Email Marketing Solutions Specific to the Cannabis Industry
As the cannabis industry continues to mature, so does its customer base. An increasing number of older adults are using cannabis for medicinal and recreational purposes, making email marketing an important tool for dispensaries trying to reach this demographic.
There are a few key things to keep in mind when crafting email campaigns aimed at older adults. First, it’s important to segment your list so that you’re only sending emails to people who have signed up to receive them. This is where we will begin our cannabis marketing journey, at the enrollment stage.
“Opting In” to Email Marketing
Due to the nature of cannabis marketing, you can avoid a potential email marketing disaster by vetting your subscribers and incentivizing them to join your subscribers’ list.
If cannabis businesses send an email campaign to unsuspecting customers who haven’t gone through a signup process, you can incur significant liability.
As a business you should always take the necessary compliance precautions to avoid this, so avoid purchasing lists to send emails to and ensure your customers have completed the opt-in process.
Generating a List of Subscribers for Your Cannabis Business
Incentivizing new subscribers with a rewards program is a great way to grow your list organically, but it can be difficult to make a cost-effective, enticing way to encourage people to join.
However, we’ve developed many strategies for maximizing the enrollment process that you can check here
To be safe, ensure your customer acquisition process includes a clear signup or ‘opt-in’ that explains the marketing process.
Alerting your customers they will receive promotional content from your business in advance is vital to maintaining a healthy communication relationship with them. So tell them they will receive targeted promotions as well as rewards and incentives for joining.
This is a great way to put your marketing out there respectfully and avoid unsubscribes who may feel duped into your marketing approach.
Operation with honesty is the marketing mantra that you should adopt when encouraging people to receive promotional content.
Post Loyalty Enrollment
However, this is just the beginning. Once you have new customers in your database, with our 30+ POS and E-Commerce integrations, you can understand what they enjoy product-wise, accelerate your customer’s shopping habits and expand your business.
This is called segmentation and is about separating customers into different ‘buckets’ based on their cannabis-friendly interests.
So, your cannabis marketing can be more effective and targeted, compared to sending a blanket email to your entire list. You can get granular and send targeted campaigns to people who are likely to react to them.
You can tell them about your targeting, how the deals will be relevant and at the end of the day, it’s better to be a member than to pay regular retail prices.
Targeted and Relevant Campaigns
Segmentation is the first step to improving your click-through rates while helping to ensure that your messages are relevant and targeted to your audience.
You can also automatically personalize your email marketing to include first names and many other dynamic fields, also increasing the likelihood of engagement and a sale.
Email Marketing Campaign Best Practices
For example, an email marketing campaign targeting Stizzy frequent purchasers, over the age of 45, who spent over $300 at your dispensary in the last month, with a Stizzy promotion.
This maximizes the effectiveness of your advertising spend and this is the kind of targeted marketing that springbig provides through email marketing, SMS marketing, and native apps complete with your branding.
Clear Messaging in Your Marketing
Additionally, make sure your subject lines are clear and concise, as older adults are more likely to delete emails that they don’t understand. Also, in your promotions, it can be important to use large font sizes and easy-to-read layouts to make your emails accessible to everyone.
Over-the-Top Visuals
Exciting visuals can also be detrimental to this age group and also trigger spam filters from your email service provider. So best to keep those for younger demographics in MMS messages or through a native app, where the audience will be more receptive and the delivery will be consistent.
By following these tips, you can ensure that your email campaigns are effective in reaching and engaging older adults. Cannabis email marketing is a great way to connect with this growing demographic and build relationships with customers that will last a lifetime.
Incorporating this form of digital marketing into your marijuana marketing channels requires patience, consistency, and a strong customer acquisition process to encourage marketing enrollment at your cannabis dispensary.
Dispensary Email Marketing Strategy
Enrolling new customers as email subscribers is a great way to keep them updated on your latest products and deals. Cannabis email marketing can be a great way to connect with your customers and keep them informed about your latest offerings.
Cannabis email marketing is still an effective marketing tool that cannot be overlooked. It is cost-effective and reaches an older demographic where they are comfortable, in their inbox.
Email Marketing and Analytics
Advanced email marketing software, like the kind springbig provides, is essential for your cannabis dispensary marketing strategy.
This is because it can show you just how effective, or ineffective your email marketing for cannabis-related promotions is. Providing you the insights to fine-tune your marijuana marketing campaigns.
Installing a SaaS marketing platform like springbig will allow you to measure and maximize the efficiency of your digital marketing channels by A/B testing multiple campaigns across multiple platforms and delivery methods.
Advertising Cadence and Monitoring Your Churn Rate
Remember, at the end of the day you are still communicating with humans, so start engaging with them with a slower cadence to start.
A welcome email converts customers much faster than initially scaring off potential customers with a ‘spammy’ transactional email.
Springbig is also a platform that can provide these insights, like how many people unsubscribe from emails, how many people clicked through to make a purchase, and the engagement from your campaigns.
