← My Digital Farmer Podcast
My Digital Farmer Podcast
357 How I Built a Spring Plant Sale Launch That Sold Out in 48 Hours
00:45:46
Loading summary
Transcript26 lines
- [00:00]
A
We just sold out our entire spring plan sale in 48 hours and had to shut the store down five days earlier. In this episode, I'm walking you through exactly how that launch was built. From the emails to the offer, to the behind the scenes decisions. So you could do something like that too. Let's get started.
- [00:25]
B
Hey there, this is Corinna Bench and welcome to the My Digital Farmer Podcast. In today's market, it's not enough to just grow your product, you've got to know how to sell it too. 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. Let's start the ship. Well, welcome to episode 357 of the My Digital Farmer Podcast. I'm your host, Karina 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 your sales strategy. Strategy so that you can grow a profitable business. How's everyone doing? Welcome back, all My Digital Farmers. Big shout out to my regular listeners. Glad you're here. And if you're new to the show, welcome. Make sure you subscribe and go check out my first 10 episodes if you feel a little unsure about marketing lingo and like you need a quick 101 education. Those 10 episodes were designed many years ago intentionally to be an onboarding ramp into the marketing space for future podcast
- [01:58]
A
listeners like yourself who just needed to
- [02:01]
B
kind of go back and hear the
- [02:02]
A
basics and the fundamentals.
- [02:05]
B
So that's a great place to start. And then you can kind of jump around in the archives and choose what suits your fancy. Another great way to learn the ropes is just to get onto my email list, because when you do, I have an email nurture sequence, like an automation that will drip out over the course of three months. And you'll get an email every week that gives you like the next piece of information that you need to know. They all build on each other. I'm giving you tips, I'm pointing you to the really good episodes, I'm sharing the fundamentals.
- [02:34]
A
I'm giving you freebies and gifts and
- [02:36]
B
free trainings and all kinds of good stuff. So subscribe to that. You can go to mydigitalfarmer.com subscribe and that's free and that'll get you into that onboarding sequence.
- [02:49]
C
Today's podcast is sponsored by my friends at localline. A new year is the perfect time to streamline your sales and grow more profitably. So if you run a CSA or 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 30 33%, building on the 23% growth they saw the year before. Average order values increased by 31%.
- [03:24]
A
I know mine did.
- [03:26]
C
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, 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.
- [04:40]
A
Today I want to pull back the curtain on one of our recent farm promotions that we do every year, our spring plant sale, and show you how it actually worked, what we did differently this year. I've done an episode on my plant sale before, but this year it just went so smoothly. There was so much energy behind it and I had a few aha moments and some new things that I tried
- [05:11]
B
that revealed some marketing principles.
- [05:13]
A
And so I decided I wanted to use this as a case study for an episode. Even if you don't do plant sales for your business, I think you can learn something by listening to how I put the promotion together, how I maneuvered the offer a little differently. What were some of the marketing principles that I relied on to work? And they did. So even if you're not ever going to do a plant sale promotion, keep listening because the principles that are in here are sound for no matter what kind of promotion you might run. So this wasn't just me tossing up a few social media posts in my private group or sending a one off email that said, hey, the plant store is open. This was actually engineered as a real launch with intentionality. So I Had a pre launch Runway. And if you don't know what that is, I teach this framework inside of farm marketing school. There's a whole project now called how to launch a promotion, and it teaches the launch framework. So we had a pre launch Runway. We built anticipation. We engineered an actual offer. I was actively managing inventory during the cart open phase, creating all kinds of energy, doing some social media, and the result, in short, was that we sold out of all of our inventory in 48 hours. And I had to close the store five days before the cart was supposed to officially close because we just literally had no more inventory. I mean, I had like two zucchini plants and one random tomatillo, you know, not enough to really keep it open. So I just closed it. So I'm going to walk through this whole process with you. This is going to kind of be a deep dive into a specific promotion. And I want you to listen for the principles behind how to launch something. Let me start out first by just letting you know what our goal was. One of the things that I teach inside of this launch promotion project in for our marketing school is that we start out with a goal. We always know what is it that this launch or this promotion needs to do for me. And in my case, I needed to generate $11,000 in sales. Frankly, we could sell a whole lot more than that. But we're limited by greenhouse space. And we like, we fill up this one greenhouse just with transplants. And Kurt's actually thinking about adding another greenhouse just so that we can grow more product for this plant sale because there is so much need and we could make a whole bunch more revenue. Anyway, our original goal was just $11,000 in sales, but we ended up doing $13,810 on our opening weekend. Our average order value was $72, and that's up quite a bit from $55 last year. And here's the part I really want you to hear. I did this almost entirely as an email promotion. So I had about 4,000 people, maybe a little less, getting the email promotions. And some of those people were CSA members who were inside of my private Facebook group who were seeing social media posts in that group as well. Okay. But a lot of the people on the email list are not in my csa. And so they were not seeing social media. They were just getting this announcement through email. So basically today, I'm going to walk you through exactly how I built this launch. I'm going to talk about what worked really well. There were a few things that were messy and what I hope maybe you can steal for your own next farm promotion, whatever the product might be. So the first principle that I want to point out to you as we get started is that this was a launch, not just a sale. And I think this is a big mindset shift we don't want to overlook. Most farmers think, oh, I'm going to do a plant sale. And then what they actually go and do is they post a few times, they send one email, they open the store kind of on a random day when they think, oh, I'm ready to open the store. And they hope that people will show up. And that's not a launch, that's just like, oh, I've decided to sell something. I'm just going to open my store. I guess we'll call it a sale. A launch is more intentional. It has phases. So it has what's called a pre launch phase. It has a buildup of anticipation where you're teasing the offer. You, you're making people aware of what's coming, but they can't buy it yet. So that they get educated and they get excited and they feel the urgency and the scarcity. A launch has an intentional offer and that offer expires at a certain point. So that creates a reason for someone to buy during this window. And there is a defined cart open window and a point when the cart closes. And a launch also has a sequence of communication. There is a rhyme and a reason for what we say when we say it, in what order. So I approached my plant sale promotion like a launch campaign. I used the formula that I used for my CSA early bird renewal campaign. The same formula I used for my recent monthly chicken share and pork share promo. The same formula I used for my online store credit membership, which was a new beta launch we did this year. And it went crazy and sold out really fast too. It's the same formula. This is the formula that I teach inside of our marketing school in our new project, which is called the Launch Formula. There is a framework for how this is done. Okay, the second thing I wanted to highlight is that for this year's plan sale promotion, I decided that email was going to be the engine that communicated the offer. And I really want to emphasize this clearly. I could have decided to really go all out and showcase this offer on my public facing Facebook page so that random people who aren't on my list yet could find out about it and just click on the link and go to the store and start buying. But I decided no, I only wanted to market this to people who had made an investment and gotten on my email list. And then I also marketed it to the private Facebook group where my CSA members live because they are my kind of my VIPs and that's it. So yeah, I posted a little on social media, like on the public facing page in the week before. But that stuff was mostly just to drive people onto the email list because I wanted control, I wanted attention, I wanted focus. And email is where people actually see the message. They get to read the details of the offer they're actually going to click. So what I was doing on the public facing page about two weeks before I opened the offer is I was just kind of saying, hey, a plant sale is coming and I'm going to be sending out a catalog. If you want to get the details and see what the inventory is, you can map out your garden. Those plants are going to fly off the shelf really fast. So you're going to want to have a plan before you go to the store. If you want that. You got to be on my email list, right? And I refused to give the details publicly. It was just sort of, hey, this is coming. If you want to plant a garden, if you want certified organic transplants, which is like hard to find in our area, or if you know someone who does. Just the way to do this is to get on our email list because these are going to sell out fast. Okay, so instead of trying to like shout into the void on social media, I concentrated my energy and my messaging where I already had eyeballs, where I had trust, and that was my email list. And I think that's why this worked. It also just was a huge time saver because I didn't have to do a lot of extra energy on my public facing pages too and create all that content. I could really just focus on email. Okay, so I want to talk a little bit about the pre launch phase. The pre launch phase began on March 1st. So we opened our cart on March 7th at 8am which was on a Saturday. And so I took the whole week prior to that and used that as my pre launch Runway. And this is sort of like the warmup phase. The warm up page is a really critical part if you're doing a launch, because what you don't want, you don't want someone to come to your store the day the card opens and just be like, I don't know, what do I want? And like be looking around like you want them to