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.

Today’s Email:

• 9 ways to create desire in your emails

• What you can do today

• Final thoughts

Let’s Roll 🛼

If you want to encourage your reader to take an action, you have to make them want to take that action.

Evoking emotion and creating desire is how you get your audience to engage with your brand’s content.

Make them feel something; give them a reason to care about what you have to say.

Make them feel important (because they are), show them you have what they want, and show them how to get it.

Here are 9 key strategies to craft emails that not only capture attention but also drive action:

1. Benefits > Features:

Focus on how your products can enhance your reader’s lifestyle or solve a problem. Your customers don’t care about the features, they care about how those features will benefit them.

Features: “1.53% Terps” - “Great Flavor” - “.06% a-Terpineol”.

Benefits: “Enhances Creativity” - “Boost Your Buzz” - “Higher Quality, Lower Prices” 

2. Use Sensory Language:

Drew E. Whitman’s book Cashvertising talks a lot about using sensory language in your copy.

In the book, Drew uses the example of someone trying to sell an orange-scented candle; just putting “Smells Like Oranges” is gonna bankrupt your company faster than you can say WoodWick Candle!

Instead, you want to put your customer in the orange fields.

Makes sense, right?

The more descriptive you can be, and the more imagery you can conjure up in your reader’s head, the better.

3. Incorporate Storytelling:

Stories evoke emotions, making your brand more relatable and memorable.

When subscribers feel a personal connection to the stories you tell, they're more likely to develop a desire for your products or services.

Let your brand’s personality shine!

4. Personalize:

Personalization is always the answer…

Personalize EVERYTHING from the subject line, to the CTA.

Use customer data to better understand your audience’s preferences and create personalized, relevant content for each section of your audience.

Tailoring content shows that you understand their unique tastes and needs, making the email more relevant and compelling.

Use first names and 1st or 2nd person point of view to make it feel like you’re speaking directly to them.

5. Create a Sense of Urgency:

Urgency leads to desire; convince your readers to act now!

Phrases like “Exclusive Access For Our Email Subscribers” or “Limited Batch Release” create a fear of missing out (FOMO) on something special.

6. Educational Content:

Education is the key to progressing this industry. Your audience can’t desire your products or brand if they don’t know about it!

Providing valuable information can spark interest and build trust, making readers more inclined to explore your offerings.

7. Leveraging Visuals:

Action shots are your best friend…

Including visuals of real people using your products is the best way to ‘paint a picture in their head’ and show them how your products work.

Infographics work great as well for product comparisons with your competition.

Just be careful to keep a good text-to-image ratio; too many images and links will land your emails in spam.

Check out my 7 Tips For Mastering Cannabis Marketing Here!

8. Clear CTA’s:

Don’t spend all this time crafting the perfect message for your reader full of desire, personalization, and savings just to end it with a ‘SHOP NOW’ CTA.

Your CTA is how you convince your reader to take action. Using phrases like “Shop Now” or “Learn More” WILL work, but ‘good enough’ isn’t good enough for your brand!

Your CTA should be clear, concise, and visible to your reader.

Using 1st or 2nd person point of view in your CTA’s can create more desire and urgency:

• Get Yours

• Find Your Strain

• Take Me There!

• I Want It!

9. Exclusives:

Your customers want to feel important. They want your content to feel like it was written especially for them; to get exclusive perks and offers that aren’t for the average customer…

Special offers can be a powerful incentive for taking action, especially if they feel personalized and significant. Provide email-exclusive discounts or loyalty rewards (and let them know that these offers aren’t for everyone).

What To Do Today:

My first piece of advice for increasing desire in your emails is to work on your subject lines and CTA’s…

If you can create desire in your subject lines, they’ll be opened.

If you can create desire in your CTA’s, they’ll be clicked.

So how do you do it?

Subject Lines: The 3 main elements I incorporate into my SL’s are:

• Personalization

• Relevancy

• Curiosity

⬆️That one covered all 3⬆️

Personalization + Relevancy + Curiosity = DESIRE.

CTA’s: Similar ‘rules’ apply to your CTA. The personalization changes from using their first name, to using 1st and 2nd person POV (I, mine, yours, you).

And don’t forget your ACTION VERBS!

Here’s some of my favorite CTA’s:

• Get Yours

• I Want It!

• Show Me!

• Discover More

• Take Me There!

• Find Your Strain

• Get My Discount

Final Thoughts:

Email marketing is a process.

Every element of your marketing strategy needs to be studied, optimized, tested, and refined.

Split test everything.

From subject lines to CTA’s, and everything in between.

But remember, when A/B testing, it’s important to only test 1 element at a time.

This way, you’ll get the most accurate data for whichever element you’re testing at that time.

That’s all for today!

Until next week,

Steve

P.S. I’d love to hear how you’re liking High On Marketing so far! If you have a minute, please reply to this email with your thoughts on my content and anything you’d like to see more or less of! Thanks!