pssst… This guide is designed for our elevator partners to get their ecosystem up and running. If you’re a producer looking for more information on how to use Marketplace please check out our FAQs
Hello!
Congratulations on the decision to use a Marketplace app from Barchart to power your business. We couldn’t be happier to have you onboard as a customer and the whole marketplace@barchart.com team is excited to work with you. This guide is designed for you to speed up adoption from producers, drive customer loyalty, and ultimately drive your business through better volume and pricing. Let’s go!
Go-to-Market Checklist
Here are all the things you should do to ensure success. Our product experts are standing by to help you along the way, so just shoot us a note at marketplace@barchart.com if you have any questions.
Get Ready! 🚦
Let’s get all the required accounts setup, and get your desktop looking spiffy. We’ve got this!
1) Get each of your grain buyers / merchandisers setup with cmdtyView Pro
Get Setup Marketplace - In order to interact with your new Marketplace apps, we’ll need to get your merchandisers setup with accounts for cmdtyView Pro. Your bundled Marketplace package comes with one cmdtyView Pro license, but you’ll want to ensure that each of your grain buyers is setup with their own account so they can create offers and chat with your producers in real-time.
Fill Out Your Profile - Once in cmdtyView Pro our marketplace@barchart.com team will work with your employees to setup their account profiles with information that will increase engagement (profile photo and title) with your producers. Did you know that having a profile photo can improve engagement by over 2,000%? At a minimum we need to make sure your company logo shows up in the profile photo.
2) Ensure Marketplace App is set to sync with cmdtyView
Setup Grain Bid Management - If you already use us for grain bid distribution, then you’re ahead of the curve. If not, we’ll need to work with you to get your public bids flowing through our system.
Link Offer System - Each of your authorized grain merchandisers will be provided with their own credentials for our offer management system. This is where you’ll manage your producer relationships and offer deck.
Sync Marketplace with cmdtyView - Our onboarding team will setup a dashboard in cmdtyView Pro that will allow you to interact with offers that farmer’s create or even create offers on their behalf. You can now view all of your farmers and offers in the same screen that you monitor cash markets, futures prices, and get your hedge off. We’re making you’re life easier already!
3) Let’s start the process of getting scale tickets and other farmer data in the app
Reach out to your Grain Account Provider - First, you’ll want to reach out to your accounting provider to let them know you need to get your producer’s data into your new Marketplace app and Barchart is serving as your technology provider. Please loop marketplace@barchart.com into that conversation and we’ll drive it from there.
Have your People Call our People - Then our amazing data integration team will work with your IT professionals and your accounting system provider to get this going as fast as possible. If you’re able to provide us with the appropriate technical contacts on your side that will help greatly.
First let’s start with… reading in Scale Tickets, Contracts, Settlements, and any other data your users are asking for. We pull the data down and then distribute it back out to your clients in our apps.
After that’s done, we can work with your accounting provider to start the process of pushing matched transactions into your system through the Marketplace and cmdtyView Pro connection.
Prepare for Liftoff - Depending on the depth of our existing integrations with your provider, and their feedback on your specific implementation, we will be able to come back to you with a project plan and timeline to get the data into your new app. It’s important to you and it’s important to us.
Get Set! 👟
Now that your merchandisers are setup, let’s make sure your apps are available and your website is setup to support a successful launch. This stuff is important. We’re here to help!
4) Get your apps (mobile and desktop) ready for distribution
We’re going to need high resolution logos so that your product looks its best. Please send these logos to the onboarding team at marketplace@barchart.com.
Work with us to create an optimized user experience in discovering your app and how it appears on the user’s screen (Apple Guide, Google Play). Here are some fields you’ll want to consider working with us on.
App Title on Phone - This is what appears on the home screen under your app. Typically you’ll want to target around 10 characters. 15 is generally the maximum you’ll want to do
App Store Title - This is the title of the app in the relevant stores. For iOS you can use up to 30 Characters and Android allows up to 50. Choose a simple, memorable name that is easy to spell and hints at what your app does.
App Store Subtitle - Your app’s subtitle is intended to summarize your app in a concise phrase. Consider using this, rather than your app’s name, to explain the value of your app in greater detail. This can be up to 30 characters
App Store Description - Provide an engaging description that highlights the features and functionality of your app. The ideal description is a concise, informative paragraph followed by a short list of main features. This can be quite a few characters, but having something that is ~1000 or less would be ideal
App Store Keywords - Provide a list of up to 100 characters to use. We use “grain, elevator, cash bids, offers, scale tickets, contracts, futures, ag, ethanol, markets” by default
Once we have your branding in place, we’ll be able to get your desktop application launched and listed in our Marketplace directory. It’s starting to feel real!
At the same time our top-notch technology team will work with Apple and Google to get your apps listed in the official App Stores for iPhone and Android. 📱
And…… we’re done. Wow that was easy. Let’s see what’s next.
5) Make sure that your new Marketplace app is easy to discover and tied into your website
Let us help you get a custom domain name that will make your Marketplace solution easier to find. By default your domain will be cmdtymarketplace.com/#/us/your-acronym. Let’s spruce that up a bit and make it easier to tell people where to find your app. Pick a domain and we’ll work with you to redirect it to your marketplace domain address. Here are some examples to help you get started: stonegrain.app, stonegrain.market, getstonegrain.com.
Now we’ll work with you to add badges for each App Store onto your website. These will link users to your page in the App Store and prompt users who visit your site to download your app on their phone. This is incredibly important so let’s do this.
Apple App Store Badges (p.s. it’s high-res, it just doesn’t look like it until you download the file).
After that, let’s make it easy for users to access the platform on their desktop. Just add our badge to your homepage and you’ll be getting producers registered for your service in no time. We can even build out a page that explains the service if you’re interested.
Get the Badge (p.s. it’s high-res, it just doesn’t look like it until you download the file).
Copy:
Section Title: Get Free Access to our Marketplace
Copy: Make offers and chat with us in real time with cmdty Marketplace
Now Go! 🏁
We’re almost there. Now let’s take it over the finish line and provide your business with the fuel it needs to take it to the next level.
6) Let’s distribute your Marketplace solution and get you more business
This one is easy. Just send an email to your producers inviting them to join your own branded marketplace. Our marketplace@barchart.com will work with you to write copy and ensure you send them all the information they need. We provide an example of an email that you can use below, but definitely take a look at some of the things you absolutely need to include in your note.
Link to app stores - Please make sure that you provide download links to both the iOS App Store and Google Play.
Link to desktop version - Please provide them with a link to your branded URL or at the very least include a link to https://www.cmdtymarketplace.com/#/us
Send a mass text to your producers to prompt them to download the app. We’ll need to include links to both the iOS App Store and Google Play. If you use us for alerting services, we can help with this important step
Work with us on a case study. We’ll do all the hard work, all you need to do is provide a quote. We’ll market this on social media to our large following of producers and you should do the same. We’ll include links to download your app along our marketing efforts and we’ll be finding new producers for you to work with in no time.
Write a guest blog post on the Commodity Blog. You write about your business goals and how we help, and we’ll provide link backs to your website. This will help you drive more traffic to your business through SEO and engagement with our large monthly audience.
Issue a press release. All press is good press, so tell the world what you’re doing. If you need help let us know and our Marketing team (marketing@barchart.com) will assist you in getting setup.
Before you go
As partners in growing your business, it’s our responsibility to work with you to ensure success. Please reach out to cmdty@barchart.com with any feedback