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How To Secure Sales Before the Busy Season
184 Plays4 years ago
In this episode of the Direct Farm Podcast, Miranda from Barn2Door and Joe Schirmer of Dirty Girl Produce will discuss tactics that he has used successfully to secure sales before the busy season.
This episode is the audio version of a webinar made in partnership with ACRES USA.
You can watch the webinar here at:
https://www.barn2door.com/webinars/farm-innovator-series-secure-sales-before-the-busy-season
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Direct Farm Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Direct Farm podcast, the weekly listen for farm selling direct. We'll talk about the four levers for farm success, which are quality, brand, price, and convenience. We'll hear from outside industry experts and producers like you to delight your customers, save time, and to increase your direct farm sales and business. We're glad you're here.
Farm Innovator Series & Partner Introduction
00:00:27
Speaker
Before we get started with the podcast, this is an audio version of a webinar that Miranda and Joe has put together in partnership with Acres USA called the Farm Innovator Series. If you'd prefer to watch this in video format, go over to barnetador.com slash resources.
00:00:43
Speaker
Welcome everyone.
Joe Shermer's Background & Dirty Girl Produce Overview
00:00:44
Speaker
My name is Miranda and I am one of the success managers here at Barn to Door and excited to have this presentation today, um, with one of the farmers that we work with, Joe from Dirty Girl Produce out in California. We are going to go over how to secure sales before the busy season. So, um, just really excited to guide you guys through what Joe does and how he has seen success, especially when it comes to his subscriptions.
00:01:11
Speaker
And then really talking about, you know, his customers and how he reaches out to them to secure those sales. So, Joe, thank you so much for joining us today. Excited to learn from you. Would love to kind of maybe start off with, go ahead, introduce yourself and let's talk about the history of Dirty Girl Produce. You know, where is it located? How did you guys get started and all of those good things? Cool. Thanks for reading.
00:01:36
Speaker
Yeah, my name is Joe Shermer. I own and operate Dirty Girl Produce here in Santa Cruz County. We started in Santa Cruz city and now we're in Watsonville. We have four leases out there. We're farming 40 acres, all organic. And we have been farming since 95. I've been farming it since 97.
00:01:56
Speaker
So it's a long time. I just turned 50 and I'm just getting these black backs of decades. It's been crazy. And so we do, you know, I would try to figure out how many things we grow. We probably grow anywhere 60 to 80 because of all the varieties, you know, I think we grow 40 things, but you know, the list is different because, you know, different sizes, different maturities. I think we have six different stages that we harvest cilantro in, which is crazy.
00:02:21
Speaker
And so yeah, we do all this kind of fun rope drop market stuff from strawberries and tomatoes to all the lettuce, broccolis, all the kind of stuff. Get a lot of receipt from Joni's. Awesome. Joe, that sounds wonderful. You just have a great variety of different products for your customers. What kind of maybe got you into farming?
Joe's Journey into Farming & Crop Evolution
00:02:38
Speaker
Well, I think I started farming when I was in college because I was.
00:02:44
Speaker
trying to figure out how to save the world. And I could just stumble on the farming. I went to three different colleges, San Diego State, business administration. I was kind of like, not feeling it. And I went to community college and started meeting interesting people. And they're doing all kinds of weird stuff in the world. Very environmentally conscious. I was studying all about environmentalism and stuff like that. And then I got into farming. I just kind of stumbled in. And then when I started with an internship and then I just never laughed once I started
00:03:13
Speaker
the growing stuff and running gardens, farms and meeting all the people and going to all the places, the different farms. I think that's a huge draw for me. Also food, you know, I love healthy food, but good food. And so, you know, that's been to grow. I've been running it since I think seven or 99 something like that. We just really evolved what we grow, what we do based on what people want, what we can sell, what we can grow reasonably. And that's not.
00:03:40
Speaker
costly, we don't own any of our land and release everything. We'd love to one day do that, but man, that's been a 30 year dream that hasn't been supposed to happen. We, you know, sold at probably 20 different farmers' markets over the years and we're down to these key five and we have a ton of restaurant accounts in San Francisco and Berkeley, Oakland and
Community Demand & Subscription Systems
00:04:04
Speaker
San Cruz. So we have a crazy food region people are really into.
