooling: no custom development, no engineering tickets, no theme work. The Smile team took the initiative to handle integration tasks that the in-house team did not have the capacity to handle, and their lifecycle marketing plugged directly into Smile's pre-built Klaviyo Flows. A few branding adjustments, and the loyalty emails were ready to go.
On the customer side, the Smile Loyalty Hub surfaces points, rewards, and tiers inside the Shopify customer account with a single click, replacing the multi-step navigation common to legacy loyalty tools. Rather than launch every feature at once, the team established a deliberate foundation: a points program with VIP tiers calibrated to reward high-volume gardeners without making the top tier feel out of reach. Referrals, TapCart app-exclusive bonus points, and a seasonal points strategy for the slower fall and winter months are planned for the off-season, when the team has room to build on top of what is already working.
Great Garden Plants' checkout with checkout extension enabled
The Klaviyo integration is where the program quietly compounds. Loyalty members are now the most engaged segment across every measure that matters: the highest open rates, the highest purchase frequency, and the segment most likely to reply directly to lifecycle email. Connecting the two systems consolidated two parallel programs into a single retention strategy, with live point balances and reward reminders showing up where customers already pay attention.
What changed after standing up Smile heading into spring:
Rapid time-to-value: program configured and live in days, with no engineering lift and no storefront disruption ahead of peak
Native Klaviyo integration: pre-built flows branded and shipped without a heavy lift from the lifecycle team
Intuitive customer experience: the Smile Loyalty Hub puts points, tiers, and redemption one click from the customer account
Zero support burden: not a single inbound ticket about the loyalty program from a customer base that skews less technical
Sequenced roadmap: referrals, TapCart app-exclusive points, and a seasonal points strategy staged for the off-season
The Results
Members spend 57% more and buy 36% more often in their first peak season
Smile is delivering a 64x return on Great Garden Plants' loyalty investment, with 52% of the active customer base enrolled inside the program's first peak season. Members are materially more valuable than non-members across every benchmark that matters to a repeat-purchase business.
Members deliver 50% higher lifetime value, spend 57% more per year ($191 average vs non-members), and purchase 36% more often. The VIP structure compounds the effect: Gold tier customers spend 1,411% more than the base tier, and Silver customers spend 581% more. Among customers who actively redeem points, annual spend and frequency climb higher again.
Beyond the dashboard, the program has changed how the team experiences peak season. The customer service inbox has been at full volume for every reason except loyalty: not a single ticket has come in about the program itself, a notable outcome for a customer base that skews less technical. Tori recently used the points system to recognize a longtime customer who had written in about how much she loved the plants, granting a discretionary 500-point bonus on the spot. The program runs reliably in the background while the team focuses on product, brand, and the next season.
52%
of the customer base enrolled within first peak season
57%
higher annual spend, members vs non-members ($191 average)
Why Smile.io
What a launch looks like when the platform does the heavy lifting
Great Garden Plants' program shows what a loyalty launch looks like when the platform does the heavy lifting. The team went live in the highest-stakes window on their calendar without engineering support, without a custom build, and without a single customer complaint about the new experience. Smile delivered the polish customers expect, the operational reliability the business required, and the analytics and segmentation depth required to scale from foundation to mature program over the seasons ahead.
Smile.io powers loyalty for over 100,000 commerce brands worldwide, including leading Shopify Plus and Enterprise operators. The platform is engineered for scale, with the integrations, segmentation, and analytics required to compound revenue program-over-program.
Great Garden Plants is an online nursery selling 1,000+ plant varieties
Industry
Home & Lifestyle
Merchant Size
Mid-market
Region
North America
Platfrom
Shopify Plus
Smile Features
Points
VIP Tiers
Integrations
Loyalty Hub
Checkout Extension
Analytics
The Story
Fivefold growth and 40% of orders from returning customers
Great Garden Plants is a direct-to-consumer online nursery shipping over 1,000 varieties of perennials, shrubs, trees, roses, hydrangeas, ground covers, and hedge plants to gardeners across the United States. Founded in 2008 by Mary Walters and acquired by Jeremy Deppe in 2019, the company has grown its West Michigan greenhouse operation roughly fivefold on Shopify Plus and built one of the most loyal customer bases in the category.
Operating across multiple greenhouses, the business spans the full range of e-commerce horticulture: a flagship storefront at greatgardenplants.com plus category sites at hydrangea.com and butterflybushes.com, a TapCart mobile app, and an in-house team that grows, ships, and supports the product end to end. Roughly 40% of orders come from repeat customers, and the brand's reputation has been built season after season on quality, consistency, and a genuinely personal relationship with the home gardeners it serves.
