SIPA: Tell me about the big Crop Tour that just finished.

JOE: Yes, the Pro Farmer Midwest Crop Tour. It was an outstanding week-long event. This was the 20th year and we had 100 volunteer crop scouts with eastern and western tours that converged in Rochester, Minn. The scouts sampled thousands of corn and soybean fields, and took measurements that we plug into formulas we have. Editors and analysts then dissect the results to give yield estimates. There were seven events in all with a total of just under 3,000 people attending. The media coverage was tremendous as always—the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg, AgDay TV, U.S. Farm Report, AgriTalk. They followed it start to finish.

How does it tie in with your audience?

The Tour is followed closely by the farmers we serve—as well as international grain buyers and commodity traders who also make up a portion of our audience. It’s extremely timely and important for the industry. We’re giving them a historically accurate yield estimate for their state and the nation as a whole, which is released in that Friday’s Pro Farmer newsletter and on our website.

Sounds like a lot of work leading up to it.

Yes, there were a lot of moving parts to get it going. It’s a big event in the industry both here in the U.S. and internationally. Coverage really blew up online, and on Twitter again this year. We also had a video crew embedded on the Tour that filed daily reports.

How long has Pro Farmer been around?

Forty years! But this is only my second. Several hundred of the original members are still members today.

How does your subscription pricing work?

We have levels of membership that go from Classic to Preferred to VIP. Most of our content is gated and ad-free. The Classic just includes the newsletter and web access. Preferred gets that plus advice alerts, the Monday Morning Wake Up Call and special reports. The VIP membership gets all that plus text quotes, the LandOwner newsletter and the Pro Farmer Today email service which is 7-9 emails throughout the day. These folks are information junkies and we give them a mix of content that’s available, and content that we push to them.

What’s on your agenda now that the Crop Tour is over?

We’re in the process of redoing our website. We’re going to test something new, giving more free content, but you have to register to access it. We expect this will be a successful lead generator. Another new thing will be more audio and video reports that will be free for registered users. We have a small studio in our office here. Every week our editors record two- or three-minute segments for Friday’s AgDay TV. We also have some handheld cameras for posting breaking news on our website; we’d rather not add time with post-production for these, plus the handheld recording will add some urgency to the look of the report.

How many staff in your office?

There’s 13 here and 15 in our Call Center. We’re all part of Farm Journal Media, which allows for cross-platform content and resource sharing. It’s all a real positive relationship to continue building our brand, and it gives us access to a wealth of experts across Farm Journal Media to turn to with various questions.

What are your main tasks?

I work on renewal strategies, attracting new members, planning and marketing live events, while supporting the sales team for all of our products and services. We also have a new educational product geared to farmers, teaching them how to market their grain. It gives strategies in a four-chapter, hour-long DVD and accompanying workbook. We’re also expanding our audience by speaking to ag educators at the high school level. Vocational-ag teachers currently don’t have a good source to go to for grain marketing educational materials.

I assume some of your tasks are seasonal.

Yes, we’ll have conferences in the winter months when farmers don’t have as much to do. We’ll hold those from Ohio through Nebraska—ten full-day sessions in 10 locations. Farmers will come from as far as 150 miles away. I like getting out and meeting our members; they’re very loyal to our product so it’s easy to start a conversation. For me being new to the company and industry, it’s good to hear what they have to say.

Where were you before Pro Farmer?

I spent the last eight years at an ad agency for the automotive industry. We used a lot of the same concepts—building awareness, using data to deliver specific messages, focusing on membership over “sales.”

You mentioned Twitter?

We have a constantly increasing Twitter following. We don’t give out too much information there—just enough to give a taste of what we provide, then direct followers back to our site for the complete story. We’re still working on finding the best way to convert Twitter followers to paying members.

Is email marketing still best for you?

Yes, we use email quite extensively, tying it together with the call center, which is a big driver for sales. As for the time to send, we look at analytics and know our opens spike from 6 -7:30 in the morning, lunch, and then early evening. We’ve also found more and more farmers using tablets, taking their iPads with them on their tractors and combines, as our tablet web traffic has grown exponentially this year.

iPads on tractors?

Yes, though stereotypical commercial images don’t show that. About 90% have high-speed Internet through satellite.

And finally, what keeps you up at night?

It was the Crop Tour. Now it’s the new website. The other thing would be that we have all of this data and services we offer for people—much of it is even mobile friendly. So it’s trying to find the right match for the right segment of our membership and who can benefit most from what specific service. Then, trying to find more people like them.

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Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline