How Panacea Payroll increased email marketing open rates 14x

Panacea Payroll is a payroll company and business services provider focused on helping companies in the cannabis and hemp industries run their businesses more easily, efficiently and profitably. With over 30 years of experience, the founders of Panacea Payroll provide payroll, human resource management and recruitment services for companies operating in the cannabis and hemp supply chain.

To connect with cannabis and hemp license holders in the United States, Panacea Payroll subscribes to the Cannabiz Media License Database and uses it to support their sales, marketing, and business development initiatives.

The problem

Panacea Payroll didn’t get the open rates from their email marketing campaigns it needed to build brand awareness with cannabis and hemp licensees, to generate, nurture, and qualify sales.

The solution

Panacea Payroll’s Account Manager at Cannabiz Media introduced Cannabiz Media’s successful email team to owner and president Jennifer Scotese.

After reviewing the email marketing history and the results of Panacea Payroll on the Cannabiz Media License Database, the team at Email Success met with Jennifer via Zoom to share their results.

Through their research, the Email Success Team found that the majority of the email marketing messages Panacea Payroll sent went to the recipients’ spam and junk folders rather than their inboxes. In fact, Panacea Payroll’s domain reputation was damaged so the results of their email marketing campaigns were severely limited.

The Email Success Team has identified three key ways to improve Panacea Payroll’s email marketing open rates and results going forward:

1. Perform a domain fix to restore the reputation of the current sender domain, or set up a new domain to send out future email marketing campaigns.
2. Improve list segmentation so that future email campaigns don’t go to recipients who are not interested in payroll services, human resource management, or human resources.
3. Improve the way you compose text in subject lines and message content to be more relevant and valuable to recipients based on list segmentation.

Implement the solution

After processing the report from the email analytics session, Jennifer began implementing the solutions recommended by the email success team to improve her email marketing results.

1. Perform a domain cleanup or set up a new sending domain to improve deliverability

“We thought we were getting decent open rates,” explains Jennifer. “It wasn’t until the email success team took a look at it that we realized that all of our emails to Google users didn’t even reach the recipient. It would all be spam. “

The email success team provided Jennifer with deliverability reports for several email service providers that showed her that the domain she was sending email from had a damaged reputation. In other words, several email service providers no longer trusted their sender domain, so they sent all or most of their messages to spam or junk folders instead of inboxes.

“For Panacea Payroll, the only way to market in this industry is through email through the Cannabiz Media License Database,” said Jennifer. “You can’t just look for contact information online in this industry. It’s hard to find, so the email marketing tool on the Cannabiz Media License Database is fabulous. It makes it so easy to create a campaign.

“I thought I’d just make a list and send it to 3,000 or 10,000 people at a time. Not a good idea. Little did I know about Google’s algorithm or that messages are automatically sent to spam. That was a huge eye opener! “

With this new information, Panacea Payroll decided to send marketing email messages from a new domain to build a positive domain reputation and improve deliverability.

2. Segment lists into target groups and exclude uninterested recipients

Panacea Payroll had sent email marketing campaigns to large lists of diverse recipients. As a result, many people who likely weren’t interested in payroll, human resource management, and human resources received the company’s email messages. Based on Panacea Payroll’s engagement results for these campaigns and the damaged domain reputation, many of these recipients reacted negatively when they received these campaigns.

To solve the problem and protect Panacea Payroll’s new domain reputation going forward, the email success team recommended a variety of ways to segment lists using the filter criteria available in the Cannabiz media license database to ensure that only those on most interested people will receive future messages.

“We sent our messages to anyone with a license, regardless of their role,” says Jennifer. “With the help of the email success team, I realized that it wasn’t smart because someone in the purchasing department isn’t taking care of payroll. Someone in the inventory or the science officer doesn’t take care of the payroll. They care about getting paid, but they don’t care about payroll and don’t meet them. It was a great benefit to learn about segmentation and find out what I did wrong. “

With the insights from the email success team, Jennifer set out to improve her list segmentation. She explains: “I focus more on roles and certain states in which Panacea Payroll is or wants to be. Now we are removing purchasing managers, inventory managers, science officers, etc. from our lists. I segment by job title and sort out irrelevant roles, which is good, because in the past those were definitely the contacts who unsubscribed or marked the message as spam because they didn’t care about the content. The segmentation was a big deal for us. “

3. Improve the writing of texts in the subject line and content to improve target group relevance

Cannabiz Media’s email success team also discussed recommendations to improve copywriting in the subject lines and content of Panacea Payroll email messages to increase open rates, clicks, and positive engagement, which would help them achieve better results and protect your domain reputation in the future.

“In the past, our messages were too good to sell, which I wasn’t aware of,” says Jennifer. “I wanted to talk about us, but the email success team taught me that I need to change my mindset to let the recipients know first. I don’t like being sold. The emails I get are pure sales that I get rid of. Now I understand and I don’t want to do this anymore.

“I am now trying to make our messages educational, which has also helped us create the content of our website, newsletter and blog. Whatever I post on the website, I try to link the email to our website so the recipients can visit and say, “Hey, that’s what they’re doing.” That was the first hurdle, so the biggest difference now is that our messages are either educational or informative. “

Jennifer also worked closely with the Email Success Team after the email analytics session to improve the copywriting in her subject lines and content. She says, “The messages I was going to put together would have been fine, but just a few small suggestions from the email success team would make a big difference to our results.”

The email success team also recommended free tools that Panacea Payroll could use to learn to write better subject lines and copies of emails, which Jennifer has used to continually improve her open rates and positive engagement for the messages she sends . “I didn’t even know the tools the email success team recommended were out, but they just make things easier.”

The results

With a new domain and better domain reputation, more targeted list segmentation, and improved subject lines and message texts, Panacea Payroll’s email marketing open rates through the Cannabiz Media License Database increased 14x.

Prior to implementing the solutions recommended by the Email Success Team, most of Panacea Payroll’s email marketing campaigns achieved open rates between 4% and 6%. Now the open rates for most campaigns are between 50% and 58%.

“I was like, ‘Wow, that’s how you can actually get open rates,'” says Jennifer. “It’s thanks to the Email Success Team for helping me tweak the content and more. Aside from the licensing information I get from the Cannabiz Media License Database, the most valuable help and guidance from the email success team is for us. ”

Panacea Payroll’s website traffic has also increased since they improved their email marketing. Jennifer shares, “We get a lot more clicks on our website, which I think is just because of the emails we send to people. I can tell that they are actually clicking the links in these messages. “

Jennifer and the team at Panacea Payroll haven’t finished improving their email marketing. “It gets easier every time,” explains Jennifer. “You don’t have to fix everything at once. Once you take a deep breath and take the time to go through everything the Email Success Team recommends, it won’t be too overwhelming. I focused on a few important things and implemented things in small steps. ”

With open rates already 14 times higher, Panacea Payroll is well on its way to continuing to generate great results from email marketing through the Cannabiz Media License Database!

To learn more about how the Cannabiz Media License Database and Email Success Team can help you connect with cannabis and hemp license holders like Panacea Payroll, schedule a demo today.