The Challenge
A lean team, an older customer base, and a peak season deadline
Great Garden Plants had evaluated loyalty platforms in prior years but had never found the right combination of ease and sophistication. The business operates with a lean team and no in-house engineering capacity dedicated to merchandising tools, and a meaningful share of their customer base skews older and less comfortable navigating new digital experiences. Any program they launched needed to be effectively zero-friction on both sides of the storefront.
The team needed a platform that could be configured without developer support, a customer-facing experience polished enough that a non-technical shopper would never need to think about it, and the operational confidence to launch into the busiest weeks of the year without disrupting the storefront.
Great Garden Plants' loyalty hub
The Solution
Live in five days, no engineering required
Great Garden Plants selected Smile.io and launched the program on March 16, 2026, just five days before the first day of spring and the start of their peak season. Setup ran on Smile's standard configuration tooling: no custom development, no engineering tickets, no theme work. The Smile team took the initiative to handle integration tasks that the in-house team did not have the capacity to handle, and their lifecycle marketing plugged directly into Smile's pre-built Klaviyo Flows. A few branding adjustments, and the loyalty emails were ready to go.
On the customer side, the Smile Loyalty Hub surfaces points, rewards, and tiers inside the Shopify customer account with a single click, replacing the multi-step navigation common to legacy loyalty tools. Rather than launch every feature at once, the team established a deliberate foundation: a points program with VIP tiers calibrated to reward high-volume gardeners without making the top tier feel out of reach. Referrals, TapCart app-exclusive bonus points, and a seasonal points strategy for the slower fall and winter months are planned for the off-season, when the team has room to build on top of what is already working.
Great Garden Plants' checkout with checkout extension enabled
The Klaviyo integration is where the program quietly compounds. Loyalty members are now the most engaged segment across every measure that matters: the highest open rates, the highest purchase frequency, and the segment most likely to reply directly to lifecycle email. Connecting the two systems consolidated two parallel programs into a single retention strategy, with live point balances and reward reminders showing up where customers already pay attention.
What changed after standing up Smile heading into spring:
Rapid time-to-value: program configured and live in days, with no engineering lift and no storefront disruption ahead of peak
Native Klaviyo integration: pre-built flows branded and shipped without a heavy lift from the lifecycle team
Intuitive customer experience: the Smile Loyalty Hub puts points, tiers, and redemption one click from the customer account
Zero support burden: not a single inbound ticket about the loyalty program from a customer base that skews less technical
Sequenced roadmap: referrals, TapCart app-exclusive points, and a seasonal points strategy staged for the off-season
The Results
Members spend 57% more and buy 36% more often in their first peak season
Smile is delivering a 64x return on Great Garden Plants' loyalty investment, with 52% of the active customer base enrolled inside the program's first peak season. Members are materially more valuable than non-members across every benchmark that matters to a repeat-purchase business.
Members deliver 50% higher lifetime value, spend 57% more per year ($191 average vs non-members), and purchase 36% more often. The VIP structure compounds the effect: Gold tier customers spend 1,411% more than the base tier, and Silver customers spend 581% more. Among customers who actively redeem points, annual spend and frequency climb higher again.
Beyond the dashboard, the program has changed how the team experiences peak season. The customer service inbox has been at full volume for every reason except loyalty: not a single ticket has come in about the program itself, a notable outcome for a customer base that skews less technical. Tori recently used the points system to recognize a longtime customer who had written in about how much she loved the plants, granting a discretionary 500-point bonus on the spot. The program runs reliably in the background while the team focuses on product, brand, and the next season.
52%
of the customer base enrolled within first peak season
57%
higher annual spend, members vs non-members ($191 average)
Why Smile.io
What a launch looks like when the platform does the heavy lifting
Great Garden Plants' program shows what a loyalty launch looks like when the platform does the heavy lifting. The team went live in the highest-stakes window on their calendar without engineering support, without a custom build, and without a single customer complaint about the new experience. Smile delivered the polish customers expect, the operational reliability the business required, and the analytics and segmentation depth required to scale from foundation to mature program over the seasons ahead.
Smile.io powers loyalty for over 100,000 commerce brands worldwide, including leading Shopify Plus and Enterprise operators. The platform is engineered for scale, with the integrations, segmentation, and analytics required to compound revenue program-over-program.
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