Wondering if SMS marketing is a fit for your farm? It is!

You can’t get closer to your customers than their back pocket — that is, in their phone.

Especially for small and local businesses like farms, SMS (text message) marketing is a highly effective way to reach your customers. But it’s not just all about sales — there’s also an opportunity to reward your customers with time-sensitive updates and exclusive content.

Also, and most importantly — getting a text from a local farm is totally different from the ones your customers are already probably getting from big corporations like Starbucks. Striking a balance between helpful and invasive is harder for corporations than it is for small local businesses like farms. Texts from your local farm can feel intimate, authentic, and build a bond with the community it serves. That’s why we’re so eager to spread the word on the amazing opportunity that SMS represents for local farms!

What is SMS marketing? 

Short Message Service (SMS), known simply as texting, are text-only messages of up to 160 characters. Its cousin, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), is a text message with an attached file such as a picture, video, emoji, or website link. 

Here’s how SMS marketing is intended to work: Once a text message is opened, you have a chance to make your pitch — whether that’s a discount code, an event, or whatever your business objective is. If the message is effective, the viewer will click through to the linked call to action (CTA) and “convert” into your intended action. Cue the confetti — SMS just got you one more sale! 

Why should farms be using SMS marketing?

When used strategically, SMS and MMS can create highly relatable and targeted marketing that gives value both to the business and the customer. Some of the reasons why we love SMS for local farms include:  

Text message marketing has significantly higher open rates and click-through rates than email. Compare the average open rate of a text message (98% open rate) against the average email open rate in the agriculture and food service industry (less than 24% open rate), and SMS provides a clear advantage for getting your foot in the door. 

Text message marketing is another customer touchpoint, which helps your overall sales. The more positive contact you have with your farm customers, the more opportunity you have to foster trust with them, and the better chance you have of catching them when they’re ready to make a purchase. 

According to Klaviyo’s 2021 research, brands using email and SMS together have seen a 10% average increase in revenue 30 days after activating SMS, and a 21% increase after 60–90 days. Their conclusion: giving customers more opportunities to choose when and how to engage with you results in a better customer experience. 

Text message marketing is convenient, which supports conversion. Text messages are simple, straightforward, and don’t ask much from the customer other than clicking a link. It’s also increasingly the way we expect to engage with brands: instantly and easily. The simpler the purchasing process is for a customer, the less likely they are to be interrupted and abandon their cart. 

Text message marketing gives farms priority in a crowded marketing space. SMS and email marketing are channels that you can “own” because you’re not bidding against other companies to show up in front of your customer. This type of direct communication, combined with incredibly high open and engagement rates, make SMS an amazing opportunity for farms to cut in front of bigger companies that are hard to compete with in other digital channels. 

A pop-up sign up form on your website can be a friendly way to nudge customers to sign up for SMS.

How local farms can use SMS for marketing

If you’re starting to think that SMS could help you connect with your farm customers, your next thoughts might be: What if my customers don’t want to be bothered? What would I even send them? 

The answer to both of those questions are linked. First, you’ll only text customers who opt-in, so only folks who want messages will receive them. Our approach centers SMS as a useful and practical benefit for your customers, so getting them to sign up is easy. Opt-in prompts can be added to your website, checkout page, email newsletters, and social media posts with a clear explanation of what sorts of messages they’ll get and how often they’ll get texts. 

You might be surprised at how many of your customers want text messages. One farm for whom we implemented this strategy received over 70 signups in just the first 3 weeks!

Here are some of our main categories for leveraging SMS in a farm customer-centric way: 

Automations

Setting up automatic text messages for order reminders can help ensure your farm customers don’t miss out because they forgot the deadline. You just “set it and forget it”, and everybody wins.  

Transactional 

Many customers appreciate getting order confirmation, cart abandonment, delivery updates, and other transactional messages via SMS. 

Brand building 

To keep customers engaged throughout the year, farms can use SMS to share the simple joys of farm life. This is where the magic of text messaging and local farming overlap: giving your supporters updates right from the farm, just for the fun of sharing them.

Time-sensitive updates

Rain canceled your farmer’s market? Got a ton of zucchini that you need to sell this weekend? Having a freezer failure sale? These are some of the ways our farm clients are using SMS to get in front of their customers with time-sensitive messages. 

First-dibs sales opportunities & exclusive content 

You can also share other news such as new product offerings, restocks, and upcoming events, or resources like easy weeknight recipes. Some farms send updates to their SMS subscribers ahead of email and social — for instance, SMS folks could be the first to hear about early bird CSA deals or get first dibs on turkey reservations.

Customer service 

Depending on your preference, SMS can be switched to either a one-way communication channel from you to your customers, or it can be a two-way channel that also allows your customers to text you directly. This could be a great way to deepen ties with high value customers and/or manage customer issues quickly. 

Don’t wait to get your farm started with SMS 

Text message marketing has been around for a few years already, and customers aren’t always going to be open to adding more brands to their contact list. According to SimpleTexting’s 2022 survey, the majority of consumers (55%) are currently subscribed to receive texts from 1–5 businesses, suggesting there’s a limit to how many brands they want to see texts from. SimpleTexting’s survey also saw a 27% year-over-year increase in SMS marketing adoption by businesses, meaning more competition to be in that handful of top brands customers have allowed to send text messages. For this reason, there’s an urgency to get on board with SMS now before the barrier to entry becomes even higher for local farms. 

Text message marketing is a great way to elevate your digital marketing and meet customers where they’re at. Incorporating SMS into an existing marketing strategy can create a sense of cohesiveness that makes it easy for you to engage your customers — whether it’s checking in on their next CSA box, finding recipes on your website to cook with their CSA ingredients, or seeing what events are happening at the farm for their next free weekend. 

Interested in giving SMS a go, or seeing if it’s a good match for your farm business? Get in touch with our farm marketing team!

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