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:

• 5 Advanced Email Segmentation Techniques

• Actionable Tips You Can Apply Today

• Final Thoughts

Let’s Roll 🛼

Are your segmentation strategies not delivering the results you expected?

Probably… since you clicked on this email📩

More than likely, you’re only scratching the surface of how powerful email segmentation can be.

Basic strategies lead to basic results.

That’s why I’ve compiled 5 advanced email segmentation techniques you should be using to craft better, more relevant content that actually resonates with your audience.

These 5 underrated techniques will give you a better understanding of your audience, and show you exactly how to target them⬇️

1. Behavioral Segmentation Based on Interaction:

Track how your customers interact with your website post-click:

• What products do they view?

• How long do they spend on which pages?

• Which pages/products have the most interaction (and figure out why)?

Use this data to segment your list based on interest and engagement levels.

This approach takes you beyond basic engagement metrics like open and click-through rates, offering a better understanding of your audience's interests and intent.

Here’s how to do it⬇️

1. Collect data on various aspects of user behavior on your website, including:

• Product views

• Dwell time

• Page navigation

2. Using the data gathered, segment your email list into categories such as:

• Highly engaged

• Moderately engaged

• Low engagement

3. For each segment, create personalized email content that caters to their level of interaction.

• Highly engaged - Exclusive offers to turn engagement into sales.

• Moderately engaged - Educate them more about the products they viewed using how-to guides, or customer testimonials.

• Low engagement - Re-engagement campaigns.

2. Purchase History & Frequency:

These two pieces of data are insanely powerful for email segmentation; they tell you exactly when to contact your customer, and with what type of content.

Bob Smoker stops in and buys 2 carts and an eighth every Monday? Great. Send him an offer every Sunday for a discount on carts or an upsell on quarters.

Pretty logical honestly.

And no, you’re not doing all of this just to target Bob Smoker to convince him to buy 4 carts instead of 3 this week.

Mr. Smoker represents an entire section of your audience. Segment your weekly, smaller-purchase customers, and upsell them on relevant products at appropriate times. Again, pretty logical imo.

I’ve said it a million times; there’s nothing that’ll make me un-sub from an email list quicker than being sent irrelevant information on products I never use.

Take the time to segment your list now, thank me later.

3. Product Preferences & Usage Intent:

Product preference goes along with purchase history; you don’t want to send irrelevant content to your audience.

But understanding their “why” for using cannabis takes your targeting up a notch.

There’s plenty of reasons that your customers smoke:

• Anxiety

• Insomnia

• Depression

• Chronic pain

• Just to get high!

These are all segments of your email list.

And each segment has tons of lifestyle-related content you can include in your strategy; it shouldn’t be all cannabis all the time!

Don’t only send them information on your products, links to product pages, and for the love of God, DO NOT SPAM DISCOUNTS EVERYDAY!

Someone who’s suffering from high anxiety might benefit from:

• A 5-minute anxiety-reducing breathing exercise

• A blog post titled “X Helpful Ways To Crush Anxiety”

• Meditation Monday: Give wellness and meditation tips every week/month to start a series your audience looks forward to

If you’re a dispensary, make a Spotify playlist of all your budtenders’ favorite songs. Super simple way to add a more human side to your brand, and get your followers engaged!

You can easily incorporate your products or other canna content into your strategy as well:

• Suggest strains/products that compliment your content topic; “The Perfect Strain to Get You in Meditation Mode!”

• Cross-sell with related products they haven’t tried but might like.

• Add links to blog posts or product pages when relevant.

4. Customer Feedback & Satisfaction:

Customer satisfaction is an underused way to segment your list; great for win-back campaigns and for segmenting your VIP customers.

Here’s everything you need to know about identifying your VIP customers, and how to keep them happy.

Your most satisfied customers should be grouped into your VIP or “Brand Advocates” segment. These are the customers you want to keep the happiest!

Why?

Remember the 80/20 rule - “80% of a company’s revenue comes from 20% of its customers.”

Your repeat buyers make up the largest chunk of your revenue, make sure they keep coming back!

Your VIP’s are also more likely to open your emails.

Why?

Because you make sure to give them a reason to. Your most exclusive offers should be reserved for your best shoppers.

Your VIP customers provide you with the most powerful, and by far cheapest type of brand recognition: Word of Mouth.

Word of mouth and social proof go hand-in-hand; they work the same way. The happier your customers are, the more likely they are to recommend you to their friends.

Now for the not-so-satisfied customers:

Unhappy customers are part of the game. But your unsatisfied customers provide you a ton of valuable info as well:

Win-back, or re-targeting campaigns are useful for re-engaging inactive subscribers and persuading your unhappy customers to give your brand another shot.

Use customer feedback to address whatever concerns they may have:

• Maybe they bought a defective product

• Maybe they’re unhappy because they had to stand in the queue for 30 minutes last time

• Maybe they bought some pre-rolls that were rolled too tight and stopped smoking halfway through (common problem I’ve found)

Whatever issues they might have had, address those issues, and show them how you’re fixing them.

Someone that is unhappy with wait times might be happy to hear that you can reserve products online, select a pick up time, and skip the line next time they need something.

Eliminate all objections. That’s how you become an industry leader.

5. Psychographic Segmentation:

Psychographic Segmentation involves grouping potential customers based on psychological traits such as lifestyle, values, opinions, and personality traits.

This form of segmentation is particularly useful in the cannabis industry where the reasons for product use can vary widely.

Psychographic segmentation goes beyond simple demographic or geographic data; it delves into the more intricate aspects of a consumer’s behavior and psychology.

This can include their moral values, hobbies, lifestyle choices, consumer habits, and even their social attitudes.

This information is then used to create more targeted and effective marketing messages that resonate on a personal level.

Here’s how to do it⬇️

1. Collect data: Use surveys, analyze social media engagement, and study customer behavioral data to learn more about your audience and to find out what content is resonating the most.

2. Identify patterns: From the data collected, identify common psychological traits.

3. Create “buyer personas”: Develop detailed personas for each psychographic segment.

   For example, "Emma, the Anxious Professional" could represent young professionals who use cannabis products to manage stress and work pressure.

4. Create tailored content: Create content that speaks directly to the interests, values, and lifestyles of each segment.

   Adjust the tone of your emails to match the personality and values of each segment.

5. Test, refine, repeat: As always, A/B testing different elements of your emails is crucial; experiment with subject lines, images, CTA’s etc.

Final Thoughts:

• Leverage email automation to automatically send content to your segmented list (creating 24/7 salespeople).

• Continuously test and tweak your segments based on campaign performance.

• Personalize not just the content, but also the send times based on user behavior.

Email segmentation is the most powerful email marketing technique.

And it makes sense why; the more direct you can be with each individual customer, the more likely they are to continue opening your emails, and continue buying from you.

But as important it is to see the individual differences in each customer, it’s equally important to know which customers are similar and can be sent the same kind of content with similar success rates.

That’s the beauty of email segmentation - it’s knowing the differences AND similarities in your audience.

Until next time, Happy Segmenting!

Steve

P.S. Want to learn more about how to craft compelling cannabis content? Click here for my 5-step strategy for turning followers into customers!