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What if I told you that every farm promotion has a second goal and most farmers completely miss it? Today I'm sharing the accidental discovery I made during a launch and how you can use your next promotion to grow your email list while you sell. Let's get started.
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Hey there, this is Corinna Bench and welcome to the My Digital Farmer Podcast. In today's market, it's not enough to
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just grow your product, you've got to know how to sell it too.
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Welcome to the My Digital Farmer Podcast where we reveal online marketing strategies and tips to help farmers like you get better and more confident at marketing, learn how to find more customers, increase your sales, and build a strong brand for your farm.
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Let's start the show. Well. Welcome to Episode Episode 352 of the My Digital Farmer Podcast. I am your host Corinna Bench, one of the farmers at Shared Legacy Farms out in Elmore, Ohio. I'm also the founder of mydigitalfarmer.com, which is all about trying to help other farmers like you get more confident in your marketing and sales strategy so that you can grow a profitable business. How's everyone doing today? Welcome back to all of my regular listeners. Big shout out to you if you are new to the podcast. I'm glad you're here today. Make sure that you subscribe to the show and go check out my first 10 episodes. They were designed to be an on ramp into the marketing lingo. If you're a little green when it comes to marketing, you feel like you have a lot to learn to get on board with what we talk about here. That's the place to go. You could also get onto my email list that's free. You can subscribe@mydigitalfarmer.com subscribe easy to remember. And when you do that, I'll send you an email every seven days for several months with some of my most important marketing fundamentals and principles. I'll be pointing to old past episodes that are really good, that are like mini trainings, sharing some free resources with you to jumpstart your activation into the marketing world. So definitely do that. Mydigitalfarmware.com subscribe Today's podcast is sponsored by my friends @localline. A new year is the perfect time
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to streamline your sales and grow more profitably.
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So if you run a CSA or
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you sell wholesale or manage both, localline helps you streamline your sales and scale with confidence. In 2025, farms and food hubs that used Localline grew their sales by 33%. Building on the 23% growth they saw the year before, average order values increased by 31%.
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I know mine did.
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And total order count grew by 9%. Look, real results across operations of all sizes. Localline brings everything together in one platform. They have CSA management, wholesale ordering, automated inventory, barcode scanning, a box builder, and pos so that you spend less time managing admin and more time growing your business. And switching couldn't be easier. There are no setup fees, my friends, no sales commissions. And their onboarding team will migrate your storefront for free. Free. Taking the workload off your plate. And that usually only takes a few days. As a podcast listener, you'll also get one premium feature for free for a full year when you use the code MDF2026 at checkout. So go to mydigitalfarmer.com localline and then enter that code MDF2026 Start 2026. Organized, efficient, and ready to grow with Localline. And now back to the show.
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All right, I'm back. I'm excited about today's topic. This is one of those topics that came upon me in a moment of inspiration. I usually have a list of topics that I'm trying to get through over the course of the year and sometimes moments like these happen in my life, in my farm business that inspire an important episode topic and they get to cut in line. And so today you're going to hear about such a story and the principle behind it. So this is a little personal. I feel like I'm at the confessional right now. I almost missed the importance of this principle and I'm glad I caught it. And I want to share it with you today. This past week, I was working on a brand new promotion. We are going to be selling an online store credit type of product, sort of like an online store membership. This is the first time we've ever done this. It's a beta launch. I'm positioning it as a beta launch. And so I was working on how do I want the offer to work? How many of them am I going to sell? What's the price point? Point going to be all of that. And I had this goal in mind that I want to sell 40 of these prepaid memberships. Our dollar figure is $300. They get a little bonus of 20 bucks if they buy within the promotional period, a seven day promotional period. And if they purchase this, then I go in and add this as store credit in the local line store. Okay, so we're just testing this, this concept out. We don't want to jump all in to a full, like, choice CSA model. We never want to do that actually. But we do have customers, I know that want to essentially be a CSA member, but they want to be able to pick what they want. So we're going to test it for a season with a small number and see how it affects our sales in the online store, how it affects loyalty in our other program. Just. Yeah, we're just kind of curious. So anyway, that's kind of the backstory. So I was building the offer stack, I was figuring out the positioning of the offer. I was writing the email copy that was going to be teased out the week before we actually opened the doors live in the store where people could buy this. And I decided that I would start teasing it on my public facing Facebook page, on social media and on Instagram. So I started saying things like, hey, we're going to be doing this, this new thing. It's going to be a beta test, but we're only going to be offering it to our email list. So I didn't give a lot of specifics about how the offer was going to work, just very generic. And I did mention that there's going to be a limited number. I actually at the time said 30. We've since upped it to 40. But I was telling people there's only going to be 30 of them and it's just not going to be promoted publicly. So if you want to know about it and you want to get the details for how it works, because I have a feeling it's going to be popular and it's going to go fast. So if you're kind of curious to know, is this for me? And I want to have an equal chance to get in on it. You