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:

• How to Occupy Space in Your Customers’ Minds

• 7 Ways to Make Your Dispensary More Memorable

Let’s Roll 🛼

The average adult’s attention span is ~8 seconds.

Can you accurately give a full breakdown of your dispensary, what your company’s values are, what sets you a part from your competition, and showcase your entire catalogue of products in 8 seconds?

Negative.

You have 2 options:

1. Forget about engaging your audience. It’s too hard. Just spam discounts everyday to their inbox until they block or report you.

2. Create a customer-focused marketing strategy: Create content they want to read. Study your audience and learn how to communicate with them, what they like, what they can relate to. When you focus on the customer, the customer will focus on you.

If you chose option 1, there’s an unsubscribe button at the bottom of this email!

For everyone else, here’s 7 ways to occupy more space in your audiences’ mind and make your dispensary more memorable:

1. Personalization:

If you can figure out how to get through to your audience and resonate with them on an emotional level, you will occupy more space in their mind. Everything in marketing/sales is emotion based.

People remember you and engage with you when can evoke emotion from them.

So, the more personalized you get, the more emotion you draw out of your audience. It starts with analyzing your customers’ purchase history, customer behavior, and preferences (among other data points), and segmenting them with customers with shared preferences and behavior.

Most CRM’s nowadays (especially Alpine IQ) offer tons of segmentation tools to make this process as easy as a click of a few buttons. Most company’s just aren’t utilizing their tools enough.

Once they’re segmented, it’s just a matter of testing different content styles and formats to see what each segment is engaging with the most. Then just double-down on that.

Pro Tip: If you really wanna be memorable, try gathering info on your customers’ interests and lifestyle preferences to create a more personal, emotional response.

For example, athletes that use cannabis may respond to content about cannabis in sports, and products that help in post-workout recovery.

Travel enthusiasts might like information on cannabis-friendly sites to see across the U.S. and products that are more travel-friendly, convenient, and discreet (vapes, edibles).

Imagine getting an email saying:

“Hey (first name),

We know you love road trips, so here’s 5 cannabis-infused restaurants to check out on your next trip! Also, we’ve selected 3 of the most discreet, portable, all-in-one disposable vapes for you to make sure you can stay medicated on your next adventure!

Check ‘em out here!”

No flashy sales techniques. Just genuine, relevant interaction.

2. Relevance:

Personalization and relevance go hand-in-hand.

Creating relevant content that connects on a personal level will continue to occupy mind space.

But relevancy comes down to timing as well. This is where your automations come in:

Creating abandoned cart/browse/checkout flows automatically sends emails to your customers after taking a specific action when interest and relevance is at its peak.

Educational content on new products, industry news, or product use guides have to be relevant to each segment. A diehard pre-roll smoker isn’t gonna care about your email about your new 1:1 CBD gummies.

Make it make sense.

3. Creativity:

Unique Offers: Everyone does discounts. We’re all so desensitized to seeing “20% Off” or “BOGO Sale” that we hardly even notice those offers coming through our inbox. That’s where physical gifts can be a unique, memorable way to incentivize your customers. Plus, a physical gift gives your customers more reason to stop into your shop.

Engaging Formats: Quizzes, games, polls, videos. You need to find a way to make your content entertaining. Remember those old Buzzfeed quizzes from the 2010’s that were all the rage? “Which Kitchen Appliance Are You?” They were ridiculous, but highly engaging. Try creating “Find Your Perfect Strain/Product/Dab Rig/Edible” quizzes to keep your readers engaged.

Creative Marketing: To be different is to be remembered. And creativity is one of the best ways to be different. Most brands (cannabis or otherwise) follow similar marketing strategies and models. Try adding a little more personality to yours. What kind of unique campaign ideas can you think of that still aligns with your overall message?

For example…

Let’s say your dispo donates a portion of proceeds to local animal shelters. You can have certain days or shopping hours where your customer receives a discount if they bring their pup in.

Or if your dispo values sustainability, start a recycling program where customers bring in their used carts for a discount on their next purchase.

Just make sure it aligns with your brand’s values or vision. Consistency in voice, theme, and business practices is key in building brand familiarity.

4. Consistency:

Humans are habitual creatures.

We like routines. We like talking to people we’re used to talking to, and going places we’re used to going to.

And we engage with emails, texts, and phone calls from people that we regularly engage with. It becomes like muscle memory; you see a text from a familiar person, you open it.

Your email content should be consistent in design, subject matter, and brand voice. As well as frequency.

Essentially, keep in touch with your email list. Regularly check in on them and let them know you’re here to help with any of their canna needs.

5. Exclusivity:

People like feeling like they’re a part of something that other people don’t have access to.

That’s why loyalty programs and VIP programs can be so valuable to your dispo.

Create a tiered reward system for your audience where higher tiers receive better deals or exclusive products.

Include loyalty program progress bars in your emails and on your website so they can see their savings and see how close they are to the next tier.

If your dispo gets a lot of small batch products or products that come in limited supply, save them for your most valuable, loyal customers.

You’ll keep your VIP’s happy, and the FOMO will be too much for non-rewards members to take!

6. Feedback Loops:

You’re not doing this enough…

Customer feedback is the best feedback you can get. And it’s extremely cheap and easy to collect.

Include regular surveys and poll questions in your email content, social media posts, in-store, etc.

Keeping your customers happy and showing them that you’re listening to their suggestions leads to the most powerful form of marketing there is…

Word of mouth.

Consumers want to shop where they feel valued (and they’ll bring their friends)!

A lot of people say it’s not good to overwhelm your audience with a bunch of questions.

I say they won’t mind if the reward you’re giving them for their participation is good/creative enough.

People love to talk about themselves. Especially when someone is actually listening.

7. Multi-Channel Operation:

Your brand’s voice and communications should be the same across all platforms.

Brand familiarity is key in occupying space in your customers minds. Being familiar with a brand and recognizing the logos, colors, and voice increases the likelihood of engagement with that brand.

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

Uniqueness, relevancy, personalization.

If your marketing strategy has those 3 qualities, you will have a highly engaged audience that trusts you, and is eager to buy.

Nobody gets remembered for being exactly the same as everyone else.

Happy Occupying (minds)!

Steve

P.S. ⬇️⬇️