Ultimate Guide to B2B Email Marketing in the Cannabis Industry

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Email marketing is essential to the cannabis industry. Offering some of the most effective marketing opportunities unavailable to companies working in and with the cannabis industry, email is a channel that can be used to guide people through the buying journey – from prospect to loyal customer. This is especially true for companies targeting cannabis license holders throughout the supply chain.

Business-to-business (B2B) email marketing messages can help businesses increase brand awareness with leads from cannabis license holders. Campaigns can also be sent to nurture leads and build brand trust — the kind of trust that converts leads into sales. You can easily track prospect and customer behavior to send more targeted messages in the future. You can also use key performance indicators to continually improve your results and return on investment.

To help you improve your email marketing results, this article is a compilation of tips and links that, if you read them in full, will give you a comprehensive guide to B2B email marketing in the give cannabis industry. If you’re looking to up your email marketing game, this ultimate guide has everything you need to get started.

Email Marketing Tips, Best Practices, Do’s and Don’ts

Email marketing in 2022 is not the same as email marketing was five years ago. Today, email marketers are at the mercy of email service providers (ESPs). These ESPs are the mailbox providers – like Google, Outlook, Apple Mail, etc. – that users use to access their email messages. ESPs are the gatekeepers to people’s inboxes, and they use sophisticated algorithms to keep unwanted messages out.

So, if you don’t know the dos and don’ts of email marketing (what ESPs like and don’t like), then your email marketing results will be poor. And if you’re not keeping up with email marketing best practices, your messages are more likely to end up in spam and junk folders than inboxes.

Suggested reading to learn more about email marketing do’s and don’ts and best practices:

Domain reputation, deliverability and spam

Sending generic messages to large lists of people (e.g. Spray and Pray) is dead. If you want to get good results today, you need to send personalized messages to targeted lists and make sure you only send to people who relate positively to your deal with news. If you don’t, ESPs will see that you’re sending content people don’t want, and more and more of your messages will end up in spam/junk rather than inboxes.

Currently, Google is the only ESP that allows you to get a sense of what it thinks of you as the sender – and only if you’re sending from your own domain and not a shared domain. With Google Postmaster Tools you can see your domain reputation according to Google, which ranks your reputation as high, medium, low or bad. The better your reputation, the more Google trusts you and the more of your messages end up in your inbox.

It’s up to you to make sure you don’t send messages or do anything that ESPs might consider spam — even if it’s unintentional. Otherwise, nobody will see your email campaigns and your return on investment will decrease.

Suggested reading to learn more about domain reputation, deliverability, and spam:

Audience, Lists and Segmentation

Remember, spray and pray is dead. To be successful in email marketing today (and to make sure your messages always get to recipients’ inboxes), you should only send content that people want. To do this, you must first identify your target groups. Second, you need to segment your audience into unique buyer personas and separate email lists. Third, you need to personalize the messages you send to each list.

The more segmented you can get your lists and the more personalized the content of your messages can be for each audience, the better your results will be. Before you send a message, always ask yourself, “Does every person on this list really want this message?” If the answer is no, you haven’t segmented your list enough or didn’t personalize the content enough.

Suggested reading to learn how to define your audience(s) and segment your lists for the best email marketing results:

Email message content and copywriting

Email marketing isn’t just about sales. Not everyone is ready to buy the moment they receive your email message. This is especially true for B2B email marketing. The higher the price of your product or service, and the longer the buying cycle for your product or service typically is, the less likely it is that someone will respond positively to a sales-focused email message.

Email marketing today is all about capturing prospects and moving them down the marketing funnel—from cold leads at the top of the funnel, to warm leads in the middle, to hot leads at the bottom. With this in mind, leads at the top of the funnel need to receive messages that drive brand awareness and recognition, while leads in the middle of the funnel need to receive messages that build trust and nurture your brand’s relationship with them. Only leads at the bottom of the funnel are likely to respond positively to promotional email messages.

Therefore, you must learn to write email marketing content that will engage and engage recipients throughout the buyer journey. This requires an overall strategy and the creation of calls-to-action (CTAs) leading to a variety of goals that are appropriate at different stages of the buyer’s journey, not just sales.

Suggested reading to learn more about how to write B2B email marketing messages to cannabis license holders:

Email Marketing Results and Using Data to Improve

How do people react to the email messages you send? Do they open your messages and click on links in them one or more times? The more engaged people are with your email messages, the better your results will be (and the higher your domain reputation and deliverability will be).

By tracking recipients’ behavior and interactions with your email messages, you can use the data to create “Next Step” campaigns that move them down the marketing funnel. You can also identify your hottest leads – the ones who are ready for a sales-focused email campaign or a face-to-face outreach by a salesperson on your team.

Key takeaways on B2B email marketing in the cannabis industry

Not only do you need to understand the current email marketing trends, keep up to date with best practices and follow the tips contained in this guide, but you also need to understand the fundamentals of the cannabis industry to run successful email marketing campaigns for owners of to issue cannabis licenses. With this knowledge, you can develop a B2B email marketing plan that delivers the results you want.

Ready to engage with cannabis and hemp license holders through the Cannabiz Media License Database for sales and marketing (including B2B email marketing)? Schedule a demo and see how a subscription can help you achieve your business goals.