got to get on my email list. Okay. So I just, I think I put up three posts about that the week before I began to publicize it through email. And then I shared in that post my produce availability sign up form, my basic email list subscribe form. Okay. So I did that and whatever. I went along with my days, had an amazing weekend and I was logging back into my email service provider. I use kit.com and on the dashboard I noticed, whoa, I have a big jump in my subscribers. And I checked the form source where they were coming from and it was that produce availability list form and realized that I had promoted it three times on Facebook in the last few days. And I connected the dots and here was sort of the insight moment that I had forgotten. I thought the Goal of this promotion was to sell 40 memberships, but I accidentally grew my email list in the process. This has happened before. When I caught this insight, I remembered that I had seen this lesson before. The past two years we have always done a spring plant sale in the month of March. This is when we pitch to our email list vegetable transplants that they can pre order for their gardens. And then we basically grow to the orders, the custom orders that we get. So we have a certain amount of space in our greenhouse. We grow a certain number of cucumbers, certain number of kale, certain number of onions, etc. We put that into our online store on local line. We pre sell it and we always sell out within two days. I mean we make a lot of money from this promotion and then that kind of becomes our focus in terms of production. We're putting these transplants in the greenhouse, we're getting them ready and then we pass them out to people. They come and pick them up usually around the weekend of Mother's day. And I love it because it's a grow to order, right? Like we only produce the things that we pre sold so we don't have a lot of waste anyway. Every year I tease this offer to the big wide world on my social media. I let them know, hey, are you wondering when the spring plant sale is going to be? Yep, we're doing it again. It's going to be on this weekend. It's coming up in a few weeks. It's always very popular. We always sell out. If you want to get certified organic vegetable transplants for your garden, you need to be on my email list because the email list gets the price list before anyone else. They see what's going to be in the catalog several days before they can shop that catalog, they can kind of map out what they want in their garden. They can put their ideal wish list together. Right. There's an advantage, an early planning advantage for subscribers because the catalog is only sent to insiders via email. So I kind of explain that in these social media posts in the weeks before I start pitching this plant sale to my email list. And likewise, last year I remember noticing I got over 125 new subscribers to my email list in that 10 day period. And I know it was simply because I was talking about this upcoming promotion that happened the year before as well. And I have noticed that the spring plant sale promotion is also a huge list generator for me. Okay, so do all of those 125 new subscribers end up buying something from the plant sale probably not. I think more than half of them probably do. But that's not the point. They don't all have to have purchased for this to be a win. Because they get into my ecosystem, they're now on my list. So even if they don't end up buying the product right away, they join my world. And now I can warm them up. And the likelihood of them eventually converting and buying something later is pretty high. So here's kind of the big reframe that I want to point out to you. I think most of us think as business owners, oh, the goal of a promotion is to sell a product. But there are actually two goals, aren't there? Number one, generate the revenue. And number two, grow your email list. And the second one might be just as powerful long term. And here's why. Because your email list is an owned asset. I want to just keep beating that drum. It's so important to be collecting an email list because this email list compounds over time. It gives you future launch power. It lowers your ad dependency. You don't feel like you have to try to pay Facebook or whoever meta to get your offer in front of the right eyeballs so people know that you're around. You have a free direct door access to that potential customer through email. And your email list builds a relationship equity because you don't just write emails that are promotional. If you learn how to do this right, I have an entire project inside of our marketing school that teaches you how to be a great email marketer. But it builds relationship equity because you're writing emails that add value to them, that share personal stories and connect with them, that give tips that are trying to coach them into a better version of themselves. Right. And that creates a connection and loyalty. So I want to, like, help you see how do we actually take this reframe of the goal of a promotion is not just to generate revenue, but to also grow our email list. What does that look like tactically? And I want to challenge you to remember to use the promotional Runway to help you grow your email list. What do I mean by that? I've talked about building the Runway before in other episodes when I teach about how to create an offer that will sell you. Part of building an offer, if you have a big promotion, part of that promotion is creating a 7 to 10 day Runway experience before you open the doors to the offer and using that time to accomplish several different things. Create momentum, create clarity about what's going to be in the offer. Give people a sense of confidence and clarity and resolve. So we don't just open the doors to our store and announce, okay, it's live, you can come buy this thing instead. We use that pre launch Runway period, intentionally. So, I don't know. I usually say seven to 14 days before the launch. You are teasing the concept. You're teasing the offer that's coming. You're hinting coming soon. You're creating intrigue about it. You're mentioning limited quantity, if that applies, or limited pricing or the first 10 or at this price. After that, it goes up to this or however you want to do it. You could position insider access as valuable and you require email signup to get the details. Now, this infers that you don't share all the details of your offer with everyone at every single marketing channel. This requires then that you become selective about, okay, I can talk about all my promotions everywhere, but maybe I don't give the whole story in all of those marketing channels. Maybe the details, the hardcore stuff that you really need is only for my insider list on my email list. That is a tactical decision. You then have to test and stay true to and see if it actually causes people