In today’s ultra competitive business environment, especially in the fast-moving and rapidly expanding world of cannabis dispensaries, if you aren’t leveraging everything that email marketing has to offer you are doing your business a huge disservice. We like to say that “SEO and reputation management brings ‘em in, and email brings ‘em back.”
Today, 92% of ALL internet users have email, more than 70% check their email every single day (multiple times a day), and email is the most often used form of digital communication – even outpacing social media these days.
If you are not utilizing email marketing as part of your dispensary marketing plan, you are leaving money on the table.
At the same time, figuring out how to “crack the code” when it comes to email marketing for marijuana dispensaries is nowhere near as simple and as straightforward as firing off and email every now and again and hoping for the best.
You really have to be strategic about how you use this marketing channel and that’s why we’ve put this quick guide together.
ALWAYS Ask for Contact Information
The number one thing you can do to dramatically improve the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns, even if you never change the actual emails themselves, is to start asking for email contact information at literally EVERY opportunity. You should also always offer something in return for an email. It can be a discount or some sort of coupon. A free pack of rolling papers is a great giveaway for an email. The customer gets something they need from you and you expose them to your brand every time they roll one up. Since joints are often shared – it’s likely that their friends will see your brand as well.
For one reason or another, a lot of entrepreneurs get a little squeamish when it comes time to ask for someone’s email. Don’t let that happen to you.
Email marketing lets you effortlessly (and inexpensively) reach out to your prospects and your customers as often as you like, letting them know what’s going on in your business but also making offers that can help ring your register and build your business at the same time.
Look for ways to grow your email list as often as possible and really drill down into your staff at your dispensary that they should be collecting contact information (or verifying information that’s already been collected) every single time they interact with a customer. There can be compliance issues with collecting and storing client information in a medical setting in some situations but https://www.springbig.com/ has solved this with an innovative opt-in system with a built in loyalty program designed specifically for dispensaries.
Plan Your Campaigns
Plan your email campaigns
The most successful business owners are very systematic and very strategic in how they market and advertise. They do not take a willy-nilly approach to building and growing their business.
Instead of firing off an email whenever you think about it, or whenever you remember to do so, instead preplan 10 or 15 emails in advance and put them in an auto responder so they start sending regularily as soon as your customer signs up, so that each individual email builds on top of every other email sent, creating real campaigns that can steadily grow your revenue. You can then add in one off emails when you have special deals or events you want your subscribers to know about.
As a general rule, you’ll want the overwhelming majority of emails in your campaigns to be relationship building emails. Think of these emails as a way to communicate with your customers, to let them better understand who you are and what help separate you from other cannabis dispensaries, and to just kind of build a relationship that’s not revolving entirely around the business/customer dynamic.
Every third or fourth email you’ll want to pitch something, however, as you also want these emails to be good for business. In a 10 email sequence you might have seven emails that are purely relationship building and three that our relationship building but also designed to get them to take some sort of action and to buy something from you. Use these as an opportunity to announce new products or time sensitive discounts or deals.
Don’t Overlook Your Past Customers – Turn them into Regulars
Every business owner on the planet wants to bring more new customers into their operation, and entrepreneurs in the cannabis dispensary world are no different.
At the same time, the most expensive thing you will ever do your business is try and convince a complete and total stranger to give you their hard earned money as opposed to giving it to anyone else – and that’s the challenge in bringing new customers to your business.
Obviously, every business needs new customers to grow and expand but that doesn’t mean that you should be overlooking the value that your past customers have.
- Members of dispensary rewards programs have 35% larger basket sizes
Having an email list is also a great opportunity to ask for customer feedback and solicit reviews. Both of which are important for improving your customer service and increasing your online visibility.
Loyalty Programs
Email marketing combined with a loyalty program can be used to target customers that have already purchased something from you, customers that already like what you have to offer, like your prices, and love your products – customers that would be a lot more likely to come back to your dispensary and purchase more of what you have to offer.
Email campaigns can be segmented to specifically target past customers differently than new prospects or potential new customers, which is another major advantage of this marketing technology. Different messages should be sent to different segments of your customer list (people that purchase CBD would get CBD campaigns versus those that purchase other products, for example) – skyrocketing the success rate and helping you expand your business at a breakneck pace.
Thankfully, implementing email marketing into your cannabis dispensary doesn’t have to feel like an uphill battle.
A lot of the tools available (like email autoresponder services, for example) are either 100% free of charge or very inexpensive to use. And because creating effective emails boils down to writing to your customers like you would a close personal friend, rather than using “corporate speak”, you are in the driver’s seat when it comes to sending messages that resonate and convert as well.
Your individual situation will determine which tools you should use. If you have online ordering you may want to look at a system that has the ability to send cart abandonment emails. If compliance is an issue you may want to look at SpringBig. Feel free to reach out to us and we can help you decide. Keep an eye out for a future post reviewing the various auto-responder options.
The post Email Marketing For Cannabis Dispensaries was originally published on: THC Internet Marketing
Email Marketing For Cannabis Dispensaries posted first on https://thc.im
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