00:04:09
Speaker
But in a very tight community, a lot of young people moving to the area to work in kitchens, kind of earn their chops in the kitchen with some of these shops that are amazing. So I get to be part of that and supply a lot of really interesting artisanal shops with produce.
00:04:28
Speaker
Fantastic. What are some of the products that you are selling? You know, I know you have a great like farm box subscription. You have, you know, specialty produce with your strawberries and tomatoes. Tell us a little bit more about those.
00:04:41
Speaker
We have about 40 different things we sell that probably doubled to, you know, 80 once we get the different varieties and maturities and sizes and colors and things like that. And so we do a lot of straight retail, like farmer's market stuff. We do a lot of wholesale selling stores. And then we also now do a farm box, which is pretty much like a CSA box, but you don't want to have to sign up for the season. You can sign up for 10 or 20 weeks. You can buy a box, you can do whatever.
00:05:07
Speaker
And we break it down, have what's called a farm box, regular farm box, smaller farm box, small farm box. We have a salad box, which is just sometimes you just want, you know, lettuce salad.
00:05:19
Speaker
And then, so we get people to sign up for that at varying times because we'll have that all year round. But then during tomato and strawberry season, we have a subscription, you know, you get a discount for signing up for a six and 10 week subscription on strawberries and tomatoes. So it's nice because we can really kind of pump up our farm box program as well when we have tomatoes and strawberries. So.
00:05:45
Speaker
When that happens, we can kind of really start kind of pumping up through Mailchimp and trying to get people in and kind of pre-order.
00:05:55
Speaker
Awesome. Uh, well that leads into perfect the topic today of subscriptions and how they have made such a huge difference for your farm business this past year. And a lot of people don't realize everyone is subscribed to something or a couple things, whether it's Netflix or Spotify for music, or, you know, your monthly vitamins, what have you. And we're seeing now a lot of people subscribing to their local farmers, whether that's a monthly meat box or a weekly produce box, what have you.
00:06:24
Speaker
So really excited to talk about how, you know, the types of subscriptions that you have to offer and how they've made a difference for your farm business. Yeah. Well, it's, it's huge because for us, you can get people to buy stuff in advance, you know, you can pay 10 and 20 weeks, they'll get a discount if they pay upfront. And when you get that payment of a 20 week farm box, that's a big chunk of change. And so just like CSA is trying to.
00:06:51
Speaker
rally people into their, you know, seasonal CSA subscription. That's what we do as well. And so, you know, we have a lot of people that buy a bar box, like every week and individual box, and then they buy it again and they buy it again and buy it again and buy it again. But for many people, especially when we were first really starting this stuff in the pandemic, when it was locked down, people would forget, you know, they need.
00:07:18
Speaker
to sign up and they wanted, they make sense to do it weekly. You know, every week you're going to get a, get fresh produce and then it, you know, put it in the fridge and you last it and they could last all week or you, some people heat it up. Some people need a smaller one or a bigger one or more or less. So it's really convenient for people to, you know, that they don't have to think as much.
00:07:37
Speaker
When they sign up for 20 weeks, cause that's a pretty long time. Some people sign up for biweekly 20 week, which is this almost a year, it's 40 weeks, you know, how they, they only eat one box in two weeks, but cause we eat so much produce in our house, you know, but yeah, it's just really convenient for the customers and it's great for us. It gives people incentive to give us some money upfront, which we need, you know, especially go coming into, you know,
00:08:04
Speaker
winter here and we're going to come into spring and you know, we always take out a big credit line from the bank and invest in the fields. And then we get that return by, you know, mid-October in November. It's so nice to have this farm box program working alongside that because now a good chunk of change coming in the spring when people sign up for a 10 and a 20 week subscription.
00:08:28
Speaker
And also when they buy, you're paying for it when you buy it, even though it's maybe in a few days or maybe it's next week that you're buying. So it's nice of, you know, a lot of these boxes are basically paid for before we pick the produce. So it's kind of nice because a lot of times as a form, you can get stuck with accounts receivables of, you know, tens of thousands of dollars or whatever. I know we always would. So instead of having to wait 30 days to start going after some of the people there, you know, they pay up front.