to drive themselves to your email list. So you would say things like, hey, this won't be publicly announced. You're only going to know about it if you're on the list. You might miss it if you're not on the list. Only my insiders are going to get the early access email list gets first dibs, right? So you have to package it as you're messaging this. You have to give them a reason to see why it's valuable to be on that email list. And in the process, this does two things. It builds anticipation for this offer. And if you build scarcity into the offer in some way by limiting something now, you create this fear of missing out and people are more likely to go and take action on the first day or as soon as it's open. And you see this big flurry of activity and conversion on the front end of when the door opens. And then that just drives more momentum and energy. It's a ripple effect of energy in your brand, but it also turns your email list into kind of like a VIP club. All right? Do you see that? So instead of saying things like follow us on Facebook so you don't miss a thing, start saying, hey, if you want the good stuff, you need to be on my email list. And you can test things like, I'm trying to think of examples here of, of what the bait would be, what the messaging would be to show what Is that good stuff? Right? In order to be on the email list. Like why, why should I be on the email list? What's the benefit for me? So here's some examples that you might test early access windows so you could talk about how people on the email list are going to have a chance of a 24 to 48 hour early access window to get the offer before anyone else is allowed to even access it. You could try things like limiting products that you only hear about that are only available to the via to the email list. Like you don't bring it to the farmer's, you only get access to the bacon or whatever if you're on the email list. If you got a certain amount of bacon and it's limited, this could be a perk. You could say, listen, you're only ever going to get bacon if you're on my email list because I, I pre sell all of it to my email list before I even show up at the market. And then you come and pick it up here. Like I'm just giving you an example of what this could look like, right? So you could limit a product and only make it available for email. Now I'm not saying you guys don't freak out. Some of you are like, what? That's crazy. That's so challenging that that just disrupts me. Um, I'm suggesting that you, that you just test this, test it for like a week or two and see what happens. See if it works. And you may find that this becomes a, a huge driver of your sales. People still end up buying the bacon, but it also drives your email list growth. Okay, so you could limit products only available via email. You could also give people a first look at catalogs. This is another way to kind of word it. So you have a whole bunch of things that are going to be in that catalog in that launch. The plant sale is a great example of that. Why would it behoove someone to want to look at this catalog before the doors open if there's only so many plants transplants in that store? And they go pretty quickly, especially the really popular items. And my audience knows that. Well, they're going to want to get their list in order so that when the door opens, they're there, ready with their list, they can populate it in their cart and hit, you know, place, order and it's done. Instead of not having the catalog in advance. So not knowing exactly what's going to be for sale, having to go and spend an extra 10 minutes in the store looking at all the options, watching them slowly disappear in front of you as the carts, as the inventory decreases. I'm trying to figure out, what do I want in my garden? I don't know, how many. How many kale plants do I need and where am I going to put them in it and how am I going to space this out? Like, I have customers like that, who, who want the plan, who want the map, and they appreciate having that extra time to really think it through. And they'll probably end up spending more because they've had time to look at the catalog and see what's possible and think that all through. Okay, so for a product like that to say to someone, hey, you get a first look at the catalog, well, that's a really. That's like a bonus asset for them and totally worth giving their email address for that. So maybe you have products like that that would fit into a catalog kind of concept for a promotion period. You could word it as a catalog, and that would be a good piece of bait. Another thing you could test is beta offers that are only for subscribers. So you're not going to let anybody who's just out there, who just finds out about you and they're not on their email list, like, they're not going to have a chance to buy this pork share beta test. We just did this a few weeks ago. Or we launched a chicken, our monthly chicken share. But this year we added on 25 pork shares, monthly pork shares. And boy, they were hot. They sold out in four minutes. And I didn't let people from the outside world be able to access that price list. Like, there's no way that they could even have known about it. It was only talked about to the email list. They were the only ones who knew what the link was to the store to go get it, right? And so I could talk about, hey, I'm going to be selling pork shares. But the only way you're going to be able to find the link and do it is if you get on my email list right now, that becomes bait to want to get on the email list. So a beta offer, being invited to a special thing that only the insider first group can do, like that makes a person feel special. I want to be in the beta group. You could also try discount codes that are only sent via email. One of the things I love about Local line is that it has coupon codes as part of its basic features. And I can create an offer that week if I need to move inventory. And I'm willing to create a discount or Maybe I have like spend $75 and get a $10 off or get a free whatever. Like I can put that into a coupon code and I can promote the code to the list. I don't put it on social media. Not everyone's going to find out about it. It's just to my insiders. And now that's a perk that's worth getting on the list if they know that I'm passing out coupon codes occasionally to my insider group. Secret bundles that are not shown publicly. That's another way you could think about this. Is there a way that you can position your products or bundle your products or create packages during special promotion periods that again, you're only going to show it to a select small group of people. Now they feel special. So those are just a few examples of what that could look like. But over time your audience learns. If I care about this farm, I need to be on that email list, right? And that changes everything.
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Today's podcast is sponsored by my friends@citizensalmonalaska.com if you run a CSA and you're always looking for value added products that feel aligned with your farm but don't create more work for you, I want to tell you about Citizen Salmon Alaska. This is my fifth season partnering with them and we keep coming back for a really simple reason. It works and I genuinely love their product. Our CSA members love it too. The wild sockeye salmon is a standout and the scallops disappear fast and I just trust the people behind the business. Citizen Salmon is a small family run seafood company working directly with independent fishermen out of Homer, Alaska. They offer wild sockeye salmon, halibut, black cod, shrimp and even in house smoked seafood, which makes it an especially easy add on for CSA farms. Here's why this partnership is such a win for farms like mine. I get to expand my product suite without taking on fulfillment. I promote Citizen Salmon to my audience. My customers order directly from their website using a farm specific code. Citizen Salmon ships the frozen fish straight to them and I earn a commission without handling inventory, packing or delivery. And the timing just works. Halibut in the spring, salmon as the summer approaches and beautiful seafood offerings for the holidays. They're currently signing up new farm partners through April. So if you're curious whether this could be a fit for your CSA, head to citizensalmonalaska.com and reach out to Erin to get the conversation started. That's citizensalminalaska.com wild seafood done the right way and a partnership I'm proud To recommend. And now back to the show.
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Okay, so what does this actually look like in very tangible terms, depending on what type of farm you are? I have flower farmers. I have a lot of meat farmers in farm marketing school. I have vegetable growers, I have CSA growers, microgreen growers. I know there's so many different types of people that listen to this show, so I wanted to give you a few examples of how this could look in the real world. If you are a meat producer, perhaps you're teasing people to get on your email list when you offer bulk beef drops and you have that promotion coming up and so you start to talk about how this is happening, but you have to be on the email list to hear about it. Or maybe organ meat boxes are things that are specialty items. People who want those, they're like rabid fans and they really want those and they can fly off the shelf. So again, that could be something you say. Only people on my email list will ever be offered this. I don't publicize this to the outside world. Your holiday ham pre sale, the. The turkeys for Thanksgiving should only be offered to people on the list if they're. Especially if they fly off the shelf. Like that can become a piece of bait. To get people on your email list, talk about your limited freezer packs. Anything that's limited becomes an opportunity to grow your email list. If you're a flower farm, maybe you're talking about your dahlia tuber pre sale and only offering it to the people on the list. Or a bouquet subscription early bird offer that you have only to people on the list. Or a workshop seat release that's popular only to people on the list. Okay. If you're a vegetable farm, maybe it's. You pick. Reservations are offered first dibs to people on the list and it's then opened to the public if you have any spots left. If you have limited types of produce, I know for us like we have a very small amount of very popular currants and gooseberries. Those always fly off the shelf. And so I'm going to talk about those and offer those to my email list first. They should get it first because they've done me the service of getting on my list. So in return I will reward them and give them the limited product offers first. Now actually I give it to my CSA members first and then to my store customers. So there's kind of like a super VIP category of being on my CSA list. Right. But you think about the things that are limited, products that are in short supply That's a great example. Talk about how you have this product and because it's so limited, you're only going to give it to people on your email list first. Maybe you have specialty crops like an heirloom tomato box or I don't know, like a mushroom bundle. Again, it's limited or special in some way. You only offer those to the insider email list. Does that make sense? So you're thinking through stuff that's limited. Okay, so how do you actually technically do this? Well, all you need to do is have a dedicated email signup form in your email service provider. I'm often asked, what email service provider do I recommend for farmers? You guys? A lot of them are good. So I know a lot of farmers start out with mailchimp as a beginning starter point and I feel like that one is a little clunky once you reach a certain level, but it is a good place to start. So if you're at the brand new beginning point, go ahead and start there, realizing that you'll probably have to switch over to another one at some point in your future. And then that does being that you'll have to rearrange some of those automations that you set up every well and everywhere in your sales funnel, which is a little inconvenient. So I'm always a believer in like choosing the one that you're going to eventually graduate to. Like to consider just starting with that one so that you don't have to do that messy work later. So if you're thinking about what, what are those good ones you really have to shop around, pay attention to things like how easy is it for me to use, how much does it cost, what are the features that it offers? Does it actually interface with my store, with my online store? That is probably the number one question you should ask. And so that's the reason that I love Kit so much, because it does provide a lot of extra features. It's pretty robust, has a lot of cool automation factors, and it interfaces with localline so they talk to each other through zapier. And I can create automations. So I recommend Kit if you want to use them. I have a affiliate code, go to mydigitalfarmer.com Kit K I T. But other ones that you could look at are Drip and activecampaign. I also really like those as well. Okay, all right, that was a little sidebar, but you basically go and you create a email signup form in your email service provider. You name it based on interest. So maybe it's the spring plant sale insider list. Or maybe you make one that's just a little more generic, like your produce availability list. That one's kind of my catch all for lots of different offers and products. And you'll promote that form, that link, that URL link, and then you'll want to track the subscriber growth during the teaser phase. During this product Runway phase. You are, you are taking a look at what was my number before I started and what's my email list growth after I started that. And you'll want to track that measure that list growth as a KPI of your campaign. I also recommend that every year you kind of zoom out and look at all the promotions that you've done and notice which promotions grew your email list the fastest. And that's just going to give you some good insight. It's going to corroborate this principle and affirm it. And it's going to make you remember every time you run a promotion that you're also thinking through the lens of, oh, this can grow my email list. And if that happens too, that's sometimes just as valuable, if not more valuable in some cases as earning the revenue from the promotion launch itself. So before your next launch, I want you to ask yourself, how can this promotion also grow my email list? Not just how can this promotion sell my product. That one question will change how you message everything. And it's going to give you incredible results. Not just the revenue that you earn for this launch, but now you've collected a whole bunch of people who are eventually going to turn into buyers and increase your lifetime customer value. All right, so my closing challenge. I have a small assignment for you if you're willing to try this. I want you to think about what's your next promotion that's coming up? Your next significant promotion. Usually I have one every month, one every six weeks. And I want you to map out a 10 to 14 day teaser Runway and decide what's exclusive, what's insider, only, what's limited, and then go and create a post on your social media channel that's going to drive people to that email sign up. All right. Pinky swear. You gonna try that? Just go play in the sandbox, look at it as a beta test, see what happens. Be curious, learn from the data. And if you notice a spike in your email list growth, would you email me and let me know? You can email me at mydigitalfarmers gmail.com and just let me know what you discovered. I'd love to see if this works for you, too. All right, my friends, that's all I have today. Remember, you can learn how to do all of this stuff and more in detail when you join Farm Marketing School, my online membership. It is such an amazing group of people. I love building into the farmers that are in there. If you need help growing your marketing system, your marketing machine, I help you build the pieces step by step, month by month, piece by piece, one at a time, until you have them all in place and they're connected and they're working together. So I'd love to have you join the subscribe link or the enrollment link is mydigitalfarmer.com enroll and I'd love to hang out with you. All right. Today's show notes can be found@mydigitalfarmer.com 352 if you liked this episode, please share it with another farmer. You can grab the URL link, send it their way, or get on my email list@mydigitalfarmer.com subscribe and I always send you the podcast of the week and you can forward that email then to a farmer friend. That's another way to do it. And don't forget, I'm now on Instagram at my digital farmer. I show up there with a marketing tip, mostly in stories. I love to connect with you there. Thank you for joining me today, everyone. Hey, I am so proud of you. Keep going. Believe in yourself. I believe in you. Have an amazing week and I'll catch you next time. Bye. Bye.