Episode 21 - eCommerce: Does Dairy Have A Future?

Beau Hayden  0:00 

But if we can capture a real dairy moment and a real dairy conversion on that first trip, we have an 82% likelihood chance of repeat purchase. So we can intercept within that path to conversion on that first time and being in the right place at the right moment with the right creative to influence that conversion. We have a strong strong chance of remaining in that basket and not necessarily losing out to a competitive set that we don’t want dollars shifting away from us or volumes.

Jennifer Glover  0:40 

Hi, I’m Jennifer Glover, a dairy farmer from Georgia.

Jennifer Heltzel  0:44 

And I’m Jennifer Helsel, a dairy farmer from Pennsylvania.

Jennifer Glover  0:47 

On today’s episode of your Dairy Checkoff podcast we’ll be talking to Bo Hayden, Vice President of insights, sales interest, and Stephanie Taylor, director of business development, about how the pandemic change grocery shopping online and our partnership with Amazon and what this means for future dairy sales. Both can you tell us about your role at checkout?

Beau Hayden  1:13 

I am the VP of insights, dairy management, and currently set I work on our partnerships across dairy gold, Amazon, Instacart, and a few other retailers also included within that role is leading up the Federation wide ecommerce strategy and partnering with a lot of our SRS and sister organizations ie milk, pep and music.

Jennifer Heltzel  1:33 

So Stephanie, can you tell us what you do at checkoff

Stephanie Taylor  1:36 

as a part of my role as director of business development, just really working to develop campaigns and working in partnership with retailers on promotions to drive drive dairy sells and capture and focus on our demographic?

Jennifer Heltzel  1:51 

Can you tell us what e commerce actually means we throw the term around all the time.

Beau Hayden  1:56 

So E commerce is the electronic fulfillment. Basically, any purchase Ecommerce has been around for about 40 years now she’ll start to hear different buzzwords like phygital, which is the marriage of physical shopping, plus digital shopping. So you’ll start to hear that I might use that word a couple of times, just to give it as a definition, really, you might see that sistered with a word as omni channel. So again, kind of blurring the lines between that physical shopping experience and then our digital shopping experience. In the past three years, we’ve seen a lot of explosive growth within penetration and household usage. From an E commerce standpoint, the percentage of shares from a online grocery perspective used to be 3% of all grocery sales were done online pre pandemic, and now we are around 12 to 13%. So really fast growth in the last two to three years.

Jennifer Glover  2:46 

My husband asked me last night, so what are you going to be talking about this time? And I said ecommerce, and my dairy farmer has been said, What’s that? And I said, you know, it’s when you buy your groceries online and you pick them up, and he’s like, Who would do that? And I said, Well, millions of people actually it’s kind of a growing thing. So that was one of my questions that I was curious about how has that changed? Since kind of we’ve moved past the pandemic? And you really answered that but how is checkoff really involved in E commerce?

Beau Hayden  3:19 

So you know, from a national level, it’ll pass a Stephanie for more of a regional local level, look at it. From a national level. What we’ve done is we’ve partnered not only with Amazon but also with other retailers across the board. So Kroger, Albertsons Instacart, almost any and every retailer, in a sense, has a digital footprint or experience available to consumers or end users. Prior to the pandemic, we were seeing about a household penetration hovering around six to 8% of usage within grocery. But during the pandemic, we saw that explode up to about 70% of households are seeing at least one trip per month online. Now, as we’ve kind of come out of I’ll call peak pandemic. We’re seeing that hover right around 50% or one and two households doing at least one purchase a month within the online space as a checkoff. What we have done is at the national level allowed ourselves to be a part of that experience by either driving traffic from off site so other locations within the web. So picture, Bloomberg, Yahoo, finance, Dick’s Sporting goods.com Anything and everything along those lines and driving traffic back to a retailer or also participating within a retailer’s Media Network online, which would mean that we are ultimately helping showcase any dairy product real dairy within a consumers path to purchase or their ultimate shopping journey.