00:08:56
Speaker
So, and that's just our farm box, farm box and retail side. Now our wholesale side is, I think has been almost revolutionized for us because we used to be so scattered in receiving all of our orders from restaurants, the text message, email, phone call, word of mouth. So when read something on a piece of paper and hands it to you at a market and I'll take that on Tuesday.
00:09:26
Speaker
And both to be able to manage all that and then write them a receipt and QuickBooks, which I'm still doing, you know, and then you have to track all those. I remember years ago when I was first starting, I would just sign things, give people a piece of paper and then I'd put invoice. If people paid, I'd find the piece of paper that matches, insert it, you know, I'd go through a lot of pieces of paper, you know, these invoices, call on the invoice. Some of them would be months old, right? Yeah. And so much time that you don't have.
00:09:56
Speaker
Crazy. And so it's so nice to be able to spend my time working on our store and having a good accurate inventory so that when people go online, they can see everything that's for sale and they can order it. And then when they send in the order, they pay for it right there. And then we get it. And then we go pick up for them and send it, which is really for small farms. I think what we should be doing
Efficient Operations & Financial Strategies
00:10:20
Speaker
is we should be getting paid more in advance.
00:10:23
Speaker
You know, there are some instances where it's more appropriate to give them 30 days or whatever, but I think for the most part, the more we can get paid in advance, the better, whether that's going to be a big subscription, that's 10 or 20 weeks for the year for a CSA, or, you know, even just paid a couple of days before wholesale.
00:10:43
Speaker
You're spot on. And that's the great thing too, with what you're offering with your subscriptions is not only do people have the choice to pay upfront, which like you had said is a huge benefit for you and other farmers to, you know, be able to take that cashflow and work on things, whether it's buying new equipment for the farm or getting the fields ready, what have you, but also too, with subscriptions being able to offer on a recurring basis too, because that can even reach a whole other audience where
00:11:12
Speaker
Some people might not be able to give up or put $700 forward right off the bat, but they could definitely afford maybe $35 on a, on a weekly basis. Do you see kind of your customers choosing one or the other more? Yeah. I think it's a real mix. You know, we, I'm not sure, you know, if it's 50 50, but you know, some people would prefer to just set it up so that their card it's either card or bank, right? Gets urged weekly.
00:11:41
Speaker
So you're only paying one than another. And some people want to put up, you know, 800 bucks. And that's great because they do get a little discount if you pay up front, you know, we offer a little discount, which is incentive to get that big check. Some people that's kind of too much and some people it's not. And it's funny how getting into this and working with barn to door, one of the things that we did early on was charge a small delivery fee. Now I never used to charge delivery fees.
00:12:10
Speaker
And what would happen would be I'd always leverage like a day, how busy is the delivery day? And, you know, what are, what are we offering? How much does it cost us to operate a delivery from Santa Cruz driving all the way to San Francisco or the East Bay in the big loop? It's, you know, it's a lot of gas. It's a lot of hours for whoever's driving.
00:12:30
Speaker
And then we just put a $7 delivery fee on, which isn't too much and it's not too little. And it really feels like it kind of offsets it. So on our home delivery, it's seven bucks for your box. So people, you know, pay $7 to get it delivered, or you don't get a delivery fee if you go to a pickup site. So if there's a bunch of, you know, they want to go to a pickup site and not a certain time, then they save seven bucks.
00:12:54
Speaker
But a lot of people want to just get it delivered to the house because then you don't have to think about it. Maybe their work, maybe, you know, who knows. And so it's really nice because it helps me offset it in my head that I'm not putting out this other expense in the delivery. It's actually paying for itself.
00:13:14
Speaker
So it helped me on it, especially on the days in the winter months, when you have like a slow delivery week where you're like, ah, you know, this is, you know, is this worth it? And then all of a sudden each one is seven bucks and you're like, it's kind of a wash, you know, because it's paid for the driver at least. And so it's worth doing and it encourages us to do it. And it also is a value that I didn't realize we were giving away for free, you know, buy something and you get this. Well, what if someone buys like.
