Quickstart Guide - Agribusiness
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
Hey there!
We’re thrilled you’ve decided to use an enterprise solution (Marketplace + cmdtyView Pro = Growth!) from Barchart to power your business, and we couldn’t be happier to have you on board. This guide is designed to help you spread awareness of your new app, speed up adoption from your producers, broaden customer loyalty, and help you grow business.
The whole marketplace@barchart.com team is excited to be working with you, and is here to provide any assistance you may need.
Your success is top priority, so consider us your partners who are ready to help!
Go-to-Market Checklist
We’ve written up a set of suggestions and guidelines that we’ve seen drive success - this plan is top-tier, and our product experts are standing by to help you throughout the whole process.
Any questions? Feedback? Shoot us a note at marketplace@barchart.com and our team will be more than happy to assist.
Let’s Get Started
Time to get all your required accounts set up so we can get your team operating. Let’s dive in!
Merchandiser Setup - In order to interact with your new Marketplace app, we’ll need to get your merchandisers and grain buyers set up with accounts for cmdtyView Pro. Your enterprise package will come with at least one cmdtyView Pro license, but you’ll want to ensure that each of your grain buyers is set with their own account so they can manage offers, view farmer data, and chat with your producers real-time.
Fill Out Your Profile - Once in cmdtyView Pro, our marketplace@barchart.com team will work with your employees to set up their account profiles with information that will increase engagement (think profile photo and title) with your producers. Did you know that having a profile photo can improve engagement by over 2,000%? Let’s be sure that, at a minimum, your company’s logo is being used as profile photos (but keep in mind, everybody likes being able to put a face to the name!).
Ensure Marketplace App is set to sync with cmdtyView
Setup Grain Bid Management - If you already use Barchart for grain bid distribution, you’re ahead of the curve (and have great taste). If not, we’ll 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.
Let’s get all that farmer data into your Marketplace app and in your cmdtyView Pro dashboards
Loop in your Grain Account Provider - First, you’ll want to reach out to your accounting provider to let them know you need to get your producers’ data into your new Marketplace app, and that Barchart is serving as your technology provider. Please include us (marketplace@barchart.com) into that conversation, and we’ll be happy to take the wheel.
Team Work Makes the Dream Work- Our stellar integration team will work with your IT pros and your accounting system provider to get this moving and grooving ASAP. If you can, send us the appropriate technical contacts on your side to help speed up the process.
Let’s first start with reading Scale Tickets, Contracts, Settlements, Balances and any other data your users have been asking for. We’ll pull the data down then distribute it back out to your clients through the app.
Afterwards, we’ll work with your accounting provider to start the process of pushing matched transactions into your system through the Marketplace and cmdtyView Pro link.
Prepare for Liftoff - It’s as simple as that. Once we’re in the loop with your ERP provider we can deploy your apps in just a few days. That said, there is still a lot of work to do to ensure success, but don’t worry -- we’ve got your back!
Now that the hard work is done, let’s get your app out into the wild
It’s Picture Day - Please send high-resolution logos over to marketplace@barchart.com so that your product can look its best. In the meantime, we’ll get started on creating some promotional materials for your app that you can use to spread the word once your app is live (more on that below).
Release Your Apps - Once we have your branding in place, we’ll be able to get your application launched in the app store (Google Play and Apple). We’ll also create a custom landing page with all of your app download links.
Driving User Adoption and Engagement
Your merchandisers are set up. The data is all pulled in and ready to roll. Now it’s time to ensure your apps are available and your website is set up to support a successful launch. As always, we’re ready to help with any and all marketing and distribution needs you may have.
Based on our experience, partners that follow these simple steps can 50x their user adoption - so let’s do this thing!
Make sure your new Marketplace app is easy to discover and tied into your website
Make your app easy to find online - We can help you get a custom domain name to make your Marketplace app easier to find. By default, your domain will be cmdtymarkeplace.com/#/us/your-acronym. We can do better. Spruce up your domain and make it easier to tell people where to find your app by picking a domain name, and we’ll work with you to redirect it to your marketplace domain address. Here are some examples to help you brainstorm: stonegrain.app, getstonegrain.com.
Put app store badges on your website - Let’s get badges to each app store up (Apple, Google) and running on your website. These will link out to your app’s page in the app stores, and prompt users who visit your site to download your app on their phone. This is a really important step, and we’re here to help.
Ensure your website is showing up as a Google My Business page - If you Google your business, does a panel pop up to the right of the search results outlining your business’s credentials? This is a good feature to take advantage of to boost SEO efforts. We can help fix this if you’re not finding the panel.
Help us help you, with branding and design - Our team will create a variety of promotional marketing graphics for you to use on your website, in emails to producers, social media, and wherever else you can think of!
If you have sizing requirements or have something specific in mind for graphics you’d like to see, send a note over to marketplace@barchart.com and our designers will work with you to get the content you want. Otherwise, we’d be happy to send over graphics we think look great!
Putting these graphics on your website? Consider linking them out to the app stores’ download pages, so that when a visitor to your site clicks on an image, they’ll be taken to the app store for downloading.
Now that we’ve got plenty of ways for growers to find your app, let’s do some proactive outreach. This is perhaps the most important part of your go-to-market strategy, so let’s keep it going!
Spreading the Word with Proactive Outreach
We have a lot of options to help amp up your distribution efforts and spread the word about your great new solution. We suggest taking a “more is more” approach to getting the word out by exploring a few different mediums of communication with your producers. Let’s get started!
Send a Getting Started Email - Let’s send an email to your producers inviting them to join your new Marketplace app. Our team will help you to write copy and ensure all the info they could need is included. Here is an example email that you can use, but we’re happy to help you put it in your own words.
Keep it Going - Rome wasn’t built in a day, and as experienced product marketers we know that user adoption might not come after just one email. We’ll help you drive user adoption through an email campaign spaced out over the course of 5-6 weeks. These will outline specific features of your app, and can include short videos showing features of the app. If you’re not a fan of the breakdown below, no worries! We’re happy to work with you to get the exact email campaign you’re after.
Example Email Campaign Outline:
Our New App - An introductory email, includes links to app stores, and an overview of features
Access Your Contracts & Tickets - Overview of the grain account data farmers can get via your app
Getting Started - Overview of registration process and a video of what this looks like
Make An Offer Today - Video of how easy it is for farmers to make an offer
Using eSign - Brief overview of the eSign feature with a video
Text Messaging will work for you - A proven way to drive user adoption is by sending onboarding texts to your producers. You’re already telling them about grain bids - so you might as well tell them about your new app. We have two recommendations:
Footers - Remember that cool URL we secured earlier (e.g. stonegrain.app)? All you have to do is start adding this to the bottom of the text messages you already send. This is a layup, so let us help you get started!
Dedicated Texts - Our go-to-market experts can help you send out a series of texts to drive awareness of your app and showcase the features that matter. Add in a link to your app landing page and you’ll 50x your user count in no-time. Here are some examples…
Try Our New App - Intro text letting producers know that you have an exciting new solution!
Access Your Contracts & Tickets - Overview of the grain account data available via your app.
Make an Offer Today - A “Did-you-know” text to inform your customers that they can submit offers digitally.
Try eSign Today - Sign contracts and documents all within the app.
Boost Your Content Marketing and Drive SEO - We spend a lot of time on this and can help you optimize your marketing strategy. Our reach will drive results for your firm.
Collaboration Announcement - We will publish a blog post outlining our enterprise collaboration. We can get this out across our syndication network and get you more traffic, and can even work with you on an “official” press release.
Case Study - We’ll do all of the heavy lifting- all you need to do is provide a quote. We’ll market this on social media to our large following of producers, and you can do the same. Download links to your app will be included, and we’ll be finding new producers for you to work with in no time.
Commodity Blog - We’d love to have you write a guest post about your business goals, how we’ve helped, and a link back to your website. This will help boost your SEO efforts by offering engagement with our large monthly audience.
Let’s get Physical… - If you opt for our premium onboarding package our marketing wizards will help you with direct mail outreach, stock cards and handouts you can keep at your offices, and even give you some cool posters you can use at the office or post on the corkboard at the coffee joint downtown.
Direct Mail - With your permission we can help you create a postcard to send via the good old USPS directly into the mailboxes of your producers. It’s a simple, but effective means of getting the word out.
Business Cards - These things work. We give you business cards with QR codes that drive people to your apps. Hand them out when growers visit the office or give them to your merchandisers - just get the word out!
Posters - Let us help you create some customized posters you can hang in the office. When growers come in, you can point them to scan the QR code and download the app while they help themselves to a cup of coffee.
One Last Thing
As partners in growing your business, it’s our responsibility to work with you to ensure success. When you win, we win. Please reach out to cmdty@barchart.com with any feedback. Thanks for choosing Barchart.