Email marketing is critical to your marketing strategy – now more than ever. But what email vendors allow cannabis companies to use their platforms? There aren’t many. Avoid getting your emails banned and your account shut down with this new email tool. While it is still in beta, it is a powerful tool owned by people who WANT to support the cannabis and hemp CBD industry.
Ignite your email marketing with this new tool!
In this episode, you’ll learn:
➡️ Impact of email marketing
➡️ Recommended new tool that fully supports the cannabis industry
➡️ Best practices in setting up the new tool
Welcome to Cannabis Marketing Live – All Puff. No Fluff!
Email marketing is a great way to build your customer base and keep in touch with existing clients. However, if you are running a cannabis business, it can be difficult to find the right email marketing software that will help you reach your target audience without the risk of having your account restricted or, worse, banned!
In the past, I’ve been recommending ActiveCampaign because it’s super easy to use. It also allows you to automate your flows and is even cheaper than most alternatives. And while that’s true for CBD companies, ActiveCampaign’s policy restricts content about certain cannabis products like THC, which makes it even more difficult for those who are selling products in the cannabis industry to use it as a primary email marketing tool.
Thankfully, I came across a new tool that will not only allow you to launch cannabis-related content over email but also comes with beautiful design templates that you can customize without having to worry about the tech-side of things.
And get this: this software company is 100% women-owned and supports the cannabis and hemp CBD space.
I know you’re excited about the big reveal (and if you don’t want to wait, you can check them out here). But before we dive in, I’d like to share a few fundamentals about email marketing in the cannabis industry, so you know EXACTLY what to do and what to look for in email marketing tools.
So let’s get started!
The purpose of email marketing
The purpose of email marketing is simple: to build a relationship with your customer and build trust with your brand. It also goes a long way in helping you and your brand stand out by creating an emotional connection with your audience – something that other digital marketing methods can hardly replicate.
Email marketing has become more powerful than ever – as it becomes more critical than it has been in the past.
People pay attention to emails. They go straight to your audience’s inbox. Email marketing puts you in charge of the relationship.
Kendra Losee
And if you’re a dispensary, you can’t afford NOT to have an email list.
Why? Because people who sign up for your newsletter are already interested in your product or service. All you need to do is constantly remind them that your business can help them achieve their goals.
For example, you can send your previous buyers exclusive coupon codes for their next purchase. It may also be helpful to remind them that they may have run out of some of the products they purchased in the past few months.
Doing so will make sure that you’re being remembered, and it’ll be much easier to convert those customers into loyal ones later on.
But remember, the list doesn’t end there! In fact, there are lots of things you can do over email to entice your readers to interact with you more. That’s why email marketing is one of the best ways to grow your business, especially if you want to focus on building relationships with your customers.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about what to look for when looking for a good email marketing solution.
8 Things You Need to Look For When Considering an Email Marketing Tool for Your Cannabis Business
Email marketing is now a must in this day and age. It’s also essential to use a tool that has all the features you need and won’t get your account restricted or banned.
Here are eight things you need to look for when considering an email marketing tool for your cannabis business.
1. The company supports the cannabis industry.
Let me break it to you: the cannabis industry is often misconstrued. That’s why there are so many restrictions regarding how businesses operate within it.
That said, most email marketing platforms today restrict cannabis-related content. But that’s totally fine because there are still quite a few apps out there that offer great features for the cannabis industry.
But remember: you have to be careful which tools you use. Otherwise, you might find your accounts restricted or, worse, banned!
A word of warning. If you’re using services like MailChimp for your cannabis business, you need to stop. MailChimp is notorious for banning accounts from our industry, and it’s not worth the risk!
2. Mobile-friendly.
It’s 2022. Gone are the days when mobile phones were just for making calls. Nowadays, we use them for everything. So, if your emails are not optimized for mobile devices, you’re missing out on a lot of potential customers.
But don’t worry. Lots of email marketing tools nowadays can accommodate responsive designs so that you can optimize your emails for any device without even having to code anything. Some of these apps may not have the responsive design feature natively, but plugins and integrations are available to help you achieve that functionality.
3. Excellent delivery rates.
You’ve probably heard about how vital deliverability is.
Deliverability refers to the odds that emails sent and scheduled through a specific app reach their intended recipients instead of being filtered out by spam filters.
So how does your new email marketing software perform on deliverability? Remember, the higher the delivery rate, the better.
4. The tool allows you to segment your audiences.
Segmentation is crucial in any marketing strategy. It allows you to target your audience based on specific criteria, like demographics, interests, behaviors, stages in the buyer’s journey, events, and so on.
Segments, lists, or sometimes called tags in other software, can be extremely helpful in determining where your prospects came from. Social? Your website? From your ads, maybe?
Above all, segmentation is important to make sure that you aren’t sending irrelevant messages to your prospects and customers. Think about it, how would an old subscriber of yours feel if they get a welcome email after receiving 20 emails from you? Doesn’t that sound annoying?