00:13:44
Speaker
$70 at a restaurant, you know, and you're like, I'm going to go all the way over this side of San Francisco for $20 word, but you know, they threw in $7 for delivery. Well, you know, but it just changes it a little bit.
00:13:56
Speaker
And people are more than willing to pay for it. Oh, 100%. It's kind of sad to see the things that people will pay for. If it's even down the street, they will pay a $10 delivery fee to, you know, get it to their door. Cause buyers are lazy and they love convenience and you know, you definitely want to be charging delivery for that. And so with your subscriptions, a really cool thing too, is you're able to allow late enrollment. So you had mentioned you have.
00:14:22
Speaker
A 20 week subscription, a biweekly subscription. And, you know, I know with your season, it's kind of ongoing, but maybe if your farm box 20 week season started in January and somebody found out, you know, middle of February, Hey, I want to hop on board and I want to purchase that subscription. They're able to enroll late and.
00:14:42
Speaker
kind of finish out those 20 weeks, which is really great. And then also they have the ability to have add-ons. So, you know, they might be getting that weekly farm box and, you know, one week they might want to order some of your tomato jars or, you know, if strawberries are in season, they want to add that onto to their order. So that's a really cool capability that you can do in Barn to Door and
00:15:03
Speaker
We've seen, you know, farms who offer subscriptions enjoy 80% revenue month over month. Would you say, you know, that is true, especially when it comes to your farm business? Yeah, you know, for sure. I mean, I haven't calculated that for our farm, but it totally makes sense because people are signing up. And if everybody had to order a farm box every week, a lot of people would be falling off. So when they do sign up, then it's guaranteed for those 20 weeks.
00:15:29
Speaker
And what we do, because we go year round where we are, we don't get to know, we don't bail. We don't close up the form so people can start their 20 weeks anytime they want. And really what it is, it's just to turn on the weekly box. You know, it's more, more than a 10 week or 20 week. It's just to turn it on so that they won't have to think about it. They'll just get an email confirming that they're going to get one.
00:15:54
Speaker
And it will also confirm whether or not they've already paid for it in the beginning or if they, their credit card was just charged to get. The one thing that we do do that is seasonal is our tomatoes and strawberries. We actually have a really long strawberry season. We usually start getting strawberries as soon as we get any long stretch of sun, which could be in March, April for sure. By May we're full on into it, June we peak. And a lot of times our strawberries can go well into November, you know, and it's just a matter of
00:16:24
Speaker
dodging the rain. So we will put in for, um, strawberries, we'll put a six or 10 week subscription. And then as it gets towards the end of this year and the end is, you know,
00:16:35
Speaker
We'll say November, you can, you can order two weeks before and still fill out that automatic subscription until the end. You know, you know, it's not going to go past the point where we think we're going to have them, but you can go late. So there's, so there's really no distance to order late or start anything late. Cause there really isn't, we don't have a season for the corn box, but for the tomatoes and the strawberries, you know, I think you can.
00:17:01
Speaker
You can have two subscriptions. If you start at the very beginning of strawberries, you can do it twice. You can have two subscriptions filled out because some people want to come in late and you don't want to have it the complete season only because that's a long, it's a long time. So, so that's what we do is we put a nice little option for them to have a bunch of weeks ahead and then they can reorder it.
00:17:24
Speaker
If they didn't really start early, if you're getting a delivery and you already paid seven bucks for your farm box, you can add anything on without an additional delivery charge already have you in there. So getting the farm box.
00:17:36
Speaker
I noticed a lot of people, especially around Christmas time, they were getting two packs of jars or they'd get a full case of jars delivered as well. Cause they're probably giving them those Christmas presents. So it's nice for people to be able to add onto that stuff. You know, absolutely. Perfect. So now we're going to move in and kind of just talk about, you know, pre-orders and how important they are and how much of a difference they can really make for farms businesses.
Pre-Orders & Customer Engagement
00:18:00
Speaker
And specifically how you utilize that Joe with either your note
00:18:05
Speaker
your strawberries or your tomatoes, but you know, first things first is a cool thing about pre-orders is what this basically is our buyers reserve their order for next season. So whether that's a CSA or strawberry season, like we had mentioned, or tomato season, it's really cool because buyers get to secure their commitments in advance. And then also the farmers, you guys get to lock in that cashflow.
