Why email marketing is essential to the cannabis industry and how to use it for profit
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Email marketing represents a significant opportunity for cannabis and related businesses at a time when many traditional and digital marketing tactics for the cannabis industry are banned or severely restricted.
Research has repeatedly shown that email marketing works. According to Litmus, for every $1 spent on email marketing, businesses get $42 back, and McKinsey found that email marketing is 40 times more effective at attracting new customers than Facebook and twitter together.
The data shows that companies working in or with the cannabis industry should actively invest in email marketing to find, nurture, qualify, and convert leads. You just need to know how to use email marketing effectively to generate sales and profits.
Successful email marketing starts with your list
The power is in your list.
When you can email a highly targeted audience of people who are likely to be interested in what you offer, and when you send them highly relevant messages that solve their problems and address their pain points, you’re more likely to convert converting them into paying customers skyrockets.
With restrictive advertising and marketing regulations for companies operating in or with the cannabis industry, the ability to connect directly to an audience via email is like mining a gold mine.
The first step is to make sure you’re using a high-quality, clean list — with real email addresses for the right people, and not irrelevant, spam, or non-working email addresses. For example, if your target audience is cannabis or hemp license holders, the Cannabiz Media License Database will provide you with the best verified leads for your email marketing campaigns. Because the data is manually collected and verified by a team of researchers, you can be assured that all email addresses are real.
Follow the latest email marketing best practices
Today’s email marketing best practices are not the same as the best practices of the past. Email Service Providers (ESPs – Mailbox Providers) update their spam algorithms after every campaign you send, and their algorithms include thousands of criteria.
If you don’t keep up with the unwritten rules of email marketing as enacted by ESPs, your email investments will fail. Why? More and more of your messages end up in spam or junk folders rather than inboxes, whether you meant to spam someone or not.
It doesn’t matter how big your list is if your messages don’t reach the recipients. So make sure you’re using the right list source, follow email marketing best practices, and don’t make any of the top 10 email deliverability mistakes.
How to use email marketing for profit
The key to using email marketing for profit in any industry, including the cannabis industry, is to consider the buyer journey and craft messages and offers that meet the needs of recipients based on who they are and where they are are in the buyer journey. In my book, Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing for Business, I explain that the consumer buying cycle consists of five stages:
- Not yet on the market
- problem detected
- research and evaluation
- preferences set
- Final decision
Your goal is to consider where each person on your email marketing list is in the consumer buying cycle, develop buyer personas, segment your list, and send personalized messages to each segment that help them convert them into to bring the next phase.
For example, a person who is new to the market or has just discovered they have a problem that needs solving could benefit from educational content, checklists, short e-books and worksheets.
On the other hand, a person who is in the research and evaluation phase and is in the process of establishing their brand, product or service preferences could benefit from case studies and instructional videos.
Finally, people who are ready to make their final purchasing decisions and just need an extra nudge to choose your brand or business could benefit from comparison charts, testimonials and product reviews from competitors, or discounts and promotions.
With that in mind, you can create an email marketing plan filled with different types of content, promotions, and offers to engage with people at different stages of the consumer buying cycle that will effectively move them to the next stage — and Getting closer to choosing your brand than making a final purchase decision.
Key insights into email marketing for cannabis and cannabis-related businesses
Every day that you’re not connecting with targeted leads in the cannabis industry is a day when your competitors can swoop in and steal market share from you.
Assemble a quality and segmented list, follow email marketing best practices, and send personalized content that matters, and you’ll successfully guide prospects through the buyer journey to becoming loyal customers.
If your business is looking to connect with cannabis and hemp license holders in the United States, Canada and international markets, the Cannabiz Media License Database can help. Schedule a demo to see how it can help your business.
Originally published on 5/1/18. Updated 4/22/22.
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