Stephanie Taylor  4:44 

So we had started testing the waters just a little bit prior to COVID. We had actually run some banner ads in partnership with Kroger, just to see what the overall results were and also wanting to make sure that very had a presence on these shopping platforms speak As we know that our competitors do after COVID, we recognize that this is a space that we have to have a presence. And so since then we’ve run a couple of ads that have been developed around special occasions such as holidays, or targeting our specific demographic with lactose free messaging. So that’s some of what we’ve completed in the past 18 months,

Jennifer Heltzel  5:19 

I do an awful lot of shopping online. I think the pandemic really changed how I grocery shop, how do consumers find dairy products online? And how do they find new dairy products? Are there ways that you can drive people to see what options are out there? Sometimes you get pigeonholed into you get the same old things every time. How do we help consumers find new products.

Beau Hayden  5:43 

As we’ve seen penetration grow from a usage perspective, especially from consumers. You know, the retailer’s, themselves are innovating in how many ways we can actually touch a consumer prior to their purchase. So with that being said, we can do it through keyword search, I would search milk. And then within those results, we can elevate real dairy to positions one through eight ideally own where 80% of the clicks do happen on that search results page. From there, we also do conquest a little bit and within the spaces of adjacency. So with that being said, like milk and cookies, so if somebody is searching cookies, we will serve a banner ad to drive them back to milk to ultimately have them convert and add milk to their online cart can do the same thing across anything coffee, any adjacency that we really see. So we try to build those baskets. One of the things that retailers do love about dairy in general within the online space, is that we generate typically 75% larger ticket rings when we are in the basket dairy just as a complete total category. And we help convert 75% more units. This is important from a retailer perspective, because they haven’t quite gotten the economics correct from a profitability perspective, within an online atmosphere. That’s really due to the typically the third party charges or the delivery charges.

Jennifer Heltzel  7:05 

Can you expand on those charges? That’s something I’ve never heard of.

Beau Hayden  7:08 

Yeah, so say Instacart is an aggregator, so a third party. So when you go on to instacart.com, you can typically shop from almost any retailer that is geographically around you. Ultimately, I have like really four or five big retailers that I can shop from within the Instacart platform in order for them to ultimately make money. They charge the retailer itself for that like kind of delivery fee and a handling fee. So it’s about 10 to $20, roughly. So the economics is not quite profitable. From a retailer perspective,

Jennifer Glover  7:39 

you know about I was thinking about during Thanksgiving, I was looking online for lots of recipes to fix to take to different gatherings. And I love to do that and follow a dairy recipe. And then when I click on it, it says add these to your grocery list. And so that’s just so simple to me as a busy mom and a busy farmer. So every time I say those, I share that with my other farmers to say this is a great thing that checkoff is doing that just populates dairy items into my shopping list while promoting recipes. Can you tell me a little bit about Amazon,

Beau Hayden  8:19 

so Amazon, they are a partner of ours. So our relationship with them right now is not actually a funded partnership like ours with McDonald’s or Taco Bell, we currently do not fund anything specifically with them. What we do do is we have uniquely been identified as a category captain for them across multiple categories. So by saying that what we deliver and partner with Amazon on is identifying the correct portfolio for their experience from a consumer perspective. So how do we make them more like a physical grocery store Amazon Fresh specifically as who we actually work with, and they are relatively newer to the game. And by that I mean, within the last 15 years to a little bit further than that, but what we do is we deliver kind of what is that consumer experience of the dairy lens? So what products do need to be ultimately included in their portfolio? how do consumers talk about the category? So from a fluid milk perspective? Do we look at it from a fat level? Do we look at it from a brand level do we look at it from a ultimately a size level, so gallon, half gallon, quart single serve, and we help design that user experience for them to ultimately interface with the consumer at the end of the day, we uniquely helped identify at the beginning of 2021 A new year new me marketing campaign in a sense, and that led to a smoothie store activation where real dairy was identified and showcased alongside of every single component you would need to drive the creation of a smoothie at home. From there that blossomed into a coffee at home store. So consumers and people in general during the pandemic we were are stuck at home right. And so a lot of times those out of home coffee occasions became in home coffee occasions. So folks became their own All Star barista call it so we were able to identify creamers, real dairy half and half to showcase within that space as well. Now for the holidays, what we have done is identified the opportunity to have real dairy moments for real hosting moments in a sense. And so what that what that means is we have developed a store within a store on Amazon Fresh homepage, all dairy categories are included. Within this page, we are funding off site promotions and on site promotions to drive eyeballs and traffic, specifically to this store within a store or dairy hosting page. And again, there are no competitors outside of real dairy sitting within this environment. We’re super excited with the results that we’ve seen, we will be able to report back kind of the full recap of the campaign and in and of itself, bout mid January to the tail end of January.

John Chrisman  11:01 

Hi, my name is dry Chrisman. I am the CEO of the American Dairy Association northeast, we represent approximately 9000 dairy farmers from New York to Virginia, with a large concentration in Pennsylvania as well. My vision includes three priority areas, our people, our programs and our strategy. When I look at our people, our staff is made up of 60 employees, high levels of expertise in a wide variety of fields. So looking at their passions and what they do well looking at our skill sets, what can we improve upon looking at our programs, we want to make sure we’re delivering the right programs in the most efficient manner for our dairy farmers. And I think about our strategy, one of the most important parts of our strategy is evolving. As consumers change, we need to change as well. It’s interesting when I started 20 years ago, if we got a got milk logo incorporated into a retailer’s ad circular, it was a big deal. We thought it was a big win. But it’s amazing how far we’ve come since then. So I think that evolution is really critical to our success. One program where all of our staff is really involved and passionate about is our Philip Glass with HOPE Program. Approximately seven years ago, we started the program in Pennsylvania with the Pennsylvania dairy men’s association and feeding Pennsylvania. And it was all about getting fresh, nutritious milk to families in need. We identified that milk is one of the most highly requested products into banks get the least distributed because of the challenges with infrastructure and equipment. So for me, I had the opportunity to sit at the table when we were starting the whole program, and to see how far it’s come. Since then, we’re at a point where we get consumer packaged companies to make donations, we’ve really kind of ramped up our efforts with our retailers to get consumers a part of it. So for the last couple of years, and especially this year, our retailers participated in a roundup program. So consumers go into the store, they go to the register, and they had the chance to round up for our fill of glass with HOPE program. And then the proceeds go to food banks in our regions, which are called food pantries. This past year, we’ve raised approximately $730,000, from the retailers that participated this year to make milk available to families in need. That’s a program I’ve been passionate about since the beginning. And our staff is really passionate about it. But our dairy farmers are extremely enthusiastic about it. Because it’s a way for fresh, nutritious milk, get to families that really need it. I’m so passionate to work for dairy farmers because of their work ethic, their passion for what they do their desire to get fresh dairy to consumers, they’re the best stewards of their land, they take care of their animals. At the end of the day. They’re just trying to provide wholesome, nutritious products to consumers throughout our region. And beyond that, you know, I’ve had the opportunity to establish this personal relationships with our dairy farmers that I’m going to have for my lifetime. So just very humbled to work on their behalf and just looking forward to our future.

Jennifer Heltzel  14:42 

I want to follow up about Amazon Fresh because a lot of us in rural America don’t have access to Amazon Fresh. It’s not something you know, maybe a lot of dairy farmers use because regular Amazon doesn’t deliver perishable products. Can you explain I guess How many people are using Amazon Fresh where there reaches you know how many? How many people use it every day.

Beau Hayden  15:06 

So Amazon Fresh, it’s a unique, I’ll call it retailer from that perspective. So as you mentioned, the reach today is about 34 to 38 markets. Now, their approach is that they use their current distribution centers. So think of Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, and New York most of the time, the bigger metropolitan areas, and they use those as their distribution centers. And that’s currently where Amazon Fresh is available. Amazon Fresh, you know, today, I would say from their business on amazon.com, there has over 100 million unique households that are prime members, fresh becomes a component of that prime membership, when it’s available in your location. So of those 100 million, I would say about 60 to 70%, are actually reached from an Amazon Fresh perspective. So a huge opportunity exists to continue to partner within that space from an Amazon Fresh and a DMI and kind of a national federation partnership, Amazon Fresh is also expanding their footprint from a physical retail store. Look, just so what that is, you know, they purchased Amazon did in 2016 2015, I think Whole Foods. So Whole Foods is a part of Amazon, but they do treat them as a separate business. Taking the learnings and the experiences they have with whole foods, they do take some of those successes and learnings and transfer them over to fresh, they have consistently and constantly expanded their footprint from a physical retailer starting in Woodland Hills, California, so just outside of LA. And they’ve expanded that now into I believe they have three physical locations in Chicago. And in total, I think they’re up to about 12. So with that happening, interestingly enough, just in the last kind of four to five weeks, we have expanded our relationship within the interior of Amazon Fresh to also include working with the physical stores to ensure dairy is showing up in a proper way and that the robustness of the category is not diminished, in a sense, from competitive facings or linear feet all call it within the store.