00:18:31
Speaker
really early, whether that's a few months in advance, a year in advance. I know a lot of farmers, you know, at the end of the 2021 season, they were already starting to put in their stores a CSA signup for 2022. And a lot of them already got sold out because their customers are excited. Hey, what a fantastic season. I want to make sure I lock that in for next season. And so it's never too early.
00:18:55
Speaker
to start doing pre-orders. And what we've seen here at Barn 2 Door is 30% of volume on our platform in 2021 was paid upfront orders. And already this month in January, we are seeing more and more pre-order purchases come through. And again, it's so great to lock that in advance for your business.
00:19:17
Speaker
So Joe, you know, speaking on this topic, you know, how do pre-orders work for your farm? You know, I'm sure your customers get really excited in the beginning of the year, knowing that season's right around the corner. When do you start to set that up in your store for people to purchase? Yeah. Well, the interesting thing about us is that we're really known for our drag farm tomatoes. And we'll be at the farmer's market the day that we don't have tomatoes. They like December 10, there's no tomatoes and people
00:19:47
Speaker
We'll come and say, when are the tomatoes coming? Like it seriously, it starts then and they'll bother us until they're on the table. One thing that I'm really psyched about doing this year is with tomatoes and with strawberries is that we'll be able to say, well, if you want to get the first tomatoes, you can pre-order you'll get the first tomatoes when they start. Of course, we're not going to have tomatoes to like.
00:20:11
Speaker
mid July, depending on the weather, but what we can do is get people to sign up whenever they come up and show interest. And we can also offer an upfront discount, get people to start signing up for the tomatoes, even though we're not going to have them later. So.
00:20:27
Speaker
We can do that and we can also do strawberries that way too. You know, you can get people to sign up also just even if they're, they're paying weekly. So you don't have to get them all to, to pay all upfront. You can also get people to sign up and then in two months their subscription starts. And what it does is it gives us all that time before we have strawberries, say like we're going to start now to try and drill them up.
00:20:52
Speaker
sales so that when strawberries are on, we have this core group of people going into it and we're not starting from zero to point them. So it gives us a lot of opportunities in our weekly email and also like on Instagram, you know, strawberries are coming, you know, so it really gives us a lot of, a lot of opportunity and I'm looking forward to kind of playing around with it. I think there's going to be some interesting, uh, things we can do with, with tomatoes and strawberries.
00:21:19
Speaker
For sure. And once you kind of dial that in and you build it out in the store and you know, you're ready to announce it to all of your customers. How do you do that? Is it through email marketing? You had mentioned Instagram, any other social channels. Instagram will link to Facebook, but we're not as active in Facebook anymore. We use our MailChimp that synced with Barnador and we got trained on how to do that. And you can really push your marketing, you know, once you get online, then you really have to drive sales.
00:21:48
Speaker
through your online channels, which is going to be like emails. And that's also just your newsletter. People want to see what's going on in the farm. What's new. We put it in our weekly email. We update what's going to be in our farm box because that changes every week.
00:22:03
Speaker
So then that's really important. And then whenever there's something coming up, you know, it gives us a chance to say, Hey, strawberry seasons are coming, you know, tomato season's coming. Look at the beans are coming. Anything that's new or anything that really ultimately we have a lot of something. It's not just like you want to push and sell what you want to sell, but when you have a lot of stuff as a farm, that's usually peak season and it usually means it's really good anyway. Right. So.
00:22:32
Speaker
That gives us an opportunity to push whatever we need to push, whatever we want to push and whatever we have, you know? And that's really what people that follow us and sign up on our newsletter, they want to know what's going on. So that's what we do. We just try to drive sales online and so people can find us and see what we have.
00:22:51
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that's just so crucial too, especially when you have new items in your store, or especially when it comes to pre-orders, you need to let your customers know, you need to make sure you are sharing that on every channel, you know, email, social, what have you, cause you know, your customers are excited about it and they want to purchase and you know, it's crazy how we see just announcements like that and keeping your customers up to date, you know, really shows the increase in sales too.
