Farm Email Marketing: Best Practices to Increase Orders
Any business owner knows that to attract and retain current and potential customers, you must constantly engage them. Email has proven to be one of the most successful methods to provide consistent communications to Farm Buyers. Social media limits your exposure and in-person interactions may be difficult with a large base of Buyers.
With email marketing, you will have the ability to communicate with Buyers straight in their inbox. You can tailor your message depending on the type of Buyer, actions you desire and current events on the Farm. Independent Farmers ‘own’ their customer base, so it is essential you know how to effectively market and communicate to encourage loyalty and purchases.
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These 6 email marketing best practices will help uncover who your audience is, how to engage them and lead them to purchase from your Farm store:
1. Know your Audience
As an Independent Farmer selling Direct, you have an advantage over big corporations: you get to know your Buyers personally. You may not know each individual Buyer by name, but you do understand your community, its values and where your customers frequent.
Because you understand your community better than big businesses, you have a leg up when identifying your target audience. It may be growing families that are seeking to feed their children safe food, empty nesters looking for convenient pick-ups for Farm food, or young adults who prioritize supporting sustainable agriculture and local businesses.
2. Segment your Lists
Once you determine who you are selling to in your community, you must identify their varying personas. A college student does not communicate in the same way as an elderly couple. A family needs more products in a box than a single household. A stay-at-home mom may have more time to drive to a pick-up location versus a professional couple that expects direct delivery.
Determine how your audience may vary, and understand what they are looking for and what they want to hear. You want to build trust in your community, to convey why they should support your Farm. You must communicate the value of your Farm products, giving your audience the obvious answer to shop from your store.
When you understand the different Buyer types, your Farm can tailor communications to each audience. Customers with busy schedules may want to hear about dinner boxes the Farm is debuting, or new delivery routes that are added to the schedule. Single households may want to see your small-size bundles and learn about signing up for biweekly Subscriptions.
3. Target Communications
To ensure you are providing the most efficient communications to each of your Buyers, you must target specific emails catered to certain groups.
It is important to engage Buyers based on how often they shop from your Farm store. New Buyers should be enrolled in a ‘Welcome’ Campaign, sending them a series of emails explaining your Farm story, your values, basics on ordering and fulfillments and providing a discount on their first order.
Loyal Buyers may want to know when you are hosting on-Farm events with educational classes, or an agritourism opportunity such as a tour of your facilities. Offer high-demand products (that you know will sell out) exclusively to Loyal Buyers to show your appreciation for their support. This will only increase their loyalty to your Farm.
Buyers who haven’t purchased in the past 90 days, aka Laggard Buyers, may need to be shown why they shopped from your Farm in the first place. Educate them on the importance of shopping for local, sustainable food. Highlight popular products and bundles. You can also explain the convenient fulfillment options you have in their area to make it easy for them to secure another purchase.
Top-performing Farmers send communications at least once a week, but any more may seem ‘spammy,’ and annoy Buyers. In contrast, sending email only once per month is too infrequent, and will reduce your conversion. Having campaigns that are sent to Buyers based on their habits will ensure communications are tailored to exactly what they need. Always include a link to “Shop Now” to give Buyers easy access to make a purchase.
4. Analyze your Outcomes
There are two key metrics Barn2Door recommends Farmers focus on when analyzing the effectiveness of emails. Open rate displays the percentage of recipients that opened the email in their inbox. To improve this metric, you can focus on your subject line, which appears first in their inbox. Make the subject line enticing, using emotional or aspirational words that will pique the interest of Buyers and encourage them to open the email.
Your click-through rate represents the percentage of people who clicked on a link or button in the email out of those who opened it. Within your email, you want to link to content that is valuable for the recipients. Share links to recipes on your blog, product pages on your website and most importantly, to your Farm store.
The writing within your email should be interesting and inviting for readers, to ensure they do not exit the email before clicking-through to your site. Content is most valuable when it is written specifically for a certain audience.
Buyers who have followed you for years do not want to be sent your Farm origin story every week. Ensure content is engaging and answers any questions Buyers may have, so they are more inclined to click-through to your online Farm store to check out your products, and make a purchase.
5. Test New Methods
It is important to always find ways to improve your communications with Buyers. You do not want your Buyers to become bored with your emails. Test new ways to improve your open and click-through rates to find what Buyers want to see and read.
Use Emojis: Emojis can also make your subject line more eye-catching in the inbox, standing out against other emails. It is important to not overdo the usage of emojis, because too many may seem spammy. Add emojis that relate to your Farm products or the contents of the email.
Personalize Emails: Many email softwares have the option to personalize the subject line with the Buyers’ name or state. This makes the email seem more tailored to the recipient, and helps it stick out from the other messages in their inbox.
Use Fewer Calls-to-Action (CTAs): Too many links in your email may be overwhelming or distracting. We know Buyers get decision fatigue when offered too many options, meaning they will exit before they even make a decision. We recommend using only one button in your email, with, at most, 2-3 hyperlinks to your Farm products (for purchase).
Have Clear Wording: Your calls-to-action should have clear wording, explaining exactly what Buyers can expect when they click. Your button should always link to your Farm store, since it will be the most eye-catching CTA. For higher conversion rates to your store, make it clear where the button leads by writing something like “Shop Now,” or “Buy Farm Products”.
Look to see what catches your eye in your inbox and test that method. As you learn what does and doesn’t work for your Buyers, you will be able to update your email tactics for increased engagement.
6. Streamline your Processes
Streamline your email writing/sending process using software tailored for email marketing. This will ensure that you can spend less time splitting up lists and sending individual emails, and more time writing engaging content. Barn2Door’s integration with Mailchimp allows for all of your Farm Buyers and purchase history to sync directly into the software, so you do not have to manually enter in each contact or determine their shopping habits.
Customer Journey Builder from Mailchimp automatically segments your contact list and enrolls them into campaigns based on their purchase habits. Loyal Buyers will automatically be enrolled in a loyalty campaign (and the same with New Buyers and Laggard Buyers) and be sent emails at optimal times for their engagement.
Use Barn2Door’s Marketing Toolkit, which is updated monthly with newsletter prompts and graphics, to personalize your emails for seasonal events and holidays. These will give you content ideas, show you how to lay out your email and give your newsletters visuals to engage Buyers. When you save time on designing and sending emails, you can focus on the content you are sending to lead Buyers to your online Farm store.
Conclusion
Use these best practices to engage Buyers and encourage purchases. Avoid sending random emails; rather, build a consistent, personalized communications strategy to spur Buyer engagement with your Farm. Test these best practices and find what works best for your business. Sales will increase when you effectively pique the interest of Buyers in your area.
Barn2Door offers software for Independent Farmers to create and promote their brand, sell online and in-person, and save time managing their business. If you’re curious to learn more, watch this 5-minute video.