Jennifer Glover  17:11 

Hey Bo, can you let us know about online grocery shopping and where it’s going. I’m curious about our partnership with Instacart. It also isn’t available where I live in rural Georgia, as probably it isn’t where most dairy farmers live. But I know that every time we go on vacation, and we arrive at a hotel, it’s always nice because I always do an Instacart order so that we always have groceries when we arrive.

Beau Hayden  17:39 

So your behavior is not unique to you just to let you know. So you’re not an oddball. Your behavior has been expressed across the nation from different dairy farmers that I’ve talked to when they go on vacations, pretty cool,

Jennifer Glover  17:53 

secret society. So

Beau Hayden  17:54 

our partnership with Instacart started, you know, a little over probably 1824 months ago, we’ve dipped our toes slowly into it and really have aggressively grown what that looks like within the you know, the last 12 months. So this 2022 calendar year Instacart, they’ve had some alcohol issues from a operation standpoint, they have gotten over those hurdles. And they’re continuing to grow at about a 25 to 28% month over month from a sales perspective. And it doesn’t seem like they’re stopping. The one way that I’ve expressed Instacart to a lot of our SR partners and Stephanie, you know, will probably not her head and laugh when I say this again. But Instacart has from a capabilities perspective there are growing and what is available to us. So as they are growing. It’s interesting because we’re able to partner with them and identify what is some of the best practices or the best opportunities from a agnostic perspective where we sit off typically from a checkoff to activate our dollars and ultimately get the biggest bang for our buck Instacart is an aggregator again, over 900 retailers. So they are aggressively expanding their footprint. They are operationalizing on a smaller scale with more local and regional grocers by being the backbone for their online experience. So if I was a owner of a grocery chain of five to 10, physical locations, I can use Instacart to get all of my products online and unlock that opportunity where we’re seeing about 10 to 13% of all grocery sales happening. So they are a great partner with that they are also aggressively expanding some of their capabilities from a activation perspective on site. So we’ve gone from not only just having sponsor displays or sponsored product ads, to now we can actually integrate recipes and those shoppable recipes that we were talking about a little bit earlier, where we can get baskets loaded from a dairy focused perspective.

Jennifer Heltzel  19:54 

Wow. Instacart something I’ve not put my toe in the water of I’ve kind of been fraid of it, but it’s great to hear your explanation. So Stephanie, I want to ask you a question. I can’t tell you the last time I stepped foot in a grocery store, everything comes from online one of three places. I’m a busy mom, we have a dairy farm. And I really don’t miss going to the grocery store at all. A lot of promotions used to be point of sale, everything was in the store, you looked at it when you were in the store. How have you in Arizona switched to doing promotions with E commerce? Is it more expensive? And how do you track who even sees those ads?

Stephanie Taylor  20:32 

Thank you, Jen, I will never be buying groceries when I am on vacation in person ever again. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that. But going forward, I won’t be doing that. So in terms of the E commerce spend, what we have found is that there are fewer restrictions and more flexibility with how you can build out what it is that you’re trying to accomplish. So more often than not the requirements with something in store is there is a minimum buy in of both stores. And then also the timeline that you have to run it. So you might be required to commit to signage in all stores and for an entire four weeks. Whereas with E commerce, they have allowed us to develop campaigns more targeted on what are we wanting to accomplish? So do we want to have the ad always on for a full month’s time period or four weeks? Or do we want to drill back and run it for maybe eight weeks timeline focused on a specific event and have it only on for certain times? So they allow you the flexibility to scale back your budget, but still be effective?