00:23:21
Speaker
Awesome. So, you know, pre-orders and subscriptions as you guys have learned so far can really make a big difference in
Growing Customer Base & Email Marketing
00:23:29
Speaker
your farm business. But also really important aspect is growing your customer list. And so we're going to just discuss how Joe grows his customer list and why it's important.
00:23:40
Speaker
You know, we see here at Barn to Door, more emails equals more orders. And there's so many different ways of how you can collect emails, especially at a farmer's market, having a QR code for people to sign up with or even, you know, a clipboard and a pen and people can write down their email list.
00:23:58
Speaker
having an email sign up form on your website. So when your customers are visiting, there's a pop-up that says, hey, subscribe to our newsletter, you know, receive 10% off your first purchase. Most likely about, I would say 100% of websites that I visit, if I want to purchase something online, I am always entering my email to receive a discount for my first order with them. And kind of an interesting fact is, you know,
00:24:23
Speaker
one in seven Americans, you know, move homes each year. So you constantly want to be growing that customer list. So even if you have 50 emails, a hundred, you know, a couple thousand people move people, um, change their buying habits or their eating habits, what have you. And so you always want to make sure you're growing your customer list.
00:24:44
Speaker
So what we see here at Barn to door is farms with a hundred plus registered customers drive more than six times the monthly revenue versus farms with less than a hundred registered customers. So just kind of having that threshold of, okay, I need to get a hundred emails. And I know that kind of sounds intimidating at first, but just start slow, you know, have a goal of 10 a week. And soon enough, you'll know you'll hit a hundred and then you'll hit a couple hundred and
00:25:08
Speaker
You know, a couple thousand. And I know Joe, you have a fantastic customer list. I think you have about a couple thousand, I would say. And you're continuing to grow that each and every week. What are you doing to add customers each and every day, each and every week? Yeah, it's pretty crazy. I think I got into this learning how to farm.
00:25:28
Speaker
And now the whole tech part of marketing has been a big learning curve for me. So before we were really doing this online, we still sent out an email list to our restaurant. So we started with a decent grip. I think we had four or 500 emails that went out to restaurant people. It seems like an incredible amount of restaurants, you know.
00:25:50
Speaker
But they got their list. Now we took that and we transferred it on to our MailChimp account where we send now a newsletter and we send now a newsletter to both retail and wholesale customers. So all, you know, it's kind of a different angle, but it's also, we include everybody in. And now if someone's going to buy something online, they sign up with their email.
00:26:14
Speaker
And so they go directly to our MailChimp newsletter list and we have a couple thousand, few thousand, I'm not sure where we pretty close to 3000 people that get this email. And so that's a lot of people that are going to open. And I know, I noticed a lot of people weekly buy from that newsletter. We didn't send the newsletter one week. And I, you know, this older guy, Richard.
00:26:36
Speaker
Email back said, Hey, are you still doing it? I don't know. I need to order something. And he didn't know to just go back to do that. Right. So he's just. Patterned to receive the newsletter email. And that's when he orders every week off of that. So I know it sends me an email about that. I know there's more than just one person doing right. What's funny. I was just gone for two weeks. Check my PO box. And I, I mean, man, the stack of mail.
00:27:05
Speaker
I can't imagine doing prints and saying like, okay, we have to, you know, market our farm box, let's print it all out. And we have all these addresses and you're going to like mail it out to everyone. Exactly. The time that would cost the time, the cost costs like thousands of dollars or something. I'm not even sure how much I would cost.
00:27:25
Speaker
Exactly. And you bring up such a good point because these days too, email marketing is so important and people are checking that regularly and people are honestly treating it like a social feed. I would say that I check my email as often as I check my Instagram feed because I want to know what's happening with the farmers that I am following them along with their newsletters or what promos are happening this week from
00:27:54
Speaker
certain businesses that I purchased from. And you made such a good point there. Exactly. People aren't sending it out in the mail anymore. That's going to cost so much money and time and, you know, doing email marketing, especially with MailChimp, there's a free version to be able to test it out. And you can really see the revenue that's generated off of those newsletters that you send out. And you had mentioned one of your customers expects that email every single week, because that's when he orders.