That’s why email marketing solutions that have good audience segmentation features are so powerful. With these features, you can easily set up rules to determine who gets what message at what time.
5. Do their email templates meet your needs?
The visual design is the first thing your subscribers notice when they open your emails. And if it doesn’t match your brand identity or looks unprofessional, you can lose a lot of potential customers.
Bear in mind that email templates don’t just have to be about visual design. It should be intuitive enough and allows customization based on your business’s needs.
To help you assess this particular feature in any email marketing software, try to ask yourself these questions:
- Can you modify templates? If so, up to which extent?
- Does it have a drag-and-drop feature?
- Which templates are free to use? Which ones do you need to pay for?
- How intuitive is the built-in email builder?
- Do you need to learn how to code to navigate the email builder?
- Can you customize the templates according to your branding?
6. Automations and workflows.
Automation is key to running an efficient business. When you automate tasks, you free up time and energy to focus on higher-value activities. This means you can spend less time managing your business and more time growing it.
Email automation is essential to any good email marketing strategy, but it could get pretty overwhelming if you’re new because there are different kinds of automations out there. For instance, you could set up automated emails based on triggers, such as new orders, new leads, sales, etc. Or, you could set up a series of emails that are automatically sent at certain times throughout the week.
Some people and some companies don’t set up automation in a way that makes sense, or based on action. They set it up based on what you, as the marketer or business owner, feel like should happen. It’s not the most effective way to do it.
Kendra Losee
While these are all crucial considerations, still, many companies don’t set up automation based on actions or in a way that makes sense. Most people still think email automation is merely about scheduling emails to be sent out at a specific time.
But email marketing tools have evolved far beyond that. Today, most platforms offer workflow automation where you can define rules that trigger emails, depending on behavior, actions, and events like lead conversion, order fulfillment, or even social media engagement. That’s a massive benefit for businesses because it allows them to scale campaigns without manually managing each step.
That’s why automations and workflows are often undervalued, but they can boost productivity and save money when done right.
7. Integrations
Integration is another feature that isn’t always valued highly enough. While it may seem minor, integration allows you to connect your tools seamlessly. You can create a workflow where you can trigger an event from one tool to another. Then, you can even combine multiple integrations into one workflow.
This is great because it allows you to take advantage of the power of each tool without having to pay for separate services, AND you can trigger the same workflow from multiple places.
For example, if you wanted to send a discount code to all those who clicked on your link in the past week, you could do just that by setting up a workflow!
If you’re considering subscribing to an app, you might want to ask the following questions:
- Which apps do they integrate with?
- What do their forms look like?
- Can you segment audiences?
- If yes, how does that work?
8. It supports scalability.
Imagine your business five years from now. What does it look like?
If you’re looking forward to growing your business big time, then your email marketing tool should be able to catch up as you scale.
Think about it. As your company grows, you’ll need a much bigger list – and when it comes to that, imagine how cumbersome moving a bunch of people from one platform to another is!
That’s why it’s wise to find the ideal solution as early as now, so you don’t have to go through the hassle of transferring your email list from one platform to another.
Now that you know all the eight things you need to consider when choosing an email marketing software for cannabis, let me introduce you to two tools that ticks off all the boxes:
If you’re a CBD company, you need to check out ActiveCampaign.
ActiveCampaign is an email marketing solution that’s designed to help you elevate the customer experience through marketing automation and more. It has everything you need if you’re running a CBD company (or ancillary cannabis business) – including a drag-and-drop interface, lots of gorgeous templates, reliable automation features, and more.
And the best part? Their restrictions on CBD-related topics are pretty minimal, which could also mean that you can send out CBD content through email without running the risk of getting your entire account shut down.
But if you’re running a cannabis company, the tool you need to be using is called FloDesk.
Meet FloDesk – the Email Marketing Software that Helps You Design Emails People Love to Open.
We’re in a highly restricted space, which is why marketing cannabis has tons of challenges.
That’s also the reason why I’m elated to present FloDesk to you.
FloDesk is unique because it allows you to send emails about cannabis, cannabis-related promotions, and more.
And the best part? The tool is super intuitive that you can only send cannabis-related emails and promotions from a business address where cannabis is legal.
Note that your business address needs to match your state where cannabis is legal. For example, if you’re in a medical-only state, you need to be promoting medical only. If you’re in any other state that allows recreational cannabis, your address has to be in that state.
Kendra Losee
I personally think that FloDesk is the perfect email marketing software for the cannabis industry. Not only that, though. This women-owned business supports our industry, too, and I would give back by sharing this fantastic tool with you.
FloDesk offers flat-rate pricing, which means you get to pay a subscription, and the features are unlimited. Click here to get 50% off for the first year of unlimited email marketing.
It also has gorgeous templates that are completely customizable.
Final Thoughts
We all know that the cannabis industry has its own unique set of challenges when it comes to marketing online. Thanks to tools like FloDesk, we have the power to reach our target audiences without worrying about compliance issues.
So, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and subscribe to FloDesk today.
And, to learn more about email marketing, check out these blog posts:
