With roots stretching back over 250 years, Syngenta has a longstanding commitment to sustainably feed the world. Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Syngenta is a global agriculture technology company, aiming to sustainably feed the world by developing seeds and hybrids to help farmers adapt to changing climates and provides crop protection solutions to safeguard plants. One of their main focal areas is promoting sustainable agriculture to farmers across the world. 

“Our job as a company is to empower farmers,” says Chris Chen, Head of Digital and IT at Syngenta, AMEA. “We see digital as an enabler that allows us to provide personalized information and tools to help our farmers grow more effectively.”

Syngenta originally relied on local SMS providers for its marketing, limiting their ability to send messages to farmers and track their efficacy. To ensure its messages reach the farms of over 7 million growers as the company scaled, Syngenta needed to adopt a more targeted communication strategy, one that integrated SMS and WhatsApp. Syngenta aims to expand its global reach — while significantly boosting the productivity and sustainability of farming practices worldwide, paving the way for a more food-secure future.

The problem: Reaching millions of farmers more effectively

Syngenta previously used local SMS providers for mass marketing, meaning they had zero visibility into how effective these messages were. Looking for a way to see how many people engaged with their messages, Syngenta considered using WhatsApp, since the platform provided key insights like open rates. 

Due to the growing scale of their audience, Syngenta searched for an ideal platform that sent SMS and WhatsApp messages, with tracking for both that decreased the manual and time-consuming process for their commercial marketing teams. 

The solution: Engaging farmers through personalized marketing

Syngenta faced a pivotal challenge: their current means of reaching out to growers, through an internal CRM, was holding them back. They could only reach a few million farmers directly—a mere fraction of their vast target audience of 450M farmers in the region. 

“We were looking for a partner that could integrate with our core platforms and had a service level we could trust to consistently reach our farmers,” said Chen.

After evaluating several companies, Bird was the only company able to meet their stringent requirements for reliable system integrations, WhatsApp and SMS support, and extensive service reach.

Syngenta created more strategic, personalized communications to improve how they engaged with farmers. They wanted each message to be relevant and timely to each individual grower. 

This approach took form as a three-pronged strategy: 1) engage with customers continuously, 2) segment audiences more effectively, and 3) improve the quality of the customer experience. By integrating these elements, Syngenta ensured that every communication not only reached farmers but truly engaged them, enhancing their connection with the brand and improving their agricultural practices.

Continuous Engagement

After implementing Bird and analyzing response rate data, Syngenta understood that the key to supporting farmers effectively lies in maintaining a constant, meaningful dialogue. This ongoing engagement is crucial not just for the farmers' immediate success, but for their long-term satisfaction as well. 

To achieve this, Syngenta turned to the rich insights provided by response rate data from their communications sent through Bird. This valuable data has allowed them to measure and improve how they connect with farmers, upping engagement rates over time.

“Continuous engagement is necessary for the success of our farmers,” said Chen. “We need to understand their pain points and challenges, and react quickly. It’s about providing the right message, at the right time, to the right grower”

By analyzing how farmers interact with their messages, Syngenta can fine-tune their outreach strategies in real time. This isn't just about sending more messages more often—it's about sending smarter, more relevant communications over time. 

More Effective Segmentation

Recognizing the varied needs, preferences, and challenges faced by farmers across different regions and crop types, Syngenta invested in a detailed customer segmentation strategy.

First, Syngenta used Bird Contacts to pick and choose customers to message, to better understand their customers’ interest in Syngenta products. The responses collected help Syngenta classify customers based on their interest in products, setting the stage for tailored marketing paths that significantly enhance the effectiveness of future campaigns.

Region-specific strategies further refined Syngenta’s approach. In Pakistan, for instance, surveys help identify the products that resonate most with local farmers, providing invaluable insights that guide both product development and marketing strategies. In Indonesia, understanding preferred communication channels—be it SMS, WhatsApp, or direct calls—enables Syngenta to tailor its outreach, ensuring that messages reach their audience and engage them effectively.