00:28:23
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And you think, you know, as it grows, you're writing in the newsletter, a lot of the stuff is just templated and like a lot of things, the same tomato jars, same, the same list of like where our farmers markets are, how to sign up as a hotel customer is still there. You changed a little bit, but then depending on how many people have signed up that week, you're still just sending it out. It's not like if someone doesn't.
00:28:49
Speaker
open it, it's not like you just bought a stamp, another stamp and they threw away. I can't imagine that those businesses are just putting all that money into it. I mean, I'm sure some people still rely on that to drive sales, but I think going online, everybody's going online to buy stuff. Here's your form and here's where you're selling. And here are all these other people in between that you're going to sell to that are going to find you online and they would have missed you. So the email.
00:29:18
Speaker
Email's huge because it just, it runs and you can really use the different avenues and sales channels to drive into the same email list. You know, our farmers market people go in there, our farmbox people do that. A lot of people that are getting things for gifts.
00:29:34
Speaker
They get a little QR code on there and now their friend has Mina can sign up. That's so great sharing how you utilize MailChimp and especially the Barn to Door integration with MailChimp, you know, being able to showcase your products, especially what's in the farm box this week, because what we see too is farmers that are using the Barn to Door and MailChimp integration drive an average increase of 30% in sales.
00:29:59
Speaker
And also too, as you start to grow your customer list, you want to be able to group those customers as well and send them specific targeted emails. You might have your farm box customers, your wholesale buyer, maybe that your strawberry season customers, what have you and being able to target them.
00:30:18
Speaker
Specifically with kind of what's going on. And we see people to send segmented emails, enjoy a 14.2% higher open rate because they know that email is specifically for them and their interests. One thing that I think was really helpful that I remember that you helped us on Miranda was that barn to door keeps track of your customers. And also MailChimp keeps track of your customers. So.
00:30:46
Speaker
They look at different demographics. One thing that are in the door will do is they can show people that haven't bought anything for X amount of months. You can write an email, you wrote one that, Hey, sorry, we haven't seen you in a while. We'd like to offer you this 10% discount on a box, whatever. And, and it, and then you just said it just to that demographic of people that haven't bought anything.
00:31:11
Speaker
In however many months, I think it was two or three months, something like that. And it was instantly the return on that was like 800 bucks. Yeah. And from that one email, right? But within, when you don't know, it was like, that was the one email that we just targeted to people that have bought stuff from us in the past, have it in a while. And then, but then you don't know, maybe that gets them back on board. You know, maybe they bought something.
00:31:35
Speaker
just a single purchase, but maybe they then signed up as a subscription, but then maybe all of a sudden they're paying attention more to their emails and they're, they're buying more.
00:31:43
Speaker
And it's, it's just so cool and it's fun to kind of learn about it and test it out. And like you were mentioning earlier, we did a customer journey in MailChimp and basically what a customer journey is figuring out who do you want to target and where do you want them to end up and kind of building out a journey along the way. And so I think, Joe, we were noticing it was kind of quiet and.
00:32:06
Speaker
We were kind of like, Hey, let's test something out. Let's target customers who hadn't purchased in maybe the past two months. And so what we did, you know, was building out a journey, sent them an email targeting them specifically with a unique promo code. And we saw a huge open rate. I believe it was like a 40% open rate, which is fantastic. And then what we did as well is a couple days later, we sent them another email and, you know, in case you miss it, this promo code is ending soon, you know,
00:32:36
Speaker
get it, place your order fast and utilize this discount. And then what we saw, I think overall for that week specifically, there was a 35% lift in sales just from building out that journey. And so that just goes to show one that email marketing works.
00:32:55
Speaker
Two, targeted email marketing works and you know, people get busy and they forget to purchase from their, from their farmer and being able to send those touch points to remind them, gets them back on board. Yeah. I think everybody uses email differently too. Just because you send email doesn't mean everybody's even seen it. A lot of people don't even see email. So.
00:33:21
Speaker
The next time it comes around, maybe they see it the next time, you know, so you do have to kind of bug people. And that's one thing that I, you know, getting into it, learning how to send email marketing, I was like, God, I don't want to bother people, but it's like, you're not going to bother them because they don't have to open it. They can always unsubscribe if they don't want to see this, you know, people have signed up and they are subscribing and they do want to see this and it does drive sales. It's really, really useful.
00:33:47
Speaker
Yeah. And I think too, it's important when you are sending those emails. I know it sounds cheesy, but I tell people all the time with your subject line. Cause that's the first thing that people are going to see. They're going to see who it's coming from and what's the subject. So, you know, ask a question, do a fun.
00:34:03
Speaker
Cheesy line. I know with one that we did, it was, you know, caught you looking with the eye emoji and, you know, that probably really helping or helped the open rate. Cause it's fun. It's cheesy and it gets people, you know, wanting to click into that email to see what's going on. And, you know, think about the emails that you guys are opening, which ones are catching your attention. I know for me, ones that have a cheesy line or they have emojis in it cause emojis stand out. I'm definitely opening that email.
00:34:33
Speaker
most likely I'll probably end up purchasing through that email. Awesome. Well, I hope you guys learned a lot today and especially, you know, the importance of subscriptions, what they are and how they can really make a difference for your farm business and especially, you know, locking in those pre-orders.
00:34:52
Speaker
Get that cash flow months in advance, even years in advance. Again, it can help you with maybe your farm equipment that you need to purchase or, you know, getting the fields ready, what have you. And alongside with that, the importance of growing your email list and, you know, don't stop growing that once you hit that 100 threshold.
00:35:12
Speaker
keep going. And then when you have that email list, start sending out newsletters, you know, especially with the barn to door integration with MailChimp, being able to have your products directly in there, your promo codes, then you can see, you know, the revenue that's really generated off of those emails.
Future Goals for Dirty Girl Produce
00:35:29
Speaker
And like Joe had mentioned before, email marketing works, have fun with it. You won't regret it.
00:35:35
Speaker
Joe, as we're kind of coming to an end, what are the goals for Dirty Girl Produce for 2022? Oh man, Dirty Girl for 2022. By land. I'm sick of being a renter. I want to buy land. I've got right at first refusal on four properties and I've been waiting for years. That's my goal. In the meantime, I'm going to try and borrow money and pay it back at the end of the year.
00:35:59
Speaker
That's the main goal. I think we won't have a problem growing good produce. We know how to do that. I think all the administrative and the banking and accounting and now, um, the marketing and the online sales, I think are going to be our big challenges. And I really want to get better at driving sales to our online marketing. That's like a.
00:36:25
Speaker
interesting to me too, as I'm learning it, because I'm not from this world, you know, I'm from the field. It's interesting to me and it's kind of fun and challenging and I enjoy learning and figuring out how to do this stuff.
00:36:41
Speaker
Perfect. And, you know, again, thank you everyone for watching. We have a ton of resources. If you haven't checked them out already on our website, you know, we have a lot of great blogs, eBooks. One that I would really recommend everyone check out is the Six Farm Secrets to Save Time and Increase Orders. And also something that we just recently implemented was Connect Program with Barn to Door. So you're able to
00:37:08
Speaker
join a session with even Joe, he will be on, he will be there on some of the sessions, but with other farmers that we work with who have seen really great success, you're able to go ask them questions on any sort of topics that you are curious about whether, how did they grow their customer list, you know, how
00:37:27
Speaker
Do they have subscription set up in their store? You know, how are they saving time? So definitely utilize that. And we hope to see you there. And also thank you, Joe, so much for your time today. It was great getting to know you, learn about you, your progress. And if you guys want to go ahead, follow Joe on Facebook, on Instagram, check out his website, dirtygirlproduce.com. And we also have a farmer spotlight on him and a great podcast about his retail and
00:37:56
Speaker
wholesale markets and you know, go ahead, sign up for his newsletter to see what he's sending out through MailChimp and you'll see kind of what he sends out on a weekly basis through MailChimp helps you guys get ideas on what you should be sending out to your customers. So again, thanks Joe. You're welcome. Thank you, Miranda.