A (4:14)
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.