come with intention. Like, I already know what I want. I've got my List. I've got my plan A and if plan A sold out, I got my plan B. Like they're ready to buy and they are chomping at the bit to buy because you've created this sense of urgency and maybe even a little bit of fear of missing out. So they are there with intention. So that whole pre launch Runway is all about educating them, making sure they know what the offer is, knowing what the product is, knowing how the fulfillment is going to work, answering all their frequently asked questions, removing all of the points of friction in the buying process and validating that this is what I want. Creating urgency and scarcity. Okay, so the Runway officially began March 1, but honestly it probably started a little bit earlier if they were paying attention to my public facing Facebook page. The, the, the business one. About two weeks before that I was teasing content like the catalog is coming get on on the availability list. You're going to want first access. You're only going to hear about it if you're on my list. Right? So during that pre launch week, here were some of the things that I was doing to build up excitement here. Here are what those pre launch activities were for this promotion. Number one is I gave the catalog early. I didn't wait until the cart open day to send the email that says, here's what's in the store. I said, plan your garden now. Print out this catalog, circle things you want, think it through, maybe even, you know, map it out on some graph paper. Right? Like imagine what your garden's gonna look like. So by the time the store opens at 8am on March 7, they weren't browsing. They, they were executing. And the, the process of giving the catalog early was also a huge incentive for growing my email list, which I did big time. Over those two weeks, I spent an entire episode talking about how that happened. And oftentimes our launches, one of the goals or outcomes of our launches is simply that it also grows our email list, even if they don't all buy. And that is a huge benefit of doing launches. You should do launches just to grow your email list, frankly. So that was kind of a little side note. I also used this pre launch Runway phase. I used engagement during this phase to build like ownership. So I did things like there were posts like hey, guess the first crop that we're seeding? Or what are your favorite garden planning tips? And I got a whole bunch of ideas from people sharing their ideas. I even had a little contest where I said, what plant are we missing in the catalog? Like what do you Wish had been included. And I told them that I would choose one answer from the ones that they suggested and we would put in one flat of that particular item. One flat. So that's not going to be a lot of inventory. So whatever one that was going to be, was going to be limited. So that created another limited scarcity element. I actually didn't get like a super clear winner, by the way, with that particular post, but it still created a lot of fun engagement. I ended up picking, making a call. I ended up picking the winner, cabbage, mostly because I thought, well, out of all of the ones that were suggested, that's the one that's the most broadly appealing. I could imagine many people just kind of wanting that classic in their garden and I was really trying to think of things that would be classics. So even though that engagement didn't give me, like a clear winner, like, oh, a ton of people chose cabbage, it was still useful because it got people thinking about the sale, it got them involved, and it gave me a reason to have a contest and, like, have a People's choice item. So, okay. I also built anticipation because every piece of communication I was putting together, the emails, the social media, I kept pointing to the call to action, which was, here's the link. You're going to go to shop the store. It opens at 8am on March 7th. I kept saying 8am I didn't just say March 7th, I said 8am on March 7th. And I hope you can feel the distinction there because as soon as you add a time now you're, you're creating another level of like, why, why, why is it 8am? Is it important that I shop right at AM? Is it going to be that popular? Right. Just gives this illusion. In my case, it's not an illusion, it's actually real. But this, this sensation of this is going to be popular. There's a reason I want to go right when it opens. Now, I want to talk a little bit about the offer itself because I did do some different things this year to the offer, and it did some major heavy lifting for me. The offer was engineered. And I want to break it down for you. Number one, I raised the price. I always talk about how there are four ways that we can raise revenue in our business. One of them is we can raise the price. And it's not, it's not a big jump. Last year the three packs were $5. This year they were $6. And it seems silly, like, to even point that out right now. Some of you might be like, that's not that expensive. And some of you are like, oh, my gosh, that's expensive. It really does depend on kind of where you are in the world. When I made that. That call to raise the price, I just did it without even thinking about it. In the two weeks before, as I was planning the promo, I'm like, we're just going to raise the price. This is, like, ridiculous. $1. That's not a lot. Our people love, love this stuff. This will be an easy way to increase revenue. No one's going to snitch over, have, or, you know, get upset about having to pay an extra dollar for a plant pack because. Because there's three in a, you know, in a pack. So I just did it. And when I told Kurt, like, two hours before I opened the cart, I was like, oh, by the way, I raised the price. Like, he. He actually freaked out a little bit when I told him that. He's like, krita, that's a lot. You should tell me stuff like this. But I was like, well, I've already been promoting it that way, and no one has said a thing, so I'm pretty sure it's going to be okay. And guess what? No one did complain. And the sales came in super fast. Like I said, we sold out two days. So clearly that wasn't a factor for people. And so that was kind of a little bit of a lesson for Kurt and for me, too, that I think sometimes we are afraid to raise our price just out of fear, not looking at data. And I guess I took a little bit of a risk, but I just felt really confident about it. I knew how much people loved our plants. We've been hearing a lot of people who were excited about the plant sale. They were asking me, when's it coming? And I could just sense that people were chomping at the bit, and we were going to have a lot of interest. And so I thought, you know what? This is a way for me to. This is an opportunity for me. I can raise the price. That's going to maybe scare a few people away, but it's going to end up bringing more revenue. So I went for it, and it worked. So the second thing I wanted to point out is we created a bundle this year. I've never done a bundle in the spring plant sale, but I decided to create what's called the starter garden combo. I don't know if I like that name now, but I priced it at $60. It was a 10 pack, and it was basically me curating 10 of our most popular plants into one pack. And I really did kind of look at what were the. What are the most popular sellers in years past. This was meant to be, like, for people who come in and are, like, overwhelmed and like, I don't know what. What would be good things to put in my garden. And if they're really a beginner customer. And instead of them just choosing like five or six items, I wanted them to see this starter thing that was 10 and end up buying more stuff because there happened to be 10, because I decided there would be 10 in the starter pack. And, you know, to be confident and be the curator of the best sellers and say, look, these are the ones that most people like. These have a great track record. These are delicious and tasty. These are the ones you should get. And I remove that friction from someone who's overwhelmed by gardening and they can just say, done. That's the one I'm going to get.
- [23:11]
B
Now.
- [23:11]
A
There's also a little bit of efficiency here because people know that these fly off the shelf, that things were going to disappear quickly. And so if they're in competition with a bunch of other people at the same time who are all shopping in the online store at the same time, and they can just go in with one click, put 10 plants into their cart and check out, they're going to beat the other people who are having to add 10 different items one at a time. Right. So there's a little bit of logic there that I actually hinted at in some of my messaging. Like, if you want to beat the rush, this is the fastest way to do it. Stick. Just stick this bundle in, and then maybe you can tag on one other little item. I'll talk about that in a second, too, which many of them did. Now, I also positioned this product, the bundle at the top of the store. It was the first thing they saw. And I did that on purpose because it became the price anchor. If you don't know what a price anchor is, I have a whole episode about that. I'll link it up in the show notes. This was a psychological move on my part. You put the expensive thing first, and that then positions the items behind it, which are priced lower. They feel differently, that price anchor up top. So that everything else kind of felt like a steal. And we sold 16 of those bundles, which was, frankly, more than I expected. I put 20 in the store, so I was very happy with that. But I think most importantly, it influenced everyone else's cartoon. So let me talk about that.
- [24:53]
B
Today's podcast is sponsored by Farm Marketing School. Before we wrap up today's episode, I want to talk to those of you who are thinking, okay, I get it,
- [25:03]
A
Corinna, I need a better marketing system.
- [25:06]
B
If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you know I don't believe in random point and shoot marketing. I don't believe in just posting and crossing your fingers and hoping. And I definitely don't believe in working harder every season just to feel the same stress again. And that's why I created Farm Marketing School. It's my monthly membership where I teach you, step by step how to build a connected marketing system for your farm. Not just more ideas or fluff. It's a structure inside fms. We start with a sales funnel audit so that you can map your entire customer journey and see what's working. Because you probably have some things that are working and what's missing. And then you build one focused marketing asset at a time. Your weekly email system, your promotion calendar,
- [26:07]
A
your product ladder, your lead magnet, your social media plan that actually supports your whole system. And each of these projects is designed
- [26:15]
B
as a 30 day finish line so you don't overhaul everything overnight. You build intentionally to the plan and over time those pieces start to connect. And that's when the flywheel starts spinning.
- [26:29]
A
That's when revenue feels more predictable. That's when your marketing feels lighter.
- [26:35]
B
Farmers inside FMS have told me things like, I finally feel like I'm on the right track or we saw a huge jump in sales during our slowest months. That's not because of luck, it's because of the structure. So if you're the kind of farmer who has proven that you can grow something, but you're bumping up against the ceiling of now what this is for you, it's $69 month to month. There's also an annual option if you know you're ready to commit and you can learn more about Farm Marketing School
- [27:09]
A
and join my amazing community ofFarmers@mydigitalfarmer.com FMS
- [27:15]
B
all the details for how it works is there.
- [27:18]
A
That's mydigitalfarmer.com FMS and now back to the show. I added a threshold bonus. So part of my messaging, there was a special offer in the emails that went out that said if you spend $75, you're going to get a free basil plant. And 72 people took me up on that offer. 72 people qualified. They spent over $75. So they're going to get a free basil plant. And the basil plant sold out like it was the first one of the first herbs to sell out in the first few hours. And so you could still get a free basil plant if you bought over $75. Right? Like, that offer still stands. So that was kind of a fun little leverage point there. And I told people about that. Like, hey, if you see the basil run out and you end up getting this, hitting this threshold, you'll still get a basil plant. It's just going to automatically be added to your order. So that basil wasn't just a gift. This is what I want to emphasize. It was an AOV lever, an average order value lever that I could pull so people would think to themselves, oh, I'm at $66, I might as well just add, you know, a couple more things. And that's how you nudge behavior and get people to put one or two more items into the cart, which raises the AOV up a little bit higher. And then finally, I used scarcity. I pulled the scarcity card. So we grow to order for this particular promotion. We have limited greenhouse space. Some items are genuinely harder to produce. Like the tomato variety packs where we, our three packs sell. We have, you know, one chocolate cherry, one sun sugar, and one just basic red cherry. And those are kind of a pain to, like, retransplant into those packs. So we don't do a lot of those. Those are just. I think we had like 24 of those. And when they were gone, they were gone. So when they sell out, I don't restock those because Kurt's like, I don't want to do a bunch of those. That's a pain. We'll just, just offer them. And that's kind of a first come, first serve thing. And so that was a real scarcity play. Like, I could talk about that in my emails and say, if you want the tomato variety pack, you really got to get in there in the first probably half hour because there's only 24. And they're going to go really fast. And once those sell out, you can still get those varieties, but they're going to be in three packs. Now you got three plants of red cherry tomatoes. It's a lot more, but that was a type of scarcity that. That worked really well for us. Okay, so those are just some of the highlights of my offer. I want to briefly just mention the email arc. So this is one of the things I teach in the project in for our marketing school as part of the launch. Like, what kinds of stuff then are you emailing? I sent five key emails, each one Had a job and they all fired in the pre launch phase. Yeah, I don't think I. I sent, I sent 12 minutes after cart opened, just to announce that the cart was finally open. But all of this came out before we actually officially opened the store. So Tuesday's email, its purpose was to basically explain how it worked, the overarching plan and the catalog. Give the catalog. It talked about what the pickup dates were gonna be, how pickup worked. I explained the basic offer, the bundle. It was like everything you need to know about the offer. Then I sent one on Thursday, which focused more on the bundle. It really talked about the bundle, it was a new item, and how there was a reason to maybe go for the bundle if you're new or if you're trying to beat the crowd and beat the rush. And then I also talked about that free basil and that bonus. And the goal of that one was just to try and encourage people to want to increase their cart size. Because if they're already at $65 or whatever, they're going to be like, what's another, you know, what's another $10 so I can get that free basil? Like that? That's an easy yes. And if a whole bunch of people do that, well, that increases your revenue significantly. Friday, I think the email said, set your alarm. And it was just kind of a urgency play. Like, hey, there's going to be a lot of people wanting to do this. You're going to want to take care of this. Here's the items that are going to fly off the shelf. If you want a basil, if you want a rosemary, if you want this variety pack of cherry tomatoes. Like history has told us, they sell out in the first 20 minutes. You got to get in there tomorrow at 8. Okay? And then on Saturday, I sent the email that said, hey, we're live. The store is open. Gave them the link to the cart. And then on Sunday, I had an email that was ready to go that just talked about low inventory. The bonus is ending tonight. Don't forget, you have to spend $75 to get that free basil by, by the end of Sunday to qualify for it. And the goal of that was to just capture the stragglers. As it turned out, I didn't have to even send that one because I could tell that I was going to sell out imminently that evening. And so I chose not even to send that one. So here's kind of the takeaway of this section. I wasn't just, you know, sending random emails. I was moving people through a Sequential messaging process. And each email removed friction. It answered questions, it increased urgency, it created clarity, it was building confidence. So they knew what to do was like being a guide. And I'm holding their hands and I'm saying, go do this. Here's the plan. So there was absolutely no question what they had to do and when they had to do it. The next thing I wanted to point out was that launch day. So the day that the card actually opened was not a passive day. This is often the case when I'm launching some of my bigger promotions. I don't just, like, set it and forget it and go off and just do some farm chores. I'm paying attention, and I'm kind of active in the store. I'm watching what's happening. I'm watching my inbox. I'm waiting for questions. I'm waiting for technical problems or texts from customers who are having issues. And this is something that a lot of people don't think about. So I just want to point it out here. I don't think I've ever had a launch day that went perfectly without any problems. There's always some sort of like, either technical issue where someone can't get stuff working, or they. Or they did something wrong or they did a double order or they want to change their site or whatever. So I'm just available. I'm watching the email flow and I'm responding, I'm making adjustments. And so it felt a little bit scrappy this year watching the sales come in in real time. I was actually downloading pick lists about every 30 minutes on local line on our store because I was trying to track what was selling, what was getting close to zero inventory. I had to make some decisions based on last year's sales on how many flats to put in for, you know, each of the different types of transplants. And I did my best guess. But then when I actually turned on the store and I saw what was moving, there were some things that were way more popular than others that were quickly heading to zero. In the meantime, I had two extra. Two or three extra flats of kale that was just sitting there. And so I was kind of adjusting inventory based on what was flying. I would lower the amount of kale, for instance, and add another flat end of the sun sugar cherry tomatoes as I saw them approaching zero. The Olympus pepper, the red pepper was another one that I was just. I just kept going. The cucumbers, oh my gosh, the market. More cucumber. I just kept replacing that one. The San Marzano tomatoes. I was just. I just kept shoving inventory in, and then I'd have to go and reduce it somewhere else because, like I said, we only have so much space in our greenhouse. And Kurt's like, this is the number of flats we can fit in there, so we cannot oversell. So I was kind of having to do a little bit of that. So just borrowing flats from slower items, reallocating inventory. And one of the reasons I did this was because I didn't want the store to feel picked over, that if someone came in later in the day and saw, oh, everything good is gone, but there's like, there's still obviously inventory in there, but it's for things that they're not really excited about. It's not the best sellers. And then their cart shrinks because they're only going to get the things that they really want. They're not going to. They're not going to go for the kale and the tomatillos. So I was kind of protecting the perception, the. The experience of the store. And frankly, I was really trying to keep the average order value high. So that was a little bit messy. I was doing math in my head, trying to keep the flats even. That was really fun, but it mattered. And it. I think it's ultimately one of the reasons why our AOV jumped so high. And I had to be kind of on deck for a good four or five hours that whole morning, as that was all flat, fluttering around. So I just want to put that out there into the space that don't just, you know, have an important promotional launch and then just walk away, like, keep your eye on it if there may be some things that you have to adjust. So here's what the numbers told me. I want to just compare 2025 sales to 2026, because there's pretty interesting data here. So in 2025, we grossed $10,900 in sales, and in 2026, it was up by 30%. We grossed $13,800 in sales. Okay. Our AOV in 2025 was $55. Our AOV in 2026 was $72. You guys, that's huge. But this is interesting. The average number of items in 2025 was 8.7, and in 2026, it was 8.9. So that's kind of fun to look at those numbers, right? Because what does that infer? Here's what's interesting. People didn't end up buying more items, but they spent more money. So that tells me that the growth is. Came from a Few things, it came from a combination of pricing, increasing my price, of bundling, so creating that starter combo pack, which we didn't have last year, and price anchoring it. The growth came from having a bonus threshold of 75, so that AOV was 72. That's really, that's really close to that bonus threshold, isn't it? And just better merchandising in general. The growth did not come from more traffic, it did not come from more customers. In fact, I did not grow my customer, my new customer base very much at all this year. But it was just better strategy. So that's something I want to work on next year is trying to get more brand new customers to buy. That wasn't the case this year, but hey, I'm still happy because I increased my revenue by 30%. Okay. And finally, the most strategic thing I did after the sale, well, one of them, I wanted to make sure that I talked about this because this is almost like my favorite part. After people purchased, I had an idea that I should send a confirmation email. Now let me just back up. Local line automatically sends a confirmation email when you buy. So they had that and it's got the instructions for how to pick up. But I wanted to send another one from my email service provider that basically said, hey, you're one of the lucky ones because we sold out in 48 hours. Did you know? I wanted to make sure that I said that. Why? Because I want to train this early buying behavior. I want them to learn that this is a promotion that flies off the shelf. So that next year they're thinking, oh, I need to buy early. I want to have this buying frenzy again. And if I don't tell them that it sold out really fast, they're not going to know. Like all the people, the first people that bought, the first hundred people that just went in there and didn't have any trouble and bought their items, they have no idea. They just think, oh, I bought something. Unless I make sure and tell them, hey, we sold out in 48 hours. You're lucky. Now they're like, oh, I am. And that's going to help me next year when I promote this again to create that scarcity and urgency. So just think about that. If you ever do sell out of something fast, don't just assume your customers, I don't know, know that. Point to it. Point, point to the fact that it went fast. That's going to help you later on. And frankly, it might help you in your next promotion. You become known as a brand that sells out quickly. Okay, so key takeaways. Let's wrap this up. If you take nothing else from this episode, here are a few just final thoughts. Don't just open your store, launch the product. Warm up your audience with a pre launch before you sell, engineer your offer to shape the behavior of their buying. Remember that there's a difference between an offer and the product itself, so taking the time to build an offer makes a difference. Use some scarcity. Email is your most powerful tool and be sure to communicate and train your customers for the next time. Okay now if you're listening to this episode and you're thinking, oh, okay, I want to do this for my strawberry you pick or my CSA or my fall moms or whatever, this is why I created a new launch project inside of Farm Marketing School. It is now live. So if you want to see the step by step process and apply it to your own product. If you want to do a formal launch, I will watch walk you through how to do that. I'm actually in that project, including the master Google Doc from this spring plant sale along with my master Google Doc for two other promotions that I've run, the Chicken share promo and the online store credit membership promotion promotion. You can see the whole thing, all the emails, all the social media posts, the email arc, the offer, the stats, just the whole strategy. So I teach you, I teach you all of it. So if you want to have the template that is a great place to go to learn it. And you can study how I built the email sequence, how the timeline works, the social media and so forth. So you don't have to guess your way through this process. You can model the formula that actually works. So if you want to learn more about how to do that, just go to mydigitalfarmer.com FMS and enroll for a month. Just go get the stuff from that project. You can come in and out, just get the info for that one asset and you'll be on your way. So let's wrap this up. Here's your question for the week. What is one product on your farm that deserves a launch? Like a real launch? A I don't think you need to do this whole shindig for, I don't know, just like a weekly special. If you're just going to have a special on watermelons this week, like we don't need to have a humongous launch. This is for stuff where you're, you've got a significant signature offer, you're going to make some major bank, you've got big revenue goals behind it and you need to build some energy around it. Okay. It's for things like a spring plant sale, like a Thanksgiving turkey promo, or your big inventory blowout that you do once a year, or your CSA renewals. Right. So what is a product on your farm that would deserve a launch like this? What could it look like if you built some anticipation, if you built an offer instead of just announcing that it's for sale? And I want you to try using this formula, even if it's just in a modified way, sometime in the next few months on a promotion like that, and see what happens. Okay. That's all I got today. Thanks for joining me. If you want to get the show notes for today's episode, head over to mydigitalfarmer.com 357. If you like today's episode, please leave me a rating or a review. Or if you know a farmer who could benefit from this podcast or another episode, send them the link, let them know about it. I want, I just want people to know about this resource. There's so much good stuff in here. I want to help other farmers get better at selling. I just really feel like this is one of the keys that's going to help us become profitable faster. We need to learn how to sell. And if you want to get on my email list, I have a ton of free resources that are going to help this become possible for you as well. Your marketing is going to get stronger. Just go to mydigitalfarmer.com subscribe and I'll hook you up. Thank you so much for joining me today, everyone. Have an amazing week and remember, I believe in you. Bye. Bye.