Jennifer Heltzel  21:37 

Interesting. So do you find you’re doing different ads? Are you using recipes? What do you find you’re doing now versus maybe when we were always just in brick and mortar advertising,

Stephanie Taylor  21:47 

I would say to a large degree, we approach our creative and our ads very similar to how we would if the person was in store. So if we’re running an ad around an event, or a holiday or a recipe, the goal is the same it’s to get the consumer to add the product to the cart. So I would say to the most part, our approach is the same. No. Can you track how many people see those ads? Absolutely. And that’s another benefit to e commerce, the data that we come back is not only quicker and more concise. But it’s also more accurate. Because in store, it’s more of an estimate. It’s an estimated amount of impressions. Whereas with E commerce, they can tell us exactly how many people were delivered that ad

Jennifer Heltzel  22:28 

that just amazes me that you can track how many people see your ads. And you know, see how many impressions and how many people click on the different things. That’s a world that we don’t think about when we look at the ads so that that’s really good for dairy farmers that we can see how many people are seeing what we actually put out there? Absolutely.

Jennifer Glover  22:49 

Tell me something, are you able to use E commerce to deliver messaging to certain local audiences?

Stephanie Taylor  22:56 

Absolutely. So you can really drill down on the type of targeting that you’re delivering, you can choose you want to select females that are of a certain age group that live within a certain area code that have children of a certain age very effective in terms of developing the creative that you want to deliver to the segment. I know that’s

Jennifer Glover  23:15 

the truth with our recent gaming that we’ve done through check off with Mr. Beast, I was talking to some of my son’s friends. He’s eight. And everybody, of course knows who Mr. Beast is. And they all had told us we got to go to a dairy farm with Mr. Bass. Like he actually took them and they went, but it wasn’t your dairy farm. This Jennifer, it was another day. And I’m like, Yeah, that’s great. But then, of course, they want to know if we can get Mr. Bass to come to our dairy farm. And I told him, of course, I was going to work on that.

Stephanie Taylor  23:46 

Do that, please send him our way, because my nine year old would also like that as well.

Jennifer Glover  23:51 

Crazy, crazy crazy. So I know how we can actually really, really work on those local audiences. So this kind of tied back in to what we talked about just a second ago. So I’m not sure who wants to answer this. But are there any worries about dairy delivered fresh versus other atoms? And how are ecommerce retailers handling this,

Stephanie Taylor  24:12 

I will jump in there only because I live in Phoenix and it’s 115 degrees in the summer. And the number one reservation that people expressed about purchasing their groceries online was a break in the cold chain. And the belief that I personally am going to handle that gallon of milk that I’m also putting in my own hot trunk and driving from that store to my house that I’m going to handle it better. But I think with COVID people were forced to get pushed past that concern. And then once they realize they’re getting the same cold product that they would have selected themselves with plenty of expiration date. And as long as the retailer is doing a good job in providing a service where if in the event there’s an issue with expiration date, addressing it,

Beau Hayden  24:53 

the retailers themselves have gotten into a mode of innovation within this space by offering specific delivery times to your door. So really controlling that cold chain and Stephanie kind of expressed in that sense. And then also from a share of what I’ll call ecommerce sales today, within grocery around 50 to 55% is actually that click and collect behavior. So we can’t take, you know that out of consideration when we think about the opportunities that are and do exist today within e commerce. So the activations that Stephanie was talking about specifically targeting X demographic within X location, that also helps drive that click and collect or that buy online pick up in store or any of those types of modes of E commerce, e commerce is really split into three specific I’ll call it modality it is shipped to home, so your delivery, so that’s like your Instacart and your third party providers from that perspective, then there is the click and collect which you know, a lot of the retail banners, they all participate in this. So that’s when you drive up into your little designated pickup location and they drop it out to unload the boot or the trunk of your car. And then you have the just pure pickup in store. So that’s just another opportunity to gain eyeballs and gain traffic, one of the learnings that we have from Instacart, that is extremely influential, and kind of our strategies, especially today and to come is you know, it’s always a 5050 jump ball when somebody actually steps on to a online platform by saying that is that I don’t know, technically, if this is possibly their first purchase online or their second purchase or their third purchase. But if we can capture a real dairy moment, and a real dairy conversion, on that first trip, we have an 82% likelihood, chance of repeat purchase. So we can intercept within that path to conversion on that first time and being in the right place at the right moment with the right creative to influence that conversion, we have a strong strong chance of remaining in that basket, and not necessarily losing out to a competitive set that we don’t want dollar shifting away from us or volume shifting away from us.

Jennifer Heltzel  27:04 

So Bo to follow up with that. How do you do that? How do you make sure that you’re in the first basket purchase, so that you come up on the Favorites list from here on out.

Beau Hayden  27:16 

So that is where we have identified opportunities across different moments, we are alive on Amazon fresh.com walmart.com. And with Instacart. So we do have that broad reach. And what we’ve done is taken on a strategy of really trying to blanket the entire nation from a national perspective, and partnering with our state and regions, such as with Stephanie, and allowing them to lead more of a localized approach, and making sure that we show up not only in sponsored products. So again, I searched milk within the keyword, and I show up with a real dairy product within the first eight listings. So and that’s where 82% of the clicks happen within that first time. So we’re optimizing to the percentages that we see from consumer behavior. So how are folks shopping? Where can we intercept and truly show up and make an impact to influence that in purchase? By having them convert and having that either put in their cart physically and dropped into their trunk or delivered to their house?

Jennifer Glover  28:18 

So do you guys think that people are going to stop going to the grocery store after they began using online shopping,

Beau Hayden  28:26 

I do not full stop to all of your questions, there is not going to be a stop of going to the physical stores, the physical stores are still going to be around, I think you’re gonna start seeing a shift and possibly what the interior of the physical store looks like. And it’s going to be more of an experience I’ll call it versus just hey, let’s roam around the perimeter and then go through the center store up and down the aisles until we check out with that back to kind of the beginning of this podcast, we were talking about the creation of the physical world. So the physical meeting the digital with that we have gotten stat that states that 84% of their consumers actually use their cell phones while in the physical setting. So within the brick and mortar store, at least four times per grocery trip. So that could be the behavior of hey, I’m checking prices, I’m checking for more information that’s not readily available at shelf. So being not only up to par and to high standards within your physical presence, not only as a brand, but as a product and providing all of that information that you could sway within a human moment of choice. So if I’m standing at the physical shelf, looking at a gallon of 2% milk and there’s four different options on a digital setting, if I’m still in at the physical shelf, I can pull up my phone, I can say okay, it is now you know 299 Next door I might bounce over there to pick up that purchase versus the one that’s sitting in front of me purely based on price. So there isn’t going to be a mass exodus of non physical store shoppers, it is truly going to be that experience of an omni channel purchase. So I can Be first touched as a consumer within my laptop, or a iPad or an iPhone. And then I can go to the physical store to actually do that shopping. And have that influenced shopping journey from that digital space that we were currently playing in

Stephanie Taylor  30:15 

most people’s initial online shopping experience, especially at the onset of COVID Was that the shopping platforms were very clunky and cumbersome, and they were not intuitive. They were not user friendly. So people weren’t enjoying the experience. And they were having a hard time finding the products that they wanted to purchase. And these platforms are only going to continue to evolve and become more individualized. And so they will be more of a necessity rather than just a luxury, especially at the point that rather than needing to log in and be delivered my favorite shopping list. And they know that I like to shop on Wednesdays, there’ll be sending me my favorite shopping list. So they’re gonna only continue to adapt and become even more user friendly.

Jennifer Heltzel  30:58 

So Stephanie, you bring up a good point about talking about where e commerce is going. And where do you guys see the future of E commerce,

Stephanie Taylor  31:06 

I see smart fridges, where these platforms have track of our inventory and our expiration dates, maybe not five years, maybe 10.

Beau Hayden  31:15 

There’s a phenomenon happening on a global scale, called Social Commerce currently set is about $362 billion in size and China. And if we use that as a leading indicator for where I believe e commerce or the digital world is going, is from a social commerce perspective, what that means is that you have a personal shopper that is showing up in a digital space and showing you how to do a live Ikea hack or doing a this is how you shop at Home Depot where they’re really showcasing a specific category or product currently set, it’s 362 billion in China dollars. And in the US, it’s only 36 billion were a little slower to adopt to this behavior. But I do think that it is coming. And again, that’ll be a more concrete moment where we’ll see the physical and the digital world really slamming up against each other and becoming integrated. I do have a feeling that it’s going to influence a lot of how our shopping takes shape and takes form over the next five years. I want

Jennifer Glover  32:08 

to ask you guys, just one more question. What would you like for farmers to know about e commerce or what’s one thing that you want them to understand about it and how it relates to what they pay into checkoff

Stephanie Taylor  32:24 

really just to understand the benefits and advantages and even really necessity of maintaining a presence in this place, we know that our competitors are there. And we need to capture these shoppers. And like Bo said, once they’ve added that product to their cart, the likelihood that they’re going to do it again. And that is what the sales data reflects, in addition to, as we continue to work with these partners, the time that we’re getting the data back the results back and the return on our ad spend is really a lot less time consuming than what it is with working with some of the retail partners and some of the in store campaigns. So overall, the results have just been really, really impressive. And this is just a space that we want to and need to make sure that we maintain placement in you know

Jennifer Glover  33:05 

what I say to my husband all the time, when he asked me questions about why are we spending money on this? Or where’s this going to? Or I want to see a billboard, I always say farmers make up 2.1 of the world’s population. So not everyone shops like you. Not everyone thinks like you. Not everyone watches TV like you. So let’s keep that in mind. Did you have anything though, that you wanted to add?

Beau Hayden  33:28 

I would say from an E commerce perspective, as the penetration grows, especially from the demographics and the usage occasions, we have to meet those consumers and those pivotal moments when App Purchases being made and decided upon, we are seeing a higher penetration amongst younger demographics. So targeting those Gen z’s, especially as they come into a moment of having disposable income or having to make that purchase decision for a household or for themselves. This is just a moment to reiterate what Stephanie said, it’s a jump ball. And if we’re not there to at least participate in it, then we’ve already lost the battle. And so from that perspective, the return on our dollars today from a checkoff perspective are extremely positive, we can shift and pivot relatively quickly. If we see something not working, we can take it down within a day, I’ll call it versus if we were just physically in the store. We are set you know, as Stephanie had mentioned earlier to a four week schedule from a calendar perspective and so we can really move our strategies to be the most impactful and and really helping drive kind of not only dairies footprint forward, but also matching up to where the consumers are and how they are shopping today.

Jennifer Heltzel  34:37 

As you talk about that. Absolutely correct. I look at I have a 20 year old Daniel 12 year old and they don’t do anything that’s not online. They don’t know a world without a phone in their hand. If they want something. They go online, find it, order it and get it and it’s just how you reach them there and I’m really excited to hear You guys talk about being their first moment for getting recipes or for finding those things that they’re looking for in the stores.

Beau Hayden  35:07 

And Jen, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head in a sense that we have been given a lot of opportunity to test and learn within the space as well. And so that’s not only from the support that you all have provided us with, we thank you for from just a check off wide perspective, especially from all the farmers and the interest that you guys are showing in these new spaces. I know that it’s new news for a lot of folks, Stephanie and I eat, sleep and breathe this category and this digital space almost every day non stop. At the end of the day, we thank you guys for leaning in with us at the end of the day and truly allowing us to test and learn our way to successful outcomes, and to continue to work on your behalf.

Jennifer Heltzel  35:45 

Thank you, Bo and Stephanie, for this discussion today. It’s been interesting to hear about e commerce and how partnerships in this space are key to providing our products to consumers. In closing, we just want to say thank you for joining us today. If you want to hear more about various issues affecting the dairy community. Subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast platform, including Stitcher, Spotify and iTunes or you can check out our website Dairy Checkoff. podcast.com for future episodes. Until next time, have a great day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai