B2B Email Marketing Trends for the Cannabis Industry in 2023

The secret to successful B2B email marketing in 2023 is strategy and value creation. This is as true in the cannabis industry as it is in other industries. Email users receive so many messages each day that the days of sending one sales message after another are over. In 2023, successful email marketing will require a more strategic approach that meets recipients where they are in the buyer journey.

According to Litmus, email marketing yields a $36 ROI for every dollar spent, which is higher than any other channel. However, to ensure that your business has a chance of seeing a positive ROI on your email marketing investments in 2023, you need to understand the email marketing trends that are working and will continue to work for months to come will.

Familiarize yourself with the five cannabis industry B2B email marketing trends discussed below to help you develop effective strategies and campaigns in 2023 and beyond.

1. Hyperpersonalization

In 2023, personalization is good, but hyper-personalization is so much better! In fact, it’s the leading email marketing trend of 2023. Embrace it and your results will improve. Ignore it and you will find your messages in spam and junk folders.

Research shows that companies who are embracing personalization still have a great opportunity. According to Twilio Segment’s 2022 Customer Engagement Report, 80% of consumers spend an average of 34% more when their experience with a brand is personalized.

However, Salesforce’s State of the Connected Consumer report shows that there is a huge gap between what consumers expect from personalization and how companies are meeting those expectations:

• 73% of consumers expect companies to understand their needs and expectations, but only 51% believe companies understand their needs and expectations in general.
• 62% of consumers expect companies to adapt (ie personalize) based on their actions and behaviors, but only 47% of consumers believe that companies actually do so.

The good news is that when you send campaigns to cannabis license holders using the Cannabiz Media License Database, it’s easy to personalize email subject lines, content, offers, images and more. The built-in email editor tool has all the features you need to make every message you send hyper-personalized.

2. Micro-segmentation

Hubspot’s 2023 Marketing Strategy & Trends Report shows that the two most effective email marketing campaign strategies are subscriber segmentation (78%) and message personalization (72%). The truth is, segmentation and personalization go hand in hand.

You can’t create hyper-personalized email campaigns unless you segment your recipient audience into niche audiences. This is what micro-segmentation is all about! To micro-segment your audience, you need to leverage all of the demographic, behavioral, and psychographic data you have about each recipient.

The trick to successfully micro-segmenting your audience is to create your email campaign (including each personalized version that fits your audience segments) and then ask yourself if the message is relevant to each person on each list. Will every person on every list appreciate your message? If not, you haven’t segmented your list enough or personalized your message enough.

Don’t be intimidated by micro-segmentation. It’s easy when you have the right tools! For example, you can micro-segment recipients from cannabis license holders and create personalized email campaigns for each audience using the data and capabilities in the Cannabiz Media License Database.

3. KPIs

Most email marketers track a number of performance metrics to determine how well their campaigns are performing. The three most popular metrics to use to get a basic understanding of how well an email subject line, body, and call-to-action are resonating with recipients are open rate, click-through rate, and click-to-open rate. Things changed for many email marketers when Apple released new privacy updates known as Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) in September 2021.

Without getting into the technical details, when Apple released iOs15, iPadOS 15, macOS Monterey and watchOS 8, new MPP features were added to protect users’ data from third-party apps, including email marketing platforms protection. That meant email marketers didn’t get any data when Apple users opened their messages. In other words, the open rate data would not be accurate, and there would be no way of knowing how well the subject lines resonated with the recipient audience.

Here’s how Apple explained what the new features would mean:

“In the Mail app, Mail Privacy Protection prevents senders from using invisible pixels to collect information about the user. The new feature helps users prevent senders from knowing when they open an email and masks their IP address so it can’t be linked to other online activities or used to determine their location.”

This news hasn’t boded well for marketers who rely on tracking data to determine not only how well their email marketing campaigns are performing, but also how integrated digital marketing investments are performing.

However, the news for B2B marketers in the cannabis industry hasn’t been all that bad. Searching the data in the Cannabiz Media License Database reveals that very few employees and companies of cannabis license holders open email messages sent through the license database on Apple devices or use Apple email addresses.

In other words, Apple’s change had a tiny impact on data reliability and KPIs among marketers who email cannabis license holders through the Cannabiz Media License Database!

While you should definitely start moving the KPIs you’re tracking in 2023 — assuming Google, Microsoft, and other companies will add features similar to Apple’s to their operating systems in the future — it’s not something you need to do right away , when you do this use the Cannabiz Media License Database to email cannabis license holders.

4. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are hot topics in every industry today and will continue to dominate the email marketing conversation in 2023. Both artificial intelligence and machine learning can be used to improve email marketing results, streamline processes, and increase ROI.

In 2022, more and more tools were launched that leverage both artificial intelligence and machine learning to increase productivity and efficiency, and even more will be launched in 2023. Keep in mind that not all AI-powered tools are worth the price. For example, AI copywriting tools don’t produce the same quality that an experienced writer can produce – not even close!

However, there are AI-powered tools that can help you get better email marketing results. All you have to do is do your research, try before you buy, and make sure the tools you try are actually giving you the results you want.

The Cannabiz Media License Database delivers the results email marketers need with its AI-powered list cleaning and send time optimization features. When you send email marketing campaigns to cannabis license holders through the Cannabiz Media License Database, you can use the built-in tools to ensure you’re sending your messages at the right time – when each recipient is most likely to open. As a result, you get the best possible results.

5. Interactivity

Interactive email messaging surged in popularity in 2022, and the trend is set to continue in 2023. Interactivity refers to actions recipients must take in order to interact with your message. In addition to clicking links, interactivity may include tapping, swiping, and viewing animated content. Rollover image effects, mini-games, and polls also add interactivity to email messages.

For example, including an animated GIF showing how your product works or showing multiple products in an animated slideshow can be an effective way to provide more information without including multiple images or lots of text.

While interactivity is popular and can work well to increase engagement with your messages, you need to be careful. Interactive elements can be spam triggers, causing email service providers to deliver your messages to spam and junk folders instead of inboxes, or not delivering your messages at all.

If you add animated GIFs or other interactive elements to your email marketing messages, make sure that the size of the message’s HTML file does not exceed 100 KB. Interactive elements can cause your message’s HTML file size to skyrocket, and if it exceeds 100 KB, your messages might not make it to the inbox.

Another spam trigger related to interactivity that you should avoid is embedding videos in your message content. Instead, include an image in the message that represents the video and link the image to the video on your website. Recipients must click on the image to view the video.

Key insights on B2B email marketing trends for the cannabis industry in 2023

If you want your email marketing campaigns to be successful and generate decent ROI in 2023, you need to prioritize the five trends above: hyper-personalization, micro-segmentation, changing KPIs, interactivity, and artificial intelligence and machine learning.

You can leverage all of these trends in your email marketing by subscribing to the Cannabiz Media License Database and sending email campaigns to cannabis and hemp license holders in the United States and international territories. Schedule a demo to see how it can help you improve your results and reach your goals in 2023 and beyond!