January 2025 Farm Marketing News
Happy New Year! We hope you had a joyful holiday season and are starting the new year feeling positive and reenergized. This month’s issue includes planning for CSA Week, Shopify and Square updates, a custom Grazecart website, and more — plus, meet our newest consultant, Airin! Dive in for some tips on getting yourself set up for success below!
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Are you ready for CSA Week?
CSA Week is coming up very soon! From February 16th through the 22th, farmers and organizations are encouraged to come together and promote CSA across the country. This annual CSA celebration is Organized by the CSA Innovation Network. Their team has put together a free digital toolkit with resources, tools, and templates to help you promote CSA leading up to and during CSA Week. Sign up here to get your digital toolkit today!
More Farm Marketing News + Tips
ACRE: Strategic Planning for AgriClusters
AgriCluster Resilience and Expansion (ACRE) is a professionally-facilitated strategic planning process to help groups of farmers work together and compete more effectively. ACRE helps local and regional groups of farmers and their stakeholder allies build more resilient “AgriClusters” by identifying shared concerns, histories, values and opportunities. Through this they create a strategy to work together going forward.
This training program provides specific instruction for food and agriculture professionals to facilitate the ACRE Process with farmers and other community stakeholders. The ACRE Facilitation Training is a fully online, self-paced course. It is FREE for NAFSN members, and membership is available on a slide scale to ensure accessibility.
Meat Supply Chains Business Builder Grant for Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming
Grant proposals are now being accepted by the Northwest & Rocky Mountain Regional Food Business Center's Meat Supply Chain team for small Business Builder grants between $3,000-50,000. The purpose of this competitive grant program is to expand the capacity of meat, seafood and poultry businesses that provide important services to small or mid-scale meat and/or poultry producers and brands. Applications are due by March 7, 2025.
For more info and to apply, see here!
Abandoned Cart Update Needed for Square Websites
On January 21, 2025 abandoned cart emails in Square Online will be disabled and the abandoned cart reporting will be removed. This feature will need to be enabled in the new Abandoned Cart email automation in Square Marketing. There is no change to the functionality but if you’ve customized your abandoned cart email template in Square Online, you will need to review the new template design in Square Marketing to make any changes. These email-related metrics will only be available in Square Marketing from 1/21 onward once your automation is enabled there. If you already subscribe to a paid Square Online plan, you’ll automatically receive access to the Abandoned Cart automation at no additional cost.
Recent Shopify Updates
Shopify POS Updates:
Tap to Pay is now available on Androids for accepting contactless payments on your phone.
Accept in-person card payments even if your network is down. Payment information is saved and processed when your POS is back online.
Shopify POS now supports Shopify Bundles.
Cart loading speeds have increased by up to 50%, for a faster cart and checkout experience for your customers.
Get more customized insights using the metrics and dimensions you choose with the new analytics, now rolling out to everyone.
What We've Been Up To
Custom GrazeCart Website
We designed a custom GrazeCart website for Fischer Farms, a family farm raising beef and selling other local goods like pastured pork and poultry. The new farm website design features custom design, optimization of conversion rate (the rate at which web visitors become customers), and best practices for SEO
Meta Ads
We also helped Fischer Farms promote their new product availability at Fresh Thyme grocery stores around the state with a combination of social media strategy, content development, and advertising. Our targeted ads reached people living close to Fresh Thyme locations in Indiana who are likely to be interested, in order to drive foot traffic to the stores and support in-store purchases.
We've also been working with this Indiana farm on other Meta ad campaigns as well as Google Shopping, Google Ads, and Drip email/SMS automations.
"I did want to tell you that both Fresh Thyme locations I sampled at today, five total people came in and said that they came in because they saw our Fresh Thyme ad, and one person came in and said that the ad reminded her that she wanted to pick up pork chops because she was from the same town that the Fischer's are from. So I thought that was pretty cool and it definitely substantiates how important it is. Thank you so much for everything you did!
We’ve had wonderful, wonderful feedback from people on the new website.
[On the shipping ads], last week we had 37 new D2C customers and I feel it is from the ads and improved SEO/Google reach. I can only see things going UP with the metrics you shared below and what we will be doing with Meta and Google! I really have tried to employ what I am learning, so thank you.
Also, I just found out we received our IN-TAP grant! You received SO much praise for your proposal! Really, it was a great one and another really good example of why Grapevine stands above the others! Thank you and a million thank you's for your patience through this process."
— Heather Tallman, Fischer Farms Marketing Director
Customer Journey and Conversion Rate Optimization Webinar with Local Food Marketplace
Grapevine partnered with LFM on January 14 for their webinar on customer journey and conversion rate optimizations. If you missed it, you can still access the recording here and sign up for future free webinars.
Want to Work With Us?
Our waitlist typically peaks in winter, and it currently stretches until April. Don’t wait to book your spot — scheduling a call secures your spot on the list, and puts you in line for any earlier slots that may open up!
Download our latest pricing guide, then book a call to reserve your spot. We look forward to partnering with you!
Meet Our Newest Team Member, Airin
Airin started working at Grapevine in November 2024 as our newest Senior Marketing Consultant. You can learn more about her below!
A few fun Airin facts:
📍Where are you located?
Chicago, IL
✨What were you doing prior to working at Grapevine?
Content management, business development, and talent acquisition/onboarding/training for a nimble content marketing agency
🍓 What’s your current favorite meal?
My ALL TIME favorite meal is chicken piccata with angel hair pasta. I only make it for special occasions — I made it on NYE and it was delightful!
🏕️ What do you like to do in your free time?
Shop local food/producers, cook, bake, go birding, enjoy the great outdoors with my pup, read, thrift, travel, and hit up all the amazing community events we have in Chicago.
🇯🇵 If you could travel to one place in the world right now, where would it be and why?
Anywhere warm and sunny!
📚 What was the last good book you read?
The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer
🍽️ Who would be your ideal dinner guest?
Robin Wall Kimmerer 😋
🎄 What’s your favorite holiday?
Indigenous Peoples’ Day
🐶 Do you have any furry co-workers at home?
My 4-year-old morkie, Bingo
✨What’s your favorite thing about working for Grapevine?
The people, the clients, and the mission-driven work
More Local Food Marketing Resources