Through Bird, Syngenta’s market development team, which has evolved from a “traditional” sales team, is now able to tailor communications to meet specific regional needs. Whether it’s addressing unique climatic challenges or crop-specific issues, this precise targeting ensures that every piece of communication delivered is relevant and directly applicable to each farmer’s daily operations.

Improving the Customer Experience

Syngenta's strategic partnership with Bird has played a pivotal role in transforming the way they engage with farmers, ultimately fostering a tighter-knit and more empowered agricultural community by enhancing the overall customer experience.

Thanks to outreach through Bird, Syngenta has successfully encouraged a large number of farmers to transition to their Cropwise Grower platform, now with 2.5 million members. This platform is more than just a digital tool; it's the backbone of a unified ecosystem designed to streamline agricultural processes and enhance productivity. 

In addition to improving their direct customer communications, Syngenta has invested in community-based information sharing. Lead growers, pivotal within their local communities, leverage WhatsApp channels facilitated by Bird to disseminate essential farming tips and product news. This peer-to-peer exchange extends Syngenta’s reach and builds a support network among farmers, fostering a strong sense of community engagement and collaboration.

The result: enhancing global marketing efficiency 

As Syngenta progressed with Bird, their focus expanded from simply managing mass communications to enhancing the efficiency of their marketing efforts. This shift was driven by an insight that the response rates from their customers were significantly higher when growers were engaged within 6 months of sharing their contact details. 

Motivated by these findings, Syngenta aimed to develop a system that could facilitate regular and valuable interactions with its customers to drive higher success rates with marketing campaigns and product launches. 

With Bird, Syngenta could now implement a comprehensive communication strategy that supported both mass outreach and targeted, insightful interactions, paving the way for more effective marketing journeys and a stronger connection with their vast farming audience.

Up next: Building stronger connections with farmers

As Syngenta looks to the future, the company is committed to deepening its connections with the farming community even further through Bird. Their goal: shift from a more manual and simple process of communicating with farmers into one dynamic, integrated messaging system, capable of reaching vast numbers of farmers with the push of a button. 

Central to this vision is the seamless integration of Syngenta's messaging functions across multiple platforms, including their innovative Cropwise Grower platform and widely used channels like WhatsApp. By consolidating all communications into a single, unified system, Syngenta will enable real-time tracking and management of conversations, creating a cohesive tapestry of interactions. Each conversation will be contextually informed by previous discussions and data, making teams more and more efficient across interactions.

Syngenta aims to offer unprecedented levels of support to their farmers, disseminating information swiftly and effectively. Syngenta is paving the way for a future where farmers are well-equipped, informed, and ready to meet the challenges of modern agriculture head-on.

About Syngenta Crop Protection AG 

Syngenta Crop Protection AG is a leader in agricultural innovation, bringing breakthrough technologies and solutions that enable farmers to grow productively and sustainably. We offer a leading portfolio of crop protection solutions for plant and soil health, as well as digital solutions that transform the decision-making capabilities of farmers. Our 18,300 employees serve to advance agriculture in more than 90 countries around the world. Syngenta Crop Protection AG is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, and is part of the Syngenta Group.

About Bird

Bird is an AI-first CRM for marketing, services, and payments. 

Our mission is to create a world where communicating with a business is as easy as talking with a friend. We power communication between businesses and their customers — across any channel, always with the right context, and on every corner of the planet. If you’ve ever ordered takeaway, returned a package, contacted customer service, or requested a login code, it’s almost guaranteed your interactions have been powered by Bird’s technology.

Our platform, our applications, and our APIs help businesses streamline conversations through their customers’ preferred channels — like WhatsApp, Email, SMS, Voice, WeChat, Messenger, Instagram - and build powerful and engaging experiences. Bird's out-of-the-box functionality and omnichannel expertise tips the scales for knowledge workers and helps them be productive right away, with tools to build great marketing campaigns, customer service experiences, or automated business processes.