San Francisco CalFresh Experience Group
Date: Spring 2022
Methods: Go to market planning & launch, copywriting for a landing page, creating enablement materials, customer research, persona development
My role: Product Marketing Manager, Customer Researcher, Project Manager
Stakeholders: Product Manager, Research Manager, Communications & PR Team, Community Partners, Deputy Directors
Challenge
The San Francisco CalFresh program was interested in building an experience group to get consistent feedback on how to improve the food stamps application process via their website and software.
Process
Before I was brought onto the team, the CalFresh food stamps program had spent several months trying to recruit people for their experience group. They wanted to create this group to get feedback on the food stamps program and to co-design improvements to the program with community members.
Stakeholder management & understanding the people we serve (personas)
I met with various stakeholders to understand their needs for creating this group. They wanted a group of about 20 food stamps recipients who spoke Spanish, Cantonese, and English. The stakeholders required that this group meet 4 times a year, for 2 – 3 hours each, and that no member could miss any meetings.
After synthesizing previous research and recent feedback, I understood the following about one of our personas:
- Challenges:
- Food stamps recipients were limited on time & money and are highly stressed. Often, they work several jobs all day & night to stay financially afloat.
- The current application process is time-consuming and confusing. Communications about the status of an application is across several channels: text message, website, software, email, postal mail.
- Wants:
- Although grateful for the food stamps program, many recipients do not want to be on food stamps.
- They view the food stamps program and their situation as temporary, and wish to get off food stamps as soon as possible.
- Direct Quotes:
- “I’m ashamed of needing help.”
- “I don’t actually want help from the government. I’m working hard to get back on my feet so I can stop getting food stamps.”
- “Applying for food stamps was a nightmare. The application asked me questions I didn’t understand and I checked my mail constantly for weeks, waiting for an answer.”
I convinced the stakeholders that we should recruit a larger group of people and that each member can participate in the meetings when they are available.
Defining success metrics & a timeline
I suggested that we increase the number of members to ~60 to increase our chances of consistently having members available for our meetings. I set a timeline of 2 months. I figured that 1 month wasn’t enough time to measure results and to pivot, if needed. Three months would be too long since other team members had spent several months trying to do this.
Originally, we were cold-calling people to ask if they wanted to join the experience group. This was incredibly inefficient, and I brainstormed other ways to recruit group members.
Planning a go to market (GTM) launch strategy
I wanted to utilize our current marketing channels. These were the options I brainstormed:
- Send text messages to food stamps recipients
- Contact colleagues who work with food stamps recipients for recommendations
- Reach out to community partner organizations for recommendations
- Send emails to food stamps recipients
- Promote the group on our website
- Post on social media
To keep this strategy simple, I needed to narrow down these channels. I learned from the Communications Team that text messages have a low response rate from recipients. From the Support Team, I learned that all recipients have a phone number and mailing address on file, but not an email. The social media accounts were rarely used and had little engagement.
Based on this, and after analyzing website traffic through Google Analytics, I decided to focus on 3 marketing channels: the website, our colleagues, and community partner organizations.
Creating enablement assets & messaging for internal colleagues & community partners
Over the course of a few days, I emailed several colleagues and community partner organizations to ask if they could recommend potential members for the experience group.
Below are examples of messaging & enablement content I created on how to communicate the value proposition of the experience group to potential members.
Writing copy for a landing page & CTAs
Then I worked with the Communications & PR Team to publish the copy for the landing page and several call to actions (CTAs) across the sfhsa.org website. The strategy for the copy was to keep it concise, mobile-friendly & to lead with the benefit to the recipient, which is the $50 per hour payment.
I wrote the copy and it was edited and approved by the Communications & PR Team.
Launch results
Within 4 days of publishing the landing page, I recruited 140+ people (across 3 languages: Spanish, Cantonese & English) to the experience group. This exceeded our goal of 60 members within 2 months.
Previously, we made almost 100 cold phone calls to food stamps recipients and recruited only 5 members for the experience group.
This process that I built not only allowed us to create an experience group, but it also helped us build a larger pool of participants for future research projects for this team and other teams around the agency.
Next steps
Post-launch, I facilitated a retrospective meeting with my stakeholders to review what went well and what we can do better for the next launch.
The next phase of this project is for me to conduct customer research with food stamps recipients to understand their experience applying for food stamps, receiving food stamps, and having their applications denied.
This research will be a combination of in-depth interviews and usability testing, where I will observe food stamps recipients using our website & software.
After conducting the research, I will utilize the findings to present recommendations to the Product Manager & Developers on how to improve the food stamps website, software, and the food stamps program in general.