Marketing & Promotion

Your marketing tools in LocallyGrown

📰 Market weblog and newsletter

Every market has a built-in weblog that doubles as a newsletter. Write an entry in Markdown or HTML, pick from eight pre-built email templates, and optionally:

• Email it to all subscribers — goes to active customers who have mailings turned on.
• Include the current product list in the email, so customers see what's available right where they're reading.
• Open the market for ordering at the same time the email goes out, so customers can act immediately.
• Schedule publication for a specific time — write the weekly newsletter Friday afternoon, schedule it for Monday 9 AM, and it publishes and emails itself.

This is the single most useful marketing surface in the platform. Full walkthrough in the Market Weblog & Newsletter guide.

⭐ Featured products

Featured products show up in the "Featured" section of the market homepage. Two ways to feature a product:

• Growers can feature up to five of their own products per market. Turn on Edit Mode, open the management menu on a product card, and click ⭐ Make Featured. If you already have five, the oldest featured product is automatically unfeatured to make room (first-in, first-out).
• Managers and superusers can feature any product in the market, up to ten at a time, with the same FIFO behavior.

📷 Product photos

Photos drive orders — they also drive the "look" of the market on social media when customers share links. Upload photos from the product editor (see the Managing Products guide). A few practical notes:

• Shoot in natural light and show the product as it actually arrives.
• Keep file sizes reasonable — the app will resize, but starting from a 20 MB original adds upload time without making anything look better.
• Don't include text overlays; they're hard to read at thumbnail size.

📊 Admin insights dashboard

The market admin page includes an insights panel that surfaces things like ordering trends, email delivery patterns, and prompts to send a newsletter when it's been a while. It's not a full analytics suite — treat it as a nudge, not a dashboard. See the Reports guide for the full list of reports that back it.

📣 Admin announcements

Superusers can post announcements that appear inside the admin UI for market managers and admins. These are for platform-to-operator communication (maintenance windows, new features), not for shopper-facing marketing. Shoppers never see them.

Newsletter opt-in and unsubscribe

Every shopper account has a mailings preference that defaults to on. When it's on, the user is included in weblog email sends. Two places this changes:

• Shopper account page. The Subscribe/Unsubscribe button flips the mailings flag without deactivating the account.
• Unsubscribe link in the email footer. Because Mailgun routes this through a deactivation webhook, clicking it deactivates the shopper's account — we treat it as "I'm leaving the market." If you want to stop the emails but keep the account, use the account-page button instead. See the Shopper Accounts guide for more.

Permanent bounces and spam complaints from Mailgun also flag the address so we stop sending to it. This is handled for you; there's no admin UI to manage it.

What actually moves the needle

After watching a lot of markets grow, the pattern is reassuringly low-tech. The habits below are what consistently turn first-time visitors into regulars:

• Post on a predictable rhythm. Pick a day and stick to it. Weekly works. Irregular doesn't.
• Lead with what's fresh this week. A short newsletter that says "tomatoes, sweet corn, peaches — order by Friday" outperforms a long essay every time.
• Put a face on a grower now and then. One paragraph and a photo. People order food from people.
• One clear call to action. "Shop this week's market" beats three competing links.
• Keep a photo on hand. When a social post needs a picture, you want one ready rather than improvising.

Off-platform marketing

LocallyGrown doesn't run your social media, print flyers, or local partnerships — but your market link is the destination, so the tools you use off-platform are up to you. Some markets do well with just a Facebook page and word of mouth; others layer in Instagram, print drops at pickup locations, or cross-promotion with local restaurants. LocallyGrown has no opinion on which tools you use. A couple of reminders:

• Link back to your market subdomain, not to generic locallygrown.net pages — you want shoppers landing where they can order.
• Pin your latest newsletter entry somewhere durable (pinned Facebook post, Instagram bio link) so new arrivals find it.
• Reuse your weblog photos in social posts — you already took them; make them work twice.

Measuring what's working

LocallyGrown tracks what it needs to run a market (orders, revenue, email delivery, active shoppers), not a full marketing analytics stack. The insights dashboard and the CSV/PDF reports listed in the Reports guide are the source of truth for in-app data. If you care about social-media engagement, web traffic to your market site, or ad attribution, you'll need to wire those up yourself (Facebook/Instagram give you basic post stats; add Google Analytics or Plausible to your market site through the theme if you want web analytics).