An educated guess about your audience is sometimes all a small business has to build a marketing strategy around. You have a good idea of who might buy your products, and you cater to their interests and type. You might gear your copy toward one gender, or carefully choose your images to reflect a certain age range.
But doing it based on data is better. That’s where predicted demographics comes in for Greensbury.
They’ve used predicted demographics to zero in on who opens emails—and who purchases. And sometimes there are discoveries that can help them guide their strategy.
“We discovered a few months ago that our average customer who is likely to purchase is in a higher age bracket than we had thought,” says Hannah. “Also, a lot of men are opening emails but not purchasing. It’s women who do the purchasing. That influences the copy in our emails and the kind of message we put out there.”
From branding to sales
The online delivery service for organic meat, grass-fed beef, and sustainable wild seafood has a small team at their New York headquarters. Two employees, the CEO, and three part-time contract workers, to be precise. They don’t work with an agency, so all the heavy lifting is done in-house. Marketing functions as both a branding and a sales tool, and Greensbury’s integration with Shopify allows them to not only use email for engagement, but also for selling product.
“We use email marketing to create the brand personality and also drive revenue and promote sales,” says Hannah Agatston, director of partnerships and marketing. “I love looking at reports to see what products people are buying from our campaigns. Even when we’re not offering a deal, we still see revenue come in directly from Mailchimp.”
Their target market is women who are shopping for food for their family. The Greensbury customer is someone who cares about ethical, sustainable food production, and they cater to her needs. Everything is flash-frozen and shipped with dry ice in an insulated cooler so customers don’t have to be at home to receive a shipment. They package their product to eliminate food waste, packing per serving in contrast to a 2-pound package of ground beef that’s hard to re-store in the freezer without losing flavor.
