5 Best Cannabis-Friendly Email Marketing Platforms

Email marketing is vital to the marketing strategy of any cannabis brand. It is a great way to build your customer base and keep in touch with the ones you already have. 

However, in the cannabis business, it can be difficult to find the right email marketing software and reach your target audience without risking having your account restricted or, worse, banned.

Let's face the truth; not all email marketing platforms welcome cannabis businesses. You should avoid spending valuable time and resources on an email marketing platform that will later ban or shut down your account.

We'll list down the best cannabis email marketing services and platforms. Before that, here are a few fundamentals about cannabis marketing and the things you should look for in email marketing software. 

Why Is Cannabis Email Marketing Important?

Email marketing has a simple goal: to get to know your customer and build trust in your brand. It also helps your cannabis brand stand out by connecting with your audience.

If you run a cannabis dispensary or any business in the cannabis industry, it is vital to have an email list. You can do many things over email to engage your customers in your business. Email marketing is one of the key steps in growing your business, especially if you want to focus on building relationships with your customers.

For example, you can send exclusive coupon codes to people who have already bought from you. You might also want to remind them that some of the things they bought in the last few months may have run out. This makes it much easier to turn them into loyal customers.

What are some restrictions on marketing cannabis?

Most digital companies and social media platforms do not allow paid advertising for CBD and cannabis products. Here is a quick look at some platforms' restrictions regarding marketing cannabis.

• Amazon: Amazon is the most popular online store and cloud computing company globally. Users of this platform are not allowed to buy, sell, or promote cannabis, CBD, and hemp products.
• Google: Google's search engine does not limit your organic content, but the company's privacy policy says that you can't use Google Ads to promote cannabis, CBD, or anything else related to using cannabis. If you fail to follow these rules, Google may suspend or close your Ads account.
• Twitter: You can't use Twitter ads to promote products that contain cannabis or CBD. However, you can say whatever you want on Twitter about your cannabis business or the products you sell.
• Facebook and Instagram: Neither Facebook nor Instagram will let businesses that sell cannabis or cannabis-derived products place paid advertisements on their sites, except if the product is hemp-derived. The rules don't apply to non-paid Facebook pages or Instagram posts.
• Banks and payment processors: Many banks and payment processors won't do business with CBD or cannabis retailers. Before choosing a payment processor or a bank, it's essential to read their terms of use carefully.
• Email service providers: If the email service provider you plan to use is not on our list below, there's a chance they will not let you market cannabis or CBD. Check with your e-commerce platform before listing your products to ensure everything is in order.

What You Should Look For in an Ideal Email Software for Cannabis Marketing

As a cannabis business owner, you must know what makes a good email service provider to avoid any potential email marketing disaster. Here are eight things you should look for in an email marketing tool for your cannabis business.

Support for the cannabis industry

People often get the wrong idea about the cannabis business, and there are many restrictions regarding how the cannabis industry operates.

It is not surprising that many email marketing platforms today don't allow marijuana marketing. Fortunately, there is still a lot of great email marketing software that cannabis businesses can use. But remember that you need to be careful about what tools you use.

For instance, the popular email marketing tool, MailChimp, is known for blocking accounts from the cannabis industry.

Segmentation

Segmentation is an essential part of any email campaign. It lets you target your audience based on demographics, interests, behaviors, events, etc. Segments, lists, or tags can be a great way to determine where your prospects came from.

Above all, segmentation is vital to ensure you don't send your prospects and customers messages that don't matter. Think about how an old subscriber would feel if you sent them a welcome email after receiving 20 emails from you.

Mobile-friendly

The days when you could only use mobile phones to make calls are over. Now, we use smartphones for almost everything. Thus, you miss out on many potential customers if your emails are not optimized for mobile devices.

There are now a lot of email marketing tools that can handle responsive designs, so you can make sure your emails look good on any device without having to write code. Although some platforms might not have a built-in responsive design, some plugins and integrations can help.

Excellent delivery rates

Deliverability is critical in digital marketing. It refers to when automated emails sent and scheduled through a certain software reach their intended recipients instead of being blocked by spam filters. Choose an email marketing platform with a higher delivery rate.

Email templates

When your subscribers open your emails, the first thing they will notice is the way they look. If it does not match your brand's image or looks unprofessional, you could lose a lot of potential customers.

Try to ask yourself these questions to help you assess the feature of any email marketing software:

• Can the templates be changed?
• Does it let you drag and drop things?
• What templates can I use for free?
• How easy is it to use the email builder that comes with it?
• