Farm Innovator Series: 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:
www.barn2door.com/webinars/farm-innovator-series-secure-sales-before-the-busy-season
-
0:27
Before we get started with a 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 barn2door.com/resources.
Miranda: 0:43
Welcome everyone. My name is Miranda and I am one of the Success Managers here at Barn2Door and excited to have this presentation today. I'm 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 I'm just really excited to guide you guys through what Joe does and how I've seen success, especially when it comes to his subscriptions 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.
Joe: 1:34
Oh, thanks Miranda. Yeah, my name's Joe Schirmer 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. It's all organic, and we have been farming since 95. I've been farming it since 97. So it's a long time. I just turned 50 and I'm just getting these flashbacks 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 at 60 to 80, because with 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. And so, yeah, we do all this kind of fun row crop, market stuff, strawberries and tomatoes. So all the lettuce broccoli has all the kinds of stuff. Get a lot of our seed from Johnny's.
Miranda: 2:30
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: 2:38
Well, I, I think I started farming when I was in college because I was trying to figure out how to save the world. And I kinda just stumbled on the farming I went to three different colleges, San Diego State business administration. I was kinda like not feeling it. And then 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 the internship and then I just never left once I started the growing stuff and running gardens and farms and meeting all the people and going all the places to different farms. I think that was a huge draw for me. Also food, you know, I love healthy food. Good food. And so, yeah, that's been Dirty Girl. I've been running it since 97 or 99. Something like that. We've 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 costly. We don't own any of our land. We lease everything. We love to one day do that, but man, that's been a 30 year dream that hasn't happened. It's supposed to happen. We've, you know, sold probably 20 different farmer's markets over the years. And we're, we're down to these key five. And we have a ton of restaurant accounts in San Francisco and Berkeley, Oakland and Santa Cruz. So we have crazy food region and people are really into it. And it's a very tight community, a lot of young people moving to the area to work in kitchens kind of, earned their chops in the kitchen with some of these chefs that are really amazing. So I get to be part of that and supply a lot of really interesting artisinal chefs with produce.
Miranda: 4:28
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.
Joe: 4:40
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 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. And we break it down. A what's called a farm box, regular farm box, smaller farm box, a small farm box. We have a salad box, which is just sometimes people just want, you know, lettuce, you know make salad. And then so we get people to sign up for that at varying times. Cause 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 weeks 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 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.
Miranda: 5:55
Awesome. 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 of 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. 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.
Joe: 6:33
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 in 20 weeks they'll get a discount if they pay up front. 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 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 farm box, like every week, an individual box, and then they buy it again and they buy it again, 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 lock down, people would forget that, you know, they need to sign up and they want to, it makes sense to do it weekly, you know, every week you're going to get up, get fresh produce and then, you know, put it in the fridge and you last it make it last all week or are you some people eat 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 when they sign up for 20 weeks, because that's a pretty long time. Some people sign up for bi-weekly 20 week, which is almost a year it's 40 weeks, you know, how they only eat one box in two weeks, but because we had 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 instead of to give us some money upfront, which we need, you know, especially coming into, you know, winter here and we're going to come into spraying. 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 into 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. 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 to have 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 farm, you can get stuck with accounts receivable 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. So, and that's just our farm box, our inbox on 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, emails, phone call, word of mouth, someone read something on a piece of paper and hands it to you at a market. And I'll take that on Tuesday. And you're supposed to be able to manage all that and then write them a receipt in QuickBooks, which we're 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 put in an invoice that 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 them or some of them be months old, right?
Miranda: 9:52
Yeah. So much time that you don't have.
Joe: 9:56
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 on and 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 is we should be getting paid more in advance. 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 even just pay it a couple of days before wholesale.
Miranda: 10:43
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 up front which like you had said is a huge benefit for you and other farmers to be able to take that cash flow 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 some people not 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?
Joe: 11:26
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 a card or bank right. Gets charged weekly. So you're only paying one than another and some people want to put up, you know, 800 bucks and that's great. Cause 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 Barn2Door, one of the things that we did early on was charged a small delivery fee. Now I never used to charge delivery fees. 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 them? Cost us to operate a delivery from Santa Cruz, driving all the way in San Francisco and east bay. The big loop, you know, it's a lot of gas, it's a lot of hours for whoever's driving. 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, on our home delivery, it's, 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 not a certain time, then they save seven bucks, but a lot of people want to just get it delivered to the house. Cause then you don't have to think about it. Maybe there at work, 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, this other expense in, in the delivery it's actually paying for itself. So it helped me on that, 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, Hmm, it's kind of a wash, you know, because it's paid for the driver at least. And so, it 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 $20 at a restaurant, you know, and you're like, I'm going to go all the way over this side to San Francisco for $20 order. But you know, they throw in $7 for delivery. Well, you know, but it just changes it a little bit. And people are more than willing to pay for it.
Miranda: 13:58
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 because buyers are lazy and they love convenience. And you know, you definitely want to be charging delivery for that. And so with your subscription is a really cool thing too, is you're able to allow late enrollment. So you had mentioned you have 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 weeks 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 kind of finish out those 20 weeks, which is really great. And then also they have the ability to have addons. 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, 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 two-door and 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?
Joe: 15:12
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 foreign 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. And what we do is, cause we go year round, where we are we don't get snow, we don't get hail, we don't close up the farm 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 and more than a 10 week or 20 week. It's just turn it on so that they won't to have to think about it. They'll just get an email confirming that they're going to get one. 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 again. 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 a 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 dodging the rain. So we we'll put in four strawberries, we'll put a six or 10 weeks subscription, and then as it gets towards the end of this year, And the end is, you know, we'll say November one. You can, you can order two weeks before and still fill out that automatic subscription until it ends you know, you're not, 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 disincentive to order late or start anything late. Cause there really isn't we don't have a season for the farm box, but for the tomatoes and strawberries, you know, I think you can, you can have two subscriptions, if you start a very beginning of strawberries, you can do it twice. You're going to 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 lot, 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 if they really start early. If you're getting a delivery and you're already paying seven bucks for your farm box, you can add anything on without an additional delivery charge. They already have you in there. So getting the farm box. 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 as Christmas presents. So it's nice for people to be able to add on to that stuff, you know?
Miranda: 17:49
Absolutely. Perfect. So now we're going to move into 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. And specifically how you utilize that, Joe with either your know, your strawberries or your tomatoes. But you know, first things first. Here's the 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. Commitments in advance. And then also the farmers you guys get to lock in that cash flow 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. They were already starting to put in their stores. I'm a CSA sign up 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 to start doing pre-orders. And what we've seen here at Barn2Door 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. 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.
Joe: 19:33
Yeah. Well, the interesting thing about us is that we're really known for our dry 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 will come and say one of 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 till like mid-July depending on the weather, but when 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 gonna have them eight or so, we can do that. And we can also the 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 two months their subscription starts right. 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 drum up 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 find 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 some interesting things we can do with, with tomatoes and strawberries.
Miranda: 21:19
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 channel?
Joe: 21:31
Instagram, we'll link to Facebook, but we're not as active in Facebook anymore. We use our MailChimp that synced with Barn2Door, 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 through your online channels, which is going to be like emails There's also just you and your own newsletter. People want to see what's going on on 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. 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. 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 that gives us an opportunity to push whatever we need to push and 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 and try to drive the sales on online, and so people can find us and, and see what we have.
Miranda: 22:51
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, emails, social, what have you, because 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. Awesome. So, you know, pre-orders and subscriptions as you guys have learned so far can really make a big difference in your farm business. But an 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. You know, we see here. At Barn2Door, 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 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. Having a email signup 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 a hundred percent 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, 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 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. So, what we see here at Barn2Door is farms with a hundred plus registered customers drive more than six times a 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. You know, a couple of thousand, and I know Joe, you have a fantastic customer list, I think you have about a couple of 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?
Joe: 25:24
Yeah. It's pretty crazy. I think I got into this learning how to farm, 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 restaurants. So we started with a decent grip. I think we had four or 500 emails that went out to restaurant people. That seems like an incredible amount of restaurants, you know, but , they got their lists now we took that and we transferred it on to our MailChimp account where we send now a newsletter and we send out 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. And so they go directly to our Mailchimp newsletter list. And we have a couple thousand few thousand, I'm not sure where it's pretty close to 3000 people that get this email. And so that's a lot of people that are gonna 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 Richard emailed back, 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 if he sends me an email about that. I know there's more than just one person doing it, right? What's funny. I was just gone for two weeks, check my PO box. And I, I, I mean, man, the stack of mail. 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
Miranda: 27:15
mail it out to everyone? Exactly the time that would cost the time the cost.
Joe: 27:22
It costs like thousands of dollars or something like that. I'm not even sure how much it would cost.
Miranda: 27:25
Exactly. And you know, you make a, you bring up such a good point because these days. Email marketing is so important. And you know, 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, you know, and following them along with their newsletters or what promos are happening this week from 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 in time. And you know, doing email marketing, especially with MailChimp, you see 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.
Joe: 28:23
Yeah, exactly. And you think, you know, as it grows, you're writing the newsletter. A lot of the stuff is just templated, and like a lot of things with the same tomato jar, same, the same list of like where our farmer's markets are. How to sign up as a wholesale customer is still there. You change a little bit, but then depending on how many, people have signed up that week, still just sending it out. It's not like if someone doesn't 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 and do 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 farm 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, the email is huge, because it just, it runs, and you can really use the different avenues in sales channels to drive into the same email list. You know, our farmer's market people go in there. Our farm box, people do that. A lot of people that are getting things for gifts, they get a little QR code on there and another friend has, you know, can sign up.
Miranda: 29:38
That's so great. Sharing how you utilize MailChimp and especially the Barn2Door 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 Barn2Door and MailChimp integration drive and increase of 30% in sales and also to 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 buyers, maybe that your strawberry season customers, what have you, and being able to target them specifically with kind of what's going on. And we see people who send segmented emails, enjoy a 14.2% higher open rate because they know that email is specifically for them and their interest.
Joe: 30:31
One thing that I think was really helpful that I remember that you helped us on Miranda was that, Barn2Door keeps track of your customers and also MailChimp keeps track of your customers. So they look at different demographics. One thing that Barn2Door will do is it can show people that haven't bought anything for X amount of months. You can write an email. You wrote one that, Hey, we're sorry, we haven't seen you in awhile. We'd like to offer you this 10% discount on a box, whatever. And then you just said, just to that demographic of people that haven't bought anything 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.
Miranda: 31:18
And from that one email, right.
Joe: 31:20
But within when you don't know, it's like, that was the one email that was just targeted to people that have bought stuff from us in the past, but haven't in a while. And then, but then you don't know, maybe that gets them back on board. You know, maybe they bought something, 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 buying more.
Miranda: 31:43
And it's, it's just so cool and it's fun to kind of, learn about it and test it out. 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 we kind of like, Hey, let's test something out. Let's target customers who hadn't purchased and maybe the past two months. And so what we did 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 of days later, we sent them another email. You know, in case you missed it, this promo code is ending soon, you know, get it. Place your order fast and, and utilize this discount. And then what we saw, I think overall for that week specifically, there was an a 35% lift in sales just from building out that journey. And so that just goes to show one that email marketing works Two, targeted emails marketing works and, you know, people get busy and they forget to, to purchase from their, from their farmer and being able to send those touchpoints to remind them, gets them back on board.
Joe: 33:11
Yeah. I think everybody uses email differently too. Just because you said email doesn't mean everybody's even seen it. A lot of people don't even see an email. So the next time it comes around, maybe they see it the next time, you know? So you do have to kind of bug. 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.
Miranda: 33:47
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, because 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 cheesy line. I know with the one that we did it was. You know, Caught you looking with the eye emoji and you know, that probably really helped them 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 and it cause emojis stand out. I'm definitely opening that email and most likely I'll probably end up purchasing through that email. Awesome. Well, I hope you guys learned a lot today 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 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, keep going. And then when you have that email list, start sending out newsletters. You know, especially with the Barn2Door 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. And like Joe had mentioned before, email marketing works have fun with it. You won't regret it. Joe as we're kind of coming to an end, what are the goals for Dirty Girl Produce for 2022?
Joe: 35:42
Oh man, like Dirty Girl for 2022 to buy land. I'm really, 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. 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 I'm 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 through our online marketing. That's like a, that's 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, it's kind of fun and challenging and I enjoy learning and figuring out how to do this stuff.
Miranda: 36:41
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 Barn2Door. So you're able to 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 lists? You know, how 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. We also have a farmer spotlight on him and a great podcast about his retail and wholesale markets and, you know, go ahead and sign up for his newsletter to see what he 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 customer. So again, thanks, Joe.
Joe: 38:13
You're welcome. Thank you, Miranda