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:

• 9-Step Process for Auditing Your Email Marketing Strategy

• That’s it!

Let’s Roll 🛼

Email marketing is the most powerful marketing tool for cannabis brands.

Your socials can, and will be blocked at any time.

And if you don’t have an effective email strategy to fall back on when that time comes, your brand could be in real trouble.

Ensure that your email strat is up to snuff⬇️

Here’s my 9-step process of how to audit your current marketing strategy, and how to make it better:

1. Reassess Email Marketing Objectives:

Start by revisiting the original goals set for your email campaigns. Are you

• Looking to increase customer loyalty?

• Trying to drive more foot traffic?

• Launching new products?

Update your objectives based on market trends or business needs.

Set SMART goals:

• Specific

• Measurable

• Achievable

• Relevant

• Time-bound

2. Analyze Audience Segmentation:

Utilize data from your CRM and POS to identify which segments are most engaged/profitable, and which ones may require re-engagement campaigns.

• Ensure that your segments have clear criteria, and are still relevant to your brands’ goals and inventory. Routinely assess your segment’s performance by analyzing open rates and other key metrics.

• Analyze how different segments interact with different types of content and campaign strategies to help in understanding preferences and behaviors of each segment.

Are your customers segmented properly? Are you missing any segments or customer personas that you could create?

Assess the performance of your segments by analyzing conversions, and segment growth/decline.

3. Audit Campaign Performance:

Define your key metrics: Open rate, CTR, bounce rate, unsub, list growth, etc.

Next, perform a detailed analysis of individual emails to pinpoint specific elements (subject lines, images, body text) that drive performance.

Collect & consolidate: Most marketing platforms offer detailed analytics and reporting features. Alpine IQ for example offers real-time analytic reports, ROI calculator, and expansive A/B testing features to make it super easy to keep up to date with your campaigns’ performance.

Consolidate data in a way that allows you to compare performance across different campaigns, time periods, and audience segments.

Look for patterns in the data that may indicate broader trends or issues.

For example, a drop in engagement over several campaigns might suggest email fatigue, while a sudden spike in unsubscribes might be linked to a specific content type or campaign.

Based on your findings, identify specific areas for improvement.

Then… ⬇️

4. Implement Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

KPIs are used in marketing to measure the success of campaigns and to ensure your brand is achieving its goals.

5 characteristics of effective KPIs⬇️

1. Quantifiable

2. Relevant

3. Actionable

4. Time-bound

5. Comparable

Before you can establish KPIs, you need to clearly define your business objectives.

Next, identify Critical Success Factors or “CSFs” (essential areas of activity that must be performed well to achieve the business objectives). For a digital marketing campaign, a CSF could be effective audience engagement.

For each CSF, develop specific KPIs that can measure the effectiveness of activities within that area (remember the SMART outline).

For example, a KPI for your digital marketing campaign might be to achieve a 40% open rate on email campaigns within three months.

Define what success looks like for each KPI and establish thresholds and targets for performance evaluation.

Some common KPIs for cannabis brands are:

1. Open rates

2. Unsub rates

3. Bounce rates

4. List growth rate

5. Conversion rates

6. Spam complaints

7. Revenue per email

8. Click-through rates

9. Segment performance

10. Engagement over time

5. Compliance Check:

Stay updated on the latest regulations affecting cannabis marketing to ensure your brand stays compliant.

1. Regularly consult legal experts

2. Subscribe to regulatory updates (i.e. FDA/DEA)

3. Train your team

4. Document everything

*Tip - Alpine IQ offers several features to help cannabis brands stay compliant in their marketing efforts:

• Data security and privacy

• Age verification

• Geo-targeting

• Opt-in and opt-out management

• Audit trails

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!⬇️

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6. Action Plan Development:

Some brands launch marketing campaigns with no clear goals, KPIs, or direction (and it shows).

Reverse engineer your company’s goals; set clear goals first, then start putting the pieces together of how to accomplish them.

Based on the outcomes of your audit, create a detailed action plan with specific initiatives aimed at addressing identified gaps in your email strategy. Whether it’s

• Addressing gaps in customer segmentation

• Optimizing email campaign strategies

• Enhancing website user experience

• Or ensuring marketing materials comply with new regulations

List these areas clearly, detailing the problems identified and the potential impact of addressing these issues on overall business performance.

Once you’ve determined what SMART goals you have for your brand, outline the strategies that will be used to achieve them.

For example, if a strategy involves improving email engagement, you might include redesigning email templates, further segmentation of your audience, or personalizing email content as mini goals that move you closer to the bigger objective.

Once you got your action plan, allocate resources to appropriate team members, establish timelines for each action, and get ready to analyze!

7. Feedback Loops:

Don’t be afraid to ask!

Direct feedback can provide insights into customer needs and whether they feel accurately categorized.

Include customer feedback forms (surveys and polls) in your content; segmentation of your audience should be an evolving process as your audience and market dynamics change.

And don’t forget about internal feedback!

Your budtenders have the most direct level of communication with your customers than any other team member. Regularly solicit feedback from your team, especially those in customer-facing roles for how to better communicate with your unique customer base.

8. Utilization of CRM Features:

Make sure you’re using your CRM software to the best of its ability. These software’s are made to make selling weed easier for you, so better get your money’s worth!

Alpine IQ offers many tools specifically designed to improve marketing strategies of cannabis brands:

• Opt-in management

• Personalization engine

• Automated email triggers

• Segmentation on steroids

• Regulatory compliance tools

• Easy integration with your loyalty program

• Real-time campaign performance analytics

Still think email marketing is all about discounts??

9. Monitor and Adjust:

As always, analyze the performance of your campaigns and adjust according to your business goals.

By implementing clear KPIs, and A/B testing different elements of your campaigns and overall marketing strategy, you’ll be able to create the ideal brand experience for your audience.

Staying relevant and on top-of-mind is critical in the canna industry. Ensure that your marketing is reflecting who you are as a brand.

And as always…

Make it about your customers!

Happy Auditing!

Steve

P.S. If you’d like me to audit your email strategy for free, reply to this email or DM me on LinkedIn!