Proven Ways to Segment Your Email List and Boost Results

Email marketing is one of the best ways to connect with cannabis and hemp license holders and businesses. However, if you’re not effectively segmenting your email list to send the most relevant marketing messages and offers, your results will suffer.

Research shows that segmented email campaigns get 100.95% more clicks and 14.31% more opens than campaigns that aren’t segmented for specific audiences. In fact, marketers have seen a 760% increase in email marketing revenue from the segmented campaigns they send to specific audiences.

To get you started, below is an introduction to the top segmentation strategies B2B email marketers can use when crafting messages for the cannabis and hemp industry.

3 key segmentation strategies

All segmentation strategies are based on data, so you need to use the right tools to extract useful data about the people in your email list. Without the right data, you can’t target and market to leads effectively. The three most popular and effective segmentation strategies are demographic, behavioral, and psychographic.

Demographic Breakdown

Demographic segmentation segments your email list based on demographic statistics. Some of the criteria that B2B email marketers in the cannabis industry can use to segment lists based on demographic information include factors such as location, occupation or position, type of business, business revenue, age, gender, income, educational status, and so on further.

Of course, not all demographics are useful for every marketer, so you need to determine which factors are best to focus on to create targeted lists for your purposes.

‍Put the strategy into action: If you are trying to contact cannabis license holders to sell your products or services to companies involved in the marijuana industry, there are several ways you can use the data in the Cannabiz Media License Database to segment your audience and build laser-targeted email lists for specific, high-converting campaigns.

For example, if your business sells a product such as a point-of-sale software tool, display products, or security products, you can use the targeting capabilities in the Cannabiz Media License Database to create a list of dispensaries and retailers with active licenses located in certain geographic areas.

Another example, if you’re trying to sell a product or service to licensed cannabis growers, you might base your targeting on factors like the size of the canopy, the type of lighting used, whether the facility is indoors, or outdoor growing environment, target number of employees, and more.

There are dozens of criteria to segment your list using the Cannabiz Media License Database, and even more combinations to create the best list possible.

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behavioral segmentation

Behavioral segmentation focuses on segmenting your email list based on specific actions people have taken with your past email messages, websites, online ads, and more.

For example, people who open your email messages are definitely interested in your content and are real leads. People who actually clicked links in your messages are likely to be even more interested and can be considered Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL). People who have clicked a link to buy or contact you are likely in the final stages of the buyer journey and are very hot, Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)!

So it makes sense to target those engaged people on your list with personalized messages tailored to their wants and needs based on their past behavior.

‍Put the strategy into action: There are many ways to target cannabis and hemp license holders with messages you send based on their engagement, but you need to track their engagement to develop segmented and personalized campaigns that get sent to the right people at the right time.

For example, it’s easy to identify your hottest leads in the Cannabiz Media License Database based on their past behavior and build a targeted email list to market to them. Tags can help you track who opened or clicked on your message, find engaged contacts, and push contacts down the marketing funnel with hyper-relevant messages and offers.

You can even create tags to track specific behaviors to further increase your email marketing ROI. After tracking engagement across multiple email campaigns, you can score your leads to determine what to send them next.

Earn your free Email Marketing Data and Lead Scoring Specialist Certification by Cannabiz Media and become an expert in tracking results and scoring leads to maximize ROI!

Psychographic Segmentation

Psychographic segmentation targets people based on psychological attributes such as attitude, opinions, goals, and personal preferences. This is the most difficult data to obtain, but it can be very useful in targeting people with the best messages to nudge them into action.

‍Putting the strategy into action: Psychographic targeting is more complex than demographic or behavioral targeting and requires analysis to segment using this type of data. Fortunately, there are a few ways to do this using the Cannabiz Media License Database.

For example, if you sell accounting services to cannabis license holders, you can track how people engage with the email marketing campaigns you send over time to determine which topics are most interesting to them.

For example, you could segment pharmacy contacts who show interest in payslip topics (because they’ve opened previous messages and/or clicked on payslip links) separately from pharmacy contacts who show interest in tax topics. You can then send each audience more news and useful content on the topics that interest them most. This is a much more effective strategy than teasing them with messages about topics they have already shown they are not interested in due to their previous lack of engagement.

The goal is to keep your brand in mind for the right reasons and guide leads through the buyer journey. You can’t achieve this goal if you don’t send messages people want!

Pay attention to what they’re interested in by tracking results and using tags in the Cannabiz Media License Database to create highly targeted lists. Once your lists are built, you can create personalized content for each audience that gets the results you want.

Earn your free Content certification for email marketing from Cannabiz Media and become an expert in writing and designing highly successful email marketing campaigns!

Key takeaways on email list segmentation for the cannabis industry

Email list segmentation is one of the best ways to improve your brand’s reputation with cannabis and hemp license holders and increase your email marketing results. The key is to create laser-focused audiences and send each prospect as personalized a message as possible. Remember, even the best email message won’t convert if the wrong people see it.

Want to learn more about how subscribing to the Cannabiz Media License Database can improve your email marketing results for cannabis and hemp license holders in the US and international markets? Schedule a demo to see it in action!

Originally published on 07/14/20. Updated 02/24/23.