Farm Email Marketing Best Practices
In this week's episode, James and Maimee discuss email best practices to engage Buyers, and increase traffic to your Farm store. Implement these tactics for writing attractive emails and consistently improving your performance.
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Hello and welcome to the Independent Farmer Podcast, the go to podcast for do it yourself farmers who are taking control of their own business, skipping the middleman and selling direct to local consumer and wholesale buyers. This podcast is hosted by Barn2Door, the number one business tool for independent farmers to manage their business, promote their brand and sell online and in person.
Let's dive in to today's Independent Farmer Podcast.
James Maiocco: Welcome to the Independent Farmer podcast. I'm James, the Chief Operating Officer at Barn2Door and your host for today's episode. As many of our listeners may be aware, Barn2Door offers an all in one business solution for farmer's selling direct, online, and in person.
In today's conversation, [00:01:00] we're going to get into email best practices to increase sales and engage your audience. Today, I'm going to be speaking with Maimee, who is on our marketing team at Barn2Door. And as a content marketer, Maimee specializes in writing and sending emails to millions of people.
In fact, I think last year, in 2023, Barn2Door sent to over 3 million plus emails. And this year, in 2024, Barn2Door is on pace to send over 9 million emails, which is just amazing. So lots of data, lots of insights to gather from Maimee. So, we're going to dive into understanding buyer personas, testing what works, and what doesn't work probably more importantly.
And we obviously have very good email marketing at Barn2Door. So, I'm excited to talk to Maimee today about knowing your audience, some best practices she's learned in writing emails, and how to provide valuable content to your audience to increase sales for your farm. Welcome, Maimee. Thanks for joining me today.
Maimee Henderson: Thank you for having me.
James Maiocco: [00:02:00] Well, it's been quite the journey since you joined Barn2Door in the middle of 2023. You've jumped into the deep end of the pool quite quickly. Let's talk a little bit about your background in marketing. Why you've been able to jump in and add so much value so quickly.
Maimee Henderson: So, I graduated school in May with a degree in mass communication, but I actually did an internship last spring doing a bunch of different types of marketing practices.
I did a little bit of content marketing. I worked with SEO, which I'm doing now as well, but even in Mass Comm, we learned a lot about marketing, a lot about writing good content that's going to be valuable to whoever your audience is. And then in September, I started at Barn2Door and very quickly got integrated into what the marketing team does here, which has been a lot of fun.
So doing blogs, podcasts, emails, a lot of emails, working with our Farm [00:03:00] Advisor network, so a lot of fun things.
James Maiocco: Yeah, you've really had a quick baptism by fire. You are doing a lot of work, sending out a lot of emails to a lot of different audiences. And as you mentioned too, you're also doing search engine optimization, SEO work.
We can probably cover that in another podcast at another time. But today, let's dive in specifically on email marketing, right? You've got a lot of responsibility here at Barn2Door. You've taken on a lot of email campaigns for different audiences. Let's talk a little bit about your run book. Help our listeners understand what's a day in the life or more importantly, what's a month in the life of Maimee look like at Barn2Door?
What types of emails are you writing?
Maimee Henderson: So, pretty much every day, I am sending out emails or writing emails, firstly, to our prospects. So, anyone that is putting their email onto our website or signing up for an e book or talking to sales, those get into our contact list and I'm sending out emails every two [00:04:00] months.
I'm doing a campaign for our prospects, trying to engage them, get them to know Barn2Door. Get them to click on our content and really see the value in our brand.
James Maiocco: So just to get clarity, so prospects means these are potential customers of Barn2Door. So these are prospect farmers that we would like to engage with.
And I know we have a massive database, more than a quarter million plus prospects. And so, we're sending out an email pretty much every day to some segment of those prospects, correct? Right?
Maimee Henderson: Yes.
James Maiocco: We're setting up campaigns to go at all times to engage those prospects, correct?
Maimee Henderson: Yes. And sending out campaigns and emails based on how well they know Barn2Door.
So trying to move them up the funnel, technically, for marketing terms, moving them through, knowing Barn2Door, seeing them first online, kind of knowing what we do, and then basically knowing really well what we do and looking for a solution.
James Maiocco: So, you're helping the sales [00:05:00] team qualify potential opportunities, more importantly, providing farmers with the tools.
The information they need to make an informed decision, because we're not the perfect solution for everybody.
Maimee Henderson: Yeah.
James Maiocco: Part of it is, you know, is helping us and the farmer make a good decision and with all the information at hand. What's another audience that you write emails for every month?
Maimee Henderson: So, every month, once a month, I send out a newsletter to our existing customers, updating them on any product updates to Barn2Door, good content that we've released, just keeping them in the loop.
That way, everyone that we're working with knows exactly what's going on with Barn2Door. We always want them to know what we're doing, how we're building new things built specifically for their business, and just making sure that they're successful.
James Maiocco: Yeah, and that's great. That's called life cycle marketing, right?
Maimee Henderson: Yes.
James Maiocco: So, making sure that the during their lifetime of engagement with Barn2Door, that those farmers are getting all the information they need about product updates, like you said, because we're a software company, we're constantly releasing [00:06:00] improvements, new things, new capabilities based on their feedback.
And I know you've also sent out surveys to farmers, all kinds of different things to again, solicit their feedback, making sure we can best serve them. What else? Who else do you write emails to?
Maimee Henderson: So, the same thing that we do with our existing customers, we do with our farm advisors, again, just updating them on what's happening.
We do a meeting every quarter with them, so keeping them on track to know what date we're meeting. And then besides that, we have people that sign up for our newsletters, for our blog. And so every quarter I send them our top three pieces of content from the quarter. That way they're getting engaged with the best pieces that we've released.
James Maiocco: And the newsletter subscribers could be, you know, students, researchers, perhaps teachers of FFA or 4 H or Ag in college, that type of thing, who want to learn about software for farmers, right? So another audience with a different set of expectations in terms of the types of content they're reading, right?
Well, let's talk a little bit about how you [00:07:00] write email for so many different audiences, right? Because prospects, existing customers, newsletter subscribers, our farmer advisors, these are all a very different relationship with Barn2Door, and that's a lot of different content, right? So, when you're assembling these emails and you're looking to gauge whether or not it's meaningful, whether or not it's been useful to that audience, what are some of the pieces of data that you look at to help you i nform whether or not the work you've done has been well received.
Maimee Henderson: So, we call these KPIs, which are Key Performance Indicators. So, there are a couple lines of data that I look at pretty much every day with my emails to make sure that they're performing highly. If they're not, then I know what to change.
First is open rate, so that's out of everyone that got delivered the email, what percentage of people are opening that email? And then, we also look at click through rate, which is the amount of people who open the email, how many of them clicked on our call to action [00:08:00] or our CTA. So, that could be a button or a link that's leading them to a podcast or a blog.
Next, we look at our click rate, so that's the percentage of people who clicked on that call to action out of the people who were delivered the email.
James Maiocco: What are the most important ones? So, you identify three metrics, and I'm sure there's a lot of other pieces of data.
What do you focus on day to day? Like, which ones inform your writing the most?
Maimee Henderson: I focus mostly on open rate and click through rate because that shows me that number one, open rate is kind of the vanity metric of if people are looking in their inbox, are our emails enticing for them to click on? If there's a low open rate, that means that maybe the subject line wasn't enticing.
Maybe I didn't use an emoji or personalize with their name in the email. So, just making sure that it is something that our audience wants to click on and they're not just going to send straight to the trash.
James Maiocco: And then, the click through rate. Why [00:09:00] is that so important?
Maimee Henderson: Click through rate is honestly the most important because that's taking them to our website, taking them to our content.
Everything down to the words that I use on a button really make a difference for whether or not someone's going to click on it. So if it's not enticing, if it's not exciting to the audience that I'm sending the email to, they're not going to click through and they're not going to be able to read that valuable content.
So, it's very important that I'm maintaining a high mix of both open rate and click through rates, learning from what didn't work, learning what does work, and constantly testing different ways to improve those.
James Maiocco: Yeah, that's really important because if they click through the content, it means they're actually willing to take time out of their day to dig in and learn more.
For farmers who are listening to this podcast, obviously the most important thing for you is getting people to go to your farm website or go to your store, more [00:10:00] importantly, and actually purchase from your farm. If it's a brand new buyer who's never purchased from your farm, they're likely to go to your website and learn about your practices, your values, about your family, what have you, and then eventually make a purchase.
But for your loyal buyers, they want a purchase from your farm, right? So having a high click through rate is really critical. Let's dive into how you test for these KPIs, right? Because improving these things obviously, has big impacts for Farmers in terms of their livelihoods, right?
If you can improve a click rate 2x, you might put a lot more dollars into the pocket of a Farmer, for their family's income. Right? And that's very meaningful. So, how do we test emails here at Barn2Door? What are the things that we've done to help improve that click through rate, incrementally, month over month?
Maimee Henderson: So, we've really been ramping up testing in 2024, which has been a lot of fun. We do what's called an A B test. So, that splits up the audience evenly and randomly so that there are [00:11:00] no certain factors that are going to influence one list to click more than the other.
They're just split evenly. And so, we use our biggest email list that we're sending to month over month. And we've been testing a lot of different things for subject lines and for our buttons and our other call to actions, so for subject line, that could be the placement of emojis. They could be in the front of the subject line or in the back.
It could also be using the name of your customer. In your subject line, a lot of these email platforms will allow you to personalize the email. It'll automatically put in their contact name when the email is sent. And then, for our CTAs, so the buttons or the links, we've been changing the color of the button to see if blue works better than red, changing the placement of the button if it's at the top of the email versus at the bottom, and then also the number of CTAs.
So, we went [00:12:00] from using three different CTAs to one because a lot of times when you have too many call to actions in an email that can cause stress or too many decisions for the buyer, so they'll just exit instead of clicking one button.
James Maiocco: Yeah, so decision fatigue is a very real use case, right? Which is, if you give somebody too many choices, they opt to make no choice at all, right?
Versus if you direct people to say, hey, here's the one thing I'm asking you to go do, and they click on it at a higher rate. That's really good advice. Really good feedback. Well, let's break down some of this in more details, right? Cause there's a lot of nuances to each of these topics. Let's just talk about subject lines specifically, right?
Cause subject lines, all of us have email inboxes that are flooded with email, right? And I think one of the questions, many farmers, I'm sure, who are listening to this podcast are asking themselves, well, I don't want to contribute to spam. Why should I even keep sending emails to people on a weekly [00:13:00] or monthly basis?
What's your recommendation? How often should a farmer be sending emails to their buyers?
Maimee Henderson: The data shows us that farmers should be engaging their buyers with an email at least once a week. Any more, say three to four, could be too much, could seem spammy to their buyers, but then also any less, like once a month, is not enough.
Your buyers are going to forget you, another farm may be engaging them, so you want to ensure that you're consistent, but not overdoing it when you're sending emails.
James Maiocco: So the key there is to actually be in the inbox when your customers open their email, right?
Maimee Henderson: Yes.
James Maiocco: Because we all are getting email all the time.
And if you send an email once a month, there's a very low likelihood that any one of your buyers is actually going to see it because you're probably not on page one. But if you're sending weekly, then there's a much higher likelihood that you're going to be on page one and that your buyers are going to see it and open that email.
Okay. Well, let's shift the subject line specifically, right? Because that's kind of the key thing to gauge like, do [00:14:00] I want to open this email from Maimee? Do I want to open this email from this farmer? What are some of the things that you've seen, like specifically, that have helped improve open rates for subject lines?
Maimee Henderson: So, keeping it very simple, not having one that's too long that it's going to get cut off, but also ensuring that the words that you're using are enticing to your buyers, knowing exactly what they're looking for. That's why it's so important to know who you're selling to, so that you know what they're going to click on.
We know that emojis work, they draw people's eye to the email, they also keep it interesting, will probably stick out from other emails in their inbox. And then also, I've said it before, but making it personal, including the name of who's receiving the email will increase their open rates. I've even seen people include the state or a certain product that they know the buyer will like, in order to make it super personal, make it something that they know that buyer is going to click [00:15:00] on.
James Maiocco: So, I heard keeping the language simple, using emojis, because that works. What are your thoughts on emojis? Because I've seen different data between putting the emoji at the beginning versus at the end of the subject line. Have you tested that? What's the data tell you about emojis?
Maimee Henderson: So, we're actually testing that right now. So, we'll probably have our own data on that within a week or two, but I know in my own experience, when there's an emoji in the front, my eye's going to go there first. People aren't looking at the very right of their inbox, they're looking down the middle at who's sending the email, looking at the very beginning of the subject line, which is also important, those first couple words.
So, I think emojis in the front work really well, but I think in general, including them, whether that's in the front or the back is best practice, just because that is going to draw the eye of whoever is looking through their inbox.
James Maiocco: And the key with those emojis, I understand, too, is it's just to pick one, right?
Don't do an entire subject line of [00:16:00] emojis. It can be distracting, right?
Maimee Henderson: Yes.
James Maiocco: But be playful, use it, make sure it relates to a very simple subject line. Well, those are really good pieces of feedback. What about emotion, right? Sometimes I see subject lines that can be, you know, aspirational, fearful, what are your thoughts about writing different types of subject lines?
Because, I'm sure Farmers don't just want to keep sending buyers a hey, buy more products from me, you know, my farm store is open today or place your orders now. Yes, it's important to ask for a call to action and place a purchase from time to time, but what other things should a farmer be thinking about when it comes to subject lines?
Maimee Henderson: Yeah, so we play with emotion a lot at Barn2Door in our emails. It works very well because it's going to pique the interest of the receiver of the email. And then it's also going to, like you said, play into that emotion. They want to know more. They want to know how you can fix their problem. Or if it's something aspirational, they're going to want to know [00:17:00] how their lives can get better with your product.
And so I think with farmers, maybe a subject line saying Do you want to serve sustainable agriculture to your family? Or, are you worried about what the grocery store is putting in your food? Using certain subject lines that are going to click in the recipient's mind, where they're like, Oh, I wonder what they're talking about in this, or oh, I wonder how they can help me in this area of my life.
It's going to work really well just working into whatever concerns they have, what desires they have to make their life better. I think playing into those work very well.
James Maiocco: And I think one thing, too, that's really interesting about this topic specifically about the emotion you play on is that all of us are different and all of us are motivated by different things.
I tend to be one of those people who are motivated by aspiration, right? So for me, the subject line that would probably catch my attention would be, hey, improve your health, increase nutrition with, you know, [00:18:00] XYZ product or what have you, or get a more nutrient dense XYZ product today from our farm, right?
Something along those lines for me would be valuable, but I know other people are certainly motivated by fear. They're concerned about what Big Ag is putting into their products at the grocery store. So, a mother might be concerned about what they're feeding their kids at home and they don't want to poison their children, essentially, right?
So, I think your idea of maybe testing different emotional ones could be very interesting. Good feedback. Well, let's talk about CTAs because you talked about buttons, right? So that by itself is a interesting test versus just a hyperlink. What's the data tell us about buttons, right? In an email.
Maimee Henderson: So, at Barn2Door, we found that buttons are the most effective call to action. You can either have buttons or links within your text. We found that links sometimes can be confusing for people. Maybe it's not obvious that you can click on them. On a mobile phone, it might be hard to click. [00:19:00] But with a button, it's very obvious.
It's bold, we use the color red a lot of the time, so it's right there, it's catching your attention. And so, that's what's worked best for us. As a farmer, you want to make sure that your buyers know exactly what they're clicking through to, and make it super obvious and simple for them to shop your product.
So saying, shop now, or Farm Store or Buy Products Online on your button will make it super easy for your buyers to know exactly what they're clicking through to. And then, also just making it attractive for them. If it's a hyperlink, they might not understand where it's sending them or how to click on it.
James Maiocco: That's great feedback. I know I subscribe to many farm emails and newsletters, and too often I see hyperlinks that are just buried inside a text, which can be, to your point, very difficult to click on. And I know some people expect hyperlinks to be underlined, so if it's just bolded text, they may not even realize that that's something you can click on.
But especially, like, when I'm on [00:20:00] my mobile phone, boy. And I'm just navigating with just my thumb, really easy, just click on a button. Very simple, I get right to where I'm expected to go. What about button placement? Like, what are you seeing in terms of like, how much content do you have, how far should somebody read before they see a button or a call to action?
Maimee Henderson: Yes, so this is something that we actually recently tested, and with all of our tests that we've been doing, it's been really interesting. A lot of the times what we think works best doesn't, or what we think will work instead of what we're doing now might be less effective. For us, we found that no matter where your button is on the page, you need to have that valuable content to lead people to wanting to click on the button.
If there's a lot of text and they don't want to read through it, they're not going to scroll down to the button. Also being aware that a lot of people use their mobile phones when they're looking at emails is important. You don't want them to have to scroll down three times to get to the button. So making sure that it's pretty high up in the email [00:21:00] and also that the text around it is exciting and engaging for your buyers.
It's going to lead them to click on the CTA. It's going to be super important.
James Maiocco: So, let's talk a little bit more about the CTA because I love the button, right? Obviously a call to action to go shop for our farmers is super important. So, what some of the data tell us about in terms of how many options to have on there, because sometimes I get on these farmer newsletters and I'm shocked because there's 25 different things that I can go click through, all kinds of activities, events, things to register for, and perhaps a button to go shop as well.
What have you found in terms of like, what's the right mix of the number of CTAs to have on an email?
Maimee Henderson: So, like we talked about earlier, decision fatigue is a big thing with buyers. If they have way too many decisions, it's probably going to stress them out and they're just going to abandon the email. So, we actually tested this recently as well.
We had three different call to actions. So, we had two hyperlinks [00:22:00] and a button. And then, we also tested it against the same exact email with one button. And we found that our click through rate pretty much doubled when we only had one CTA. And so, we know that it works better if you give them one option, one place to click.
Also, if you have a million different options going to a blog or to a podcast or to your social media, that might draw them away from your store. So you really, really want to make sure that you have your store as the most important button, the one that sticks out the most in your email, so that you're driving conversions over to your store and securing purchases.
James Maiocco: That's really great feedback. It's not to say you can't offer other things for people to read, but perhaps they should be lower on the content page, right? So, you don't want to distract from the most important one, which is, again, to shop from that farm specifically.
It's really interesting because I know many of our farmers have pretty high open rates on their [00:23:00] newsletters already, right, because they have really great customers, right, who care to support local food and want to buy from their farm. I'd be very curious to see how you know, this plays out for farmers who test this, right?
Which is perhaps moving that shop button up a little bit further, removing some of the CTAs or putting the other links lower on their newsletters, and just seeing if they can drive, like you said, a, you know, an all roads go to their farm store type of approach and see if it can incrementally increase things a few percent, right?
Yeah, I know we saw our click through rates doubled, right? I imagine every farmer on this podcast, listening to this podcast right now, would give anything for their click through rates to double going to their farm store. So, definitely worth testing for anyone who's listening to this podcast.
Simplify your CTAs, your newsletters and try to drive folks to one call to action. All right, well, let's let's move on. I know there's so many other things that you do with email marketing that can also help improve open rates and click through rates. Let's talk [00:24:00] about audiences. That's where we started this podcast, talking about the different types of people we send emails to.
Tell us a little bit more about what that means, and how does that influence how you write, you know, the content you do, and the tenor of the emails.
Maimee Henderson: Every time I write content, I'm constantly thinking about the emails that I'm going to include it in, because I'm always sending emails. I think about who I'm writing to, what my goal is, what I want them to do after reading the email or reading the content. And so, with segmenting our list, which means splitting up our audience into maybe different habits or behaviors.
So, people who click on a lot of our content or really know our brand, I'm going to send content that is maybe more catered towards what they're looking for versus someone who isn't familiar with us. It's going to be more surface level, easier to digest. And that's the same with farmers. So, I think breaking up your list of, you have your loyal [00:25:00] customers, but maybe you have new customers as well.
Your loyal customers, you're not going to send your farm story week after week, but your new customers, you're going to introduce them to your farm, your products, maybe what markets you set up at, the easiest way to shop at your store. Your loyal customers, you're going to send, hey, these are new products that I'm doing, these are the subscriptions that we're offering this quarter.
James Maiocco: Yeah, people who know and trust your brand are very different than somebody you have to introduce to your brand, right, where you're trying to build loyalty, right? So segmenting in, like you said, based on the expectations of those buyers and what you want as the farmer is really critical, right?
So, when we talk about the relevant content you're trying to create for these folks, what are some of the things that farmers should be thinking about in terms of assembling for those different types of audiences when they're writing that type of content?
Maimee Henderson: So, like I said before, we play a lot on emotion, but I think just really knowing your buyers, being able to communicate the value of your brand, why they [00:26:00] should shop from you.
You know that your product's better than probably what they can get at the grocery store, so being able to communicate that with your buyers. Also, always keeping them in the know of your farm. You want to build that relationship. It can be hard to have personal relationships in person if you have hundreds of buyers, so making sure that you're being very intentional with the content that you're sending them week over week, making it personal, keeping them updated with what's going on in your farm, your products, new things that you're trying, with each season where you're offering pickup locations, the markets that you're going to set up, making sure that at every point your buyers know exactly what to expect from your farm and keeping it engaging for them is going to make them a repeat customer.
James Maiocco: I find too, you know, maybe because I read a lot of farm newsletters that many farmers do a really good job of not just quote unquote personalizing the content, but inviting them into their personal story, right? Like [00:27:00] specifically, like what's going on in their lives? What's happening on the farms?
What are some of the struggles or challenges they maybe have had with their crops or with the winter or what have you? And you know, also inviting them out to participate with their farms, especially their loyal buyers, right? People who get out to have an opportunity to come out for a farm day or an opportunity to come out or do chores with you as a farmer, that's pretty cool.
Maimee Henderson: Mm-Hmm.
James Maiocco: Because, I know families are always looking for things to do with their kids and those types of things. So, inviting them into that story, 'cause most buyers today tend to romanticize the lives of farmers.
Maimee Henderson: Yes.
James Maiocco: Without fully appreciating, again, the challenges of the day-to-day. But I do know, again, when you offer that type of information, many times you have to kind of be careful about not overdoing it.
Maimee Henderson: Yes.
James Maiocco: No one wants to read, you know, a treatise on how to shovel manure, right? We know it's hard work. Keep it simple, right? You can still paint a vivid image of the challenges to the things you're working on on the farm, but without hitting your buyers over the head, right?
Maimee Henderson: Yes. I know that we've [00:28:00] talked before about like the three E's. We talk about it a lot with social media, but in emails it's important too to entertain. So, let them know what's going on on the farm. Keep the email engaging. Educate. Let your buyers know why they're buying from you rather than someone else or rather from the grocery store.
Let them know your practices and why that's important. And then, e commerce, also always linking to that store. So, I think as long as you're hitting those and you know that you're writing the content exactly to your buyers. You're forming it in a way that you know they will appreciate, I think it'll be a successful email.
James Maiocco: Well, before we wrap up, I want to dig in a little bit more on personalization and brand, right, because these are two topics where software can add a lot of value in hopefully helping farmers save time and streamline this type of engagement. So, when you talk about personalization, can you walk through some of the things that farmers can do with Barn2Door, with MailChimp together to make it simplified for the farmers to deliver something that's, you know, [00:29:00] specific to each buyer?
Maimee Henderson: Yes, so Barn2Door has that integration with MailChimp, which automatically syncs all of their contacts from their store into the platform, which is so nice. That means that everyone who's buying from your online store, you can also engage via email, which in turn is going to spur future purchases. So, being able to segment, like we said before, a split up list based on habits, based on how many times they purchased from your farm store or how long they haven't purchased from your farm store.
MailChimp has this feature called the Customer Journey Builder, in which they will segment your audience and run them through a series of emails to spur engagement. So, that might be a loyalty email, so all of your buyers who are loyal buy from you consistently, they can be put into a list together, and you can send out a series of emails thanking them for their loyalty, maybe sending [00:30:00] a promo code, giving them special access to a product that's in high demand, because they've shown their loyalty to your brand.
Also, in the very beginning, new customers, maybe they'll be enrolled into a welcome campaign, again, explaining your farm, your practices, your family, why you chose the farm, where they can buy from you. And then, maybe even a re engage campaign, which is when buyers maybe don't purchase for a couple months, they're sent a series of emails that are going to pull them back in, pique their interest, say, Hey, we'd like to give you this discount so that you can purchase from our farm store again.
Remind them why they were a customer in the first place.
James Maiocco: Yeah, we haven't seen you for a while. I actually had a pizza store do this to me, believe it or not, when my sons went off to college. Because when my sons were living with me, you know, not uncommon for them to have a pizza on a Saturday night. And all of a sudden, they saw that, you know, my wife and I, we stopped ordering pizza, because our kids went away to college and they've reached out and they sent us a free pizza. It's like, Hey, [00:31:00] look, we haven't seen you for a while. We'd love to get you back ordering pizza from us. It works. Guess what? We ordered a pizza and we ordered more products from them. And so, that just built a lot of brand loyalty.
Let's talk about brand, right? Cause this is a big deal, right? I know farmers are competing with lots of brands. All of their buyers are getting hit up by tons of brands, big billion dollar brands, who are hitting them on every single channel. Why is it so important for the farmer to continue to emphasize and engage their buyers with their brand?
Maimee Henderson: So, your farm brand could be the deciding factor for a buyer from purchasing from the local grocery store versus your farm. So, when they're going into a grocery store, they're not seeing the face of the people who are growing those products.
They're not getting to interact with them. They're not, understanding their practices or what goes into growing their product, but with your farm, they do get to experience that, especially through email. So, that's what's going to build the relationships, [00:32:00] build the loyalty, help people understand why they should support your farm.
Having a distinct brand voice, so the way that you communicate in email, on a blog, on social media. Sticking to your core values, that's going to communicate a lot more about your brand than just saying, here's how you shop. So, making sure that your content is really aligned with who you are as a farmer and how you want your buyers to experience your farm.
James Maiocco: That's really great advice because I know I'm one of those buyers, right? You know, 9 out of 10 people in America right now are willing to spend more money with a local farmer who produces a sustainable product, right? And that's great, great news. Big thing the farmer needs to do is they need to make it easy and make themselves accessible to those buyers, right?
I choose to buy local microbreweries as an example, too. When it comes to beer, I don't buy any of the big names and I know it costs me more money. That's okay because I want to support a local small business and support local jobs as well. And so [00:33:00] I think this notion that similarly, right, you don't have to have a big marketing budget as a farmer.
The key is investing that brand in those personal relationships like you said and distinguishing yourself and your farm from big box retailers. So that's great. Well, before we wrap up, what's one final piece of advice, Maimee, that you would like to give to our listeners today who are thinking about sending emails to their buyers?
Certainly, they're never going to be sending millions like we are, because we have very, very big gloves. But I imagine many of our farmers send thousands and thousands of emails every month and certainly every year. What are the things that they should be thinking about moving ahead?
Maimee Henderson: So, we mentioned earlier that we're currently testing a lot of different subject lines and call to actions.
I think that that's a really good practice for anyone that's sending a lot of emails. Obviously, always stay true to your brand, as I said before. But, something that I like to do is go through my email inbox, and see what's drawing my attention. And [00:34:00] then, I think farmers can also do that.
If they want to try something out, see if it works. Because you never know unless you try. It may be more enticing for you to have one CTA versus maybe the five that you have right now. And you would never know if you didn't test it. So, I think it's really important to do that. Also, looking at integrations and features that are going to make your life easier.
You want to consistently engage your audience, but that's going to be a lot of work if you're manually writing a ton of emails, having to segment lists on your own, having to come up with content on your own. So, like we said, MailChimp Customer Journey Builder, that is great for setting up different lists.
Running people through campaigns based on their habits and their actions. Then, also our own marketing toolkit I think works really well. You're going to get newsletter prompts, you're going to get graphics that are going to be able to work through your email. So, that's just taking some of the work out for you, so that you can focus more on the content that you're sending.
James Maiocco: That's great [00:35:00] feedback. Well, I want to extend my thanks to Maimee for joining us on this week's podcast episode. You can check out more content about our marketing team that they've produced at Barn2Door.com/resources. Here at Barn2Door, we are humbled to support thousands of independent farmers across the country and we're delighted to offer services and tools to help farmers access more customers, increase sales and save time for their business. If you're an independent farmer who's just getting started or transitioning to selling direct, or if you've been at it a while and simply want to simplify your business management, please visit Barn2Door.com/learn-more.
Thank you for tuning in today. And we look forward to joining you next time on the Independent Farmer Podcast.
Thank you for joining us on the Independent Farmer Podcast. At Barn2Door, we are passionate about empowering independent farmers to build a thriving [00:36:00] business. To all the farmers out there, thank you for all you do to grow amazing food, care for the soil, and serve your local communities. You are the backbone of our country.
For free farm resources, or to listen to prior podcasts, go to barn2door. com backslash resources. We hope you join us again and subscribe to the Independent Farmer Podcast wherever you stream your podcasts. Until next time.