All of these KPIs are vital for creating a next-level email marketing strategy at your dispensary.
What About The Younger Demographics?
While email marketing is certainly a tool for older demographics, younger demographics tend to respond to different communication mediums like SMS marketing and apps.
So pay attention to your customer’s ages and filter them into different marketing channels, like Facebook or social media companies. In order to appropriately encourage sales by driving visits to your website landing pages.
Welcome Emails
Initiation emails are a great way to welcome new customers into the process of checking for promotional emails in their inboxes.
Sending a cannabis-friendly initiation to your program can invite your new customers to your marketing approach and develop your business organically.
Introduce them to your website and the services provided on your landing pages. Where they can naturally stumble on your promotional sales, and your social media channels and experience your email marketing cadence slowly.
Transactional Emails
This is where cannabis or CBD brands can kick start their sales, run campaigns and evaluate the engagement from their target audience.
Just be sure to target your transactional emails appropriately based on purchase behavior to turn these prospective customers into habitual shoppers.
You can use these types of emails in your marketing approach to drive consumers to a deal on your landing pages, or e-commerce store.
Taking a Deeper Look at Your Dispensary’s Data
If you notice your dispensary customer base is of the older demographic, then email should never be ignored. Setting up drip campaigns that are respectful to your new customer’s expectations can help build brand awareness without coming off as spam or overbearing.
If you see that 50% of your database is aged 45 and up, maybe your dispensary marketing strategy would benefit more from email marketing campaigns or generating new email subscribers.
This age group of adults check their inboxes and send emails regularly, where they are more likely to receive promotional content and act upon it.
Why Email?
Cannabis email marketing can be especially effective when targeting older customers, as they are generally more comfortable with this method of communication.
Email also has high deliverability rates, meaning that your message is more likely to be seen by the recipient.
Additionally, email campaigns typically have high open and click-through rates, meaning that people are actually reading and engaging with the content.
Finally, email marketing can be a great way to generate revenue for your dispensary. Let’s dive into each one of these topics to see how we can generate more subscribers and sales from your marketing endeavors.
Personalzied Messaging
Different age demographics definitely react differently to different communication mediums. Cannabis email marketing may not be as effective with a younger demographic, but it can still be a useful tool to reach older customers.
SMS marketing, apps, and social media are usually more effective forms of digital marketing with younger people since they generally prefer social media as a method of communication for their age group. It’s important to know your audience and what communication channels they are most likely to use.
Deliverability
Email deliverability is the process of making sure your emails actually reach their intended recipients. This can be a challenge, especially for businesses in the cannabis industry, as many email providers like Gmail have strict policies against services sending messages related to technically federally illegal substances. Another thing to keep in mind when marketing your services is keywords.
Email Service Providers
Email service providers place restrictions on the types of cannabis-related content that can be distributed through their email marketing platforms.
Email service provider platforms like; Gmail, Outlook, and iCloud mail are some of the main platforms. With Gmail being the largest at around 1.2 billion users, it is important to focus on deliverability for this platform, knowing the terms and conditions, as well as any flagged ‘keywords’, will be essential to your email marketing strategy.
No Restrictions on Cannabis-Related Content
Another great tip is to avoid using cannabis keywords in your message content, as this could trigger spam filters and prevent your email from being delivered.
Instead, get creative and explore some other digital marketing tactics to expand your message beyond the reach of email marketing platforms, companies, and their restrictions. This is also extremely relevant for social media marketing.
Mobile Email Marketing
Mobile must also be taken into consideration when optimizing your deliverability using an email service provider, so iCloud and Apple cannot be ignored as 41% of cellphone users are on Apple products. Let us ensure that your mobile email marketing is optimized so we can get customers on the road to your dispensary.
Brand Awareness and CBD Products
CBD companies should certainly be looking into email platforms as a majority of their older customer base is looking for pain relief, anti-inflammatory, and other medicinal benefits.
These adults check their inboxes regularly and are looking for a cannabis-friendly alternative to painkillers and other dangerously addictive pharmaceuticals.
Building brand awareness through email can show your consumers what you have going on at your store, maybe showcase a new delivery service, or cannabis brand in stock or invite consumers into a marketing retention system like loyalty programs.
Conclusion
All in all, springbigs email marketing tool is a great cost-effective, and compliant approach to ensuring your intended audience; receives your promotional content through the web of email service provider filters, reacts to your email marketing campaigns, and finally the ultimate goal of responding to your email marketing through making a purchase.
When applied to an aging demographic, email marketing services and campaigns can easily return more engagement than google ads, Facebook and Twitter combined.
With springbig, you’ll have the tools to understand your audience, apply email marketing strategies, and fine-tune the results.
Allowing you to easily pivot between SMS marketing, email marketing, and native apps is something uniquely springbig, and a function that provides cannabis brands and retailers the tools to excel over their competition.
