ABWEP.org
About The Project
The Arkansas Boll Weevil Eradication Foundation (ABWEF) is a non-profit corporation organized in 1993 to implement a program (ABWEP) of boll weevil eradication in Arkansas. Operations of the program are managed across 32 cotton-producing counties segmented into five zones – Southwest, Southeast, Central, Northeast Ridge, and Northeast Delta. ABWEF has met its goal of eradication in all zones and currently operates in the maintenance phase of the program. ABWEP assesses all Arkansas cotton growers annually based on the acreage they report. Prior to 2021, ABWEP relied solely on the efforts of dedicated field staff to conduct its annual reporting and verification operations. ABWEP enlisted The Communications Group to build the organization a website with advanced functionality to empower ABWEP’s primary audience, Arkansas cotton growers, to digitally and independently report, verify and pay their assessments online.
Extensive research was necessary to capture the vision of the executive director effectively. This resulted in multiple discovery meetings and interviews with ABWEP staff, board members, and stakeholders to conduct primary formal research to gain a thorough understanding of ABWEP operations and processes.
Additional research was needed to vet appropriate website building platforms and web developers who could handle the technical complexity that this site would require. Secondary formal demographic research was also conducted to understand the social media preferences and behaviors of ABWEP’s audiences.
Our research identified two major challenges to overcome. First, how do we digitally recreate ABWEP’s physical processes that its field staff shepherds growers through? Two, how do we communicate the availability and purpose of this new site? Three, how do we persuade an audience inherently mistrustful and opposed to conducting personal business online to use the website? And four, how do we educate growers with limited computer literacy to effectively use the site to conduct their business.
Planning
The goal of this project was to create a permanent, modern digital presence for ABWEP. The Communications Group was tasked with the objective of establishing the website and successfully implementing its advanced reporting and payment functionality within three months to coincide with the start of ABWEP’s annual reporting window. With approximately 500 growers on ABWEP’s rosters, The Communications Group worked with the client to set the following SMART objectives for the launch of the website:
- Successfully implement a new website with advanced reporting and payment functionality between April 1, 2021, and June 1, 2021.
- Achieve 75% grower engagement via ABWEP.org between June 1, 2021, to June 15, 2021.
- Collect $1 million in assessments via ABWEP.org between June 15, 2021, to August 1
The strategy developed to achieve these objectives was built around providing a frictionless, user-friendly website supported by new visual branding, a custom image library, and an integrated communications and grower relations plan to impress upon audiences the convenience and security of ABWEP.org. The project timeline was broken down into five phases, coinciding with different milestones of completion, and budgeted according to the investments required during each phase. Phase 1 – Creative/Concept: $11,660; Phase 2 - Development: $22,000; Phase 3 - Optimization: $15,230; Phase 4 – Client Training and Handoff: $12,505; Phase 5 – Promotion/Maintenance: $40,000. The human resources invested in this project included 1 account executive, 1 public relations director, 1 digital marketing director, 1 digital marketing specialist, 1 creative director, 1 freelance photographer, and 1 freelance developer.
Implementation
The implementation of ABWEP.org had an initial four phases. The first phase focused on website conceptualization which included creating a website template, generating content and copy, developing new branding, coding, and client approval.
In the second phase, the Grower Tools portal was built and customized with online reporting and payment functionality. This phase also included the appropriation of licensing and extensive operational testing.
The third phase concentrated on site optimization, adding images and video from the custom full-season image library curated specifically for this project. This phase also included final edits and revisions to the site based on client feedback and testing.
The fourth phase was essentially a training process for the client to learn how to take over the day-to-day management of the website. However, the client opted to retain the services of The Communications Group to continue managing their site.
The fifth and final phase centered on the promotion and maintenance of the site.
We realized that even with a sleek, modern website at their disposal, ABWEP would not be able to successfully achieve their objectives if they did not communicate to their growers that it existed. The client approved a fifth phase to develop an integrated communications and grower relations plan. This plan included the establishment of social media channels for ABWEP as well as a custom e-newsletter, The Scout.
The messaging for these channels promoted the site’s security and convenience. These owned media channels were leveraged in tandem with a virtual ribbon-cutting ceremony to officially launch the website. ABWEP officials including the executive director and several board members were joined by the Arkansas Secretary of Agriculture to ceremonially open the website for business. This event was broadcast on Facebook Live and supported by a news release distributed to the Arkansas ag and business media following the event. Additionally, a tutorial video was created to demonstrate step-by-step instructions on how to report acres and pay assessments online. We also successfully pitched a story about the website to the Arkansas Department of Agriculture, which included the story in its annual magazine publication.
THE FINAL
Result
The launch of ABWEP.org was ultimately a success from a benchmarking perspective, despite a few shortfalls in fully achieving our objectives. The new website was successfully launched ahead of schedule in late May. The virtual ribbon-cutting ceremony and supplemental promotion resulted in ABWEP.org’s highest single-day traffic ever with 1,591 users visiting between June 1 and 2, 2021. Out of the 2,351 total site sessions, Grower Tools attracted 899 views or 38.24% during that 24-hour period. While we did not persuade 75% of growers to conduct their business online, we did achieve approximately 50% for our first year, with the first 36% paying their assessments on or before July 15th – the most ever collected that early in the payment window in ABWEP history.
Finally, we did not collect $1 million in online assessments either but did collect roughly $500,000 or one-third of ABWEP’s total assessments. This program is ongoing in 2022. The numbers reported above were used to benchmark our goals and objective for the 2022 year now in progress. Ultimately, we hope to achieve 90% online grower engagement and are working toward this goal by assigning metric objectives for each of our communications tools and channels.
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