How To Grow Your Email List: 3 Steps for Farm Stores

An email address isn’t just a convenient way to stay in touch with your customers — it’s an opportunity to generate hundreds of dollars in revenue each month. 

Brooks and Blaine Hitzfield from the highly successful Seven Sons Farm found that for every new email address they acquired, they earned $90 in revenue. Their strong email marketing strategy, developed by farm marketing expert Chad Graue, was key to crossing the $1 million sales milestone. 

So, how did they do it? 

In this blog, we’ll explore why email marketing is so important for farm stores, and we’ll share the team’s top three insights on how to grow your email list and earnings. 

Let’s get started! 

Email Marketing for Farm Stores: The Why

With so many marketing channels to choose from, it’s hard to decide where to focus your efforts. 

It might be tempting to put all your energy into trendy social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, but email marketing is nonnegotiable for farm-to-consumer success — especially if you sell online. Here’s why: 

• Email isn’t going anywhere: Different social media platforms rise and fall in popularity, but everyone checks their email regularly for work, banking, and verifying logins. 

• Email isn’t subject to complex algorithms: Social media platforms use algorithms to decide which followers actually see your posts, but email guarantees your spot in a subscriber’s inbox. 

• Email is more personal: Your email subscribers have already opted in to hearing from you, which makes it easier to nurture a stronger connection and turn them into customers. 

• Email marketing has a higher ROI: Seven Sons Farm and other successful farm retailers generally see a higher return on investment for their email marketing efforts than other marketing channels. 

In short, email marketing is a tried-and-true way to build your loyal customer base and drive sales — but it only works if you have a healthy subscriber list. 

Let’s look at three proven ways to grow your email list, attract new subscribers, and build your relationship with existing customers. 

1. Announce New Product Launches Through Email

Adding a new item to your farm store’s lineup? Whether you’re offering summer-themed grilling boxes or house-made breakfast sausage, product launches are a fantastic way to excite new and existing customers. 

Farm-to-fork enthusiasts want to stay in the loop and be the first to order your new product, so this is a great opportunity to turn social media followers into email subscribers. Here’s how: 

• Create a social media post to let customers know that something big is coming. You can announce the product directly, drop hints, or keep it a mystery to generate more curiosity and excitement. 
• Encourage followers to sign up for your email list to be the first to try your new product. Make sure your email subscription link is easily accessible from each post or your account bio! 
• Reward subscribers with a special preorder opportunity or exclusive discount code. This will help you turn subscribers into paying customers. 

Seven Sons Farm uses this strategy during their annual salmon season sale. All year long, their customers look forward to ordering fresh, wild-caught Alaskan salmon, so the Seven Sons team encourages these fish fanatics to sign up for their email newsletter to be the first to know when salmon season starts. 

This approach has helped them grow their email list and enjoy more profitable product launches. 

2. Create an Evergreen Lead Magnet

When was the last time you visited a website and submitted your email address to a newsletter subscription box? Chances are, it’s been a while. 

The prospect of joining your newsletter usually isn’t enough to convince people to share their contact information with you — they need more. 

That’s why we recommend creating lead magnets. With a lead magnet, you’ll give website visitors something in exchange for their email address. Here are some examples: 

• Virtual farm tours: When someone signs up for the Seven Sons Farm email newsletter, they get access to a 30+ minute virtual farm tour, helping them feel confident that they’re ordering from a regenerative farm that uses sustainable, ethical practices. 
• Recipes: You can share recipes featuring your products, especially less-common cuts of steak or zero-waste products like bone marrow, to increase email subscriptions and drive sales. 
• Discounts: People are much more likely to sign up for emails and place an order in exchange for a monetary incentive. For instance, you might offer 15% off a customer’s first order if they sign up for emails. 

These lead magnets don’t have to be expensive or time-consuming to produce — they just have to appeal to potential customers. 

Related Read: How To Create a Farm Website in 4 Simple Steps 

3. Gate Your Pricing Information

Our next tip requires a leap of faith, but it can be a game-changer for building your farm’s email list.

We recommend gating your pricing information. 

In other words, customers have to submit their email address before they can see how much your products cost. The benefits of this strategy include: 

• Increasing the quality of your email leads: People who are willing to share their email are much more likely to actually place an order from your farm. 

• Providing more accurate shipping and pricing information: Requiring website visitors to share their email address and zip code makes it easier to display the products and pricing available in their specific area. 

• Preventing sticker shock: Individuals who share this information already see the value of your products, meaning they’re much less likely to be driven away by high prices. 

Worried that this approach might scare off customers? The Seven Sons Farm team was, too. That’s why they ran a test, comparing their email list and order data when requiring zip codes only versus zip codes and emails. 

Their results were clear: Removing the email requirement on their website resulted in a 50% drop in new customer acquisition. Other farm-to-consumer businesses ran the same test with similar results — and so can you. 

How To Grow Your Email List and Revenue With GrazeCart

Ready to grow your farm store’s email list, build strong customer relationships, and drive sales? Let’s recap our top tips: 

• Turn your social media followers into email subscribers by teasing new farm store products and offering preorders. 
• Give potential customers a reason to sign up for your email list through lead magnets, like special discounts or exciting content like recipes or farm tours. 
• Require potential customers to submit their zip code and email address before they see your prices for an easier shopping experience and higher customer acquisition. 

Putting all these tips into action might sound like a tall order, but that’s where GrazeCart comes in. Our all-in-one farm e-commerce tool includes everything you need to create an eye-catching website, manage new and existing customers, and send newsletters and promotions via email. 

Plus, it can help you make online sales, fulfill orders, and even offer revenue-boosting subscription boxes and bundles. 

Start your GrazeCart journey today by exploring our flexible pricing options.