By Susan Gunelius
Email marketing is critical for every cannabis business since so many advertising channels are not accessible to businesses working in and with the cannabis industry. However, sending one generic sales message after another is unlikely to drive the results you want and need.
One of the best ways to improve your email marketing results is to send the best content to each person on your list – content that is personalized to them. Here’s how to do it using your email marketing platform.
Leveraging Personalization and Dynamic Content in Email Marketing
Your goal should always be to personalize the email messages you send so they’re as relevant as possible to each recipient. Not only will this lead to better results, but it will also help keep your messages out of spam folders.
Personalization involves automatically adjusting content in your email messages so it’s clear to each recipient that the message is meant for them. For example, adding the recipient’s first name in the email subject line or in the message greeting (e.g., Hi John) adds simple personalization that can make a big difference in whether or not someone opens the message and reads it.
Dynamic content takes personalization a step further. Rather than simply pulling a piece of data from a contact’s record (such as First Name) and filling a field in your email message with that data, dynamic content changes depending on who sees it. For example, recipients could see different images, offers, text, colors, and links in your messages based on the criteria you choose.
With dynamic content, you can quickly create a single email message for your audience but configure it so specific elements automatically change based on who each recipient is. You could send the same message to 500 people but some recipients will see a 10% discount and others will see a 20% discount. You could even change the images to appeal to different audience segments or change the products promoted in the message.
Developing Segmentation, Personalization, and Dynamic Content Strategies
Personalization and dynamic content should make your email message look like it was made specifically for each recipient. By giving people content that is the most relevant to them, they’re more likely to act on it.
While there are many ways you can use personalization and dynamic content in your email messages to improve results, you can get started quickly by focusing on your audience’s demographics and behaviors.
Demographic Strategies
Using the demographic data that you’ve collected for each person on your email marketing list, you can craft personalization strategies that make your messages more relevant to recipients and more successful for you.
Gender provides a good example. You can send images with women to female recipients and images with men to male recipients. If you know women are more likely to buy edibles than pre-rolls, show more images of edibles to them.
Age can also be used effectively for personalization and dynamic content. Promote products recipients are more likely to buy based on their age and use imagery that is more likely to make them feel like the message is meant for them.
Other demographic criteria to consider include location, marital status, parental status, and additional information you’ve gathered about your audience.
Behavioral Strategies
Behavioral data comes from tracking the actions people take when they interact with your business or buy from you. Using sales data combined with online behavior tracking data you compile from sources like Google Analytics and social media platforms, you can develop email marketing campaigns that use personalization and dynamic content based on people’s past behaviors.
For example, you can send an email campaign promoting specific products, but using dynamic content, you can show just the products each recipient has previously purchased from your business. You can also use dynamic content to create a single email campaign that could be used to promote different products based on specific pages they’ve visited on your website.
In addition to online and purchase behaviors, you can use behavioral data related to how people engage with your brand on social media, their loyalty, their influencer behaviors, and more.
Bringing the Strategy to Life with the Right Email Marketing Software
The key to making personalization and dynamic content work for you is to choose an email marketing software that offers easy-to-use tools for both. You should select a platform that automatically populates personalized elements and dynamic content in your bulk email campaigns.
Imagine sending a message to 500 people and having to manually enter each recipient’s name in the greeting. That would take too much time, so you need an email marketing software that does it for you automatically.
With that in mind, look for an email marketing tool that provides advanced personalization and automation features, so you’re not limited in terms of what fields and elements you can customize for each recipient.
Finally, the software should be easy to use and provide comprehensive training and help documentation. Personalization and dynamic content are powerful. However, you need to pick an email marketing software that makes it as easy as possible for you to use these tools so you can get better results from your campaign investments.
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