Welcome to High On Marketing - A weekly newsletter where I show you how to strengthen your email marketing strategy for your cannabis brand. Learn how to nurture your audience, increase retention rates, and sell more weed.

⚡Quick Tip⚡

Today’s Email:

• Understanding Your Audience

• Creating Content They Want to Open

• Tips for Leveraging Your CRM to Improve Your Marketing Strategy

Let’s Roll 🛼

Who’s your favorite online “guru”?

Gary V?

Jay Baer?

Alex Hormozi?

Whether you love, hate, or love-to-hate theses guys, there’s one obvious thing you can’t deny about any of them: They’ve built hugely successful brands.

And I’d be willing to bet that their success boils down to one major, undeniable factor:

They know who they’re talking to…

They understand their audience; but not just on a demographic, statistical level. They know their audience’s

• Dreams

• Emotions

• Pain points

• Sociolinguistics (how to talk like them)

• What they’ve tried and failed to do in the past to fix their pain points

They know how to use this information to make an impact in their customer’s lives through content creation.

And if you can make an impact in your customer’s lives like the gurus do, your content will work ‘round the clock for you, too.

Unluckily for you, you can’t use social media like the gurus do (cause plants are bad).

Luckily for you, I’m here to show you how to do it with email and Alpine IQ…

Here are 7 things you need to do before, during, and after running any email campaigns in order to have an impact on your audience:

1. Know Your Audience:

Let me tell you what this doesn’t mean…

“Our target market is cannabis consumers within a 50 mile radius ages 21-70”

Just, no.

Before even starting an email campaign, you have to know exactly who you’re talking to.

If not, you won’t know

• How to speak to them

• What to offer them

• What their preferences are

There’s 3 ways to do it:

1. Surveys: Send them regularly. Include them in your welcome series, post-purchase emails, or add 1-2 questions at the end of your emails, and give them a little something for taking the time. Ask about preferences, interests, demographics, etc.

   Marketing gurus will tell you surveys can overwhelm your audience and you shouldn’t ask them too many questions…

   Just make them optional. People don’t like being forced. If your reward is good, they’ll fill it out.

2. Purchase History: Analyze that sh*t! Works great on those who hate filling out surveys😎

3. Brand Engagement: Analyze email, social media, and website engagement. This data can help you find relevant products to recommend/cross-sell/upsell, and can help with creating more personalized content for your audience.

The better you know them, the easier it is to engage. Understanding your audience should be a top priority in your marketing strategy.

2. Segment Your Audience:

You👏can’t👏use👏the👏same👏strategy👏for👏every👏customer👏

If you’re not customizing the experience for your customers, you’re not giving them any reason to shop with you.

No marketing strategy has ever been successful without being relevant to the target audience. It sounds obvious, but it’s easy to tell when you’re signed up to a brand’s email list and they haven’t properly segmented you yet. Especially in cannabis…

If you’re not creating content, recommending products/services, and providing value that is relevant to each segment of your audience, you’re hurting your deliverability, engagement, and you’re wasting your time.

Don’t know where to start segmenting your list?

👉Right here.👈

Now for the fun part…

3. Content Strategy:

These are the 4 main types of content you want to create:

1. Educational Content: Valuable cannabis/lifestyle content. Usage tips, recommendations, evergreen content.

2. Community Stories: Testimonials, social proof, case studies.

3. Exclusive Offers: Offers on relevant products based on purchase behavior. Invitations to loyalty program.

4. Interactive Content: Quizzes, surveys, polls. Data collection.

Your brand’s strategy and schedule is unique and requires a unique approach, but the general rule-of-thumb is 80% value-driven, 20% promotional for a content split.

Meaning, 80% educational, community stories, and interactive content - 20% exclusive offers.

When You’re Ready, Here’s How I Can Help You…

Click HERE to download the High On Marketing Evergreen Templates - 50 pre-written emails tailored for cannabis brands to educate, engage, and encourage action from your audience

Stay on top-of-mind while building a well-informed, loyal customer base.

Get your templates today and have the next 6 months of canna content covered!

⬇️Don’t forget to use your subscriber code for 50% off!⬇️

9VVS85T

4. Personalization:

Some people might look at an email list of 2000 subscribers and just see a number. Marketers look at it as 2000 opportunities to create a unique, personalized buying experience that those 2000 canna consumers have never experienced before!

And no, that’s not being dramatic.

You should want to create as customized an experience as you can for your buyers. Why half-ass something as critical to your brand’s success as your marketing strategy?

Personalize your

• Greetings

• Recommendations

• Automations

• Customer stories

• Everything!

Write up some quick birthday and first purchase anniversary emails/offers and put ‘em on autopilot. Even with little to no design/copywriting experience, you can whip up a couple celebratory emails, personalize them, and automate them in an hour or 2.

• Personalized subject lines have a 26% higher open rate (my memory)

• Marketers have seen up to 760% increase in revenue from segmented campaigns (Experian)

• Personalization can decrease unsubscribe rates by ~17% (MarketingDive)

5. Leverage Your CRM:

CRM management is a tall order for someone running a whole business. But utilizing your CRM to the best of its abilities is crucial for the success of your marketing strategy…

They’re made to make your life easier, here’s a few things to remember when using Alpine IQ or other popular CRM’s:

• Data Integration: Integrate data from your POS systems, online platforms, and customer feedback for a comprehensive view of each customer.

• Advanced Segmentation: Alpine IQ offers advanced segmentation tools and predictive analysis to tailor your messages more precisely based on customer data.

• A/B Testing: Regularly test different aspects of your emails (subject lines, content, timing) to optimize for open rates and engagement.

• Automation: Automate welcome series, milestone emails, and re-engagement campaigns to maintain continuous and timely communication with your customers.

• Analytics: Use your CRM analytics to track the performance of your emails, understand what works, and refine your strategies accordingly. The analytic reports in Alpine tell you EVERYTHING you need to know to improve your strategy.

6. Building Trust:

Transparency and compliance. The 2 keys to success in cannabis marketing.

The less you seem like a business that is trying to take your audience’s money, the easier it is for them to trust you.

This is CANNABIS. We’re not here JUST to make money! 

We’re here to provide a product and a service to a group of people that want, need, and enjoy it.

Bonus points if we make a healthy living doing it. And that’s exactly what my entire online presence is about - helping you help people, and make you more money at the same time.

I’m a firm believer that brands who are not transparent are that way because they have something to hide. So, if you have nothing to hide, don’t hide it!

Be honest about your products, cultivators, extraction, mission, etc.

• Show behind the scenes of your process

• Showcase/celebrate your budtenders and other staff

• Recommend music to your audience

• Take them on virtual tours of your grow

Anything that isn’t constant BOGO deals or discounts on irrelevant products.

7. Regular Review and Adaptation:

Being able to adapt and change course in your strategy is crucial for succeeding in a volatile market that’s constantly changing and progressing/regressing.

And the only way to stay on top of it all is to regularly review every element of your campaigns to know what’s working for your audience.

Identify and follow patterns in customer behavior and engagement.

Double-down on what’s working.

Change what’s not.

Well, I suppose 1400 words is enough…

If you’ve made it this far, thanks so much for reading, and I’ll see you next week!

Let me know how I did below🙏

Steve

P.S. Want me to help BEEF up your dispo’s email content for FREE?? DM me on LinkedIn to find out how you could get one week of email content creation, consultations, and CRM management for $0 (Lookin’ for more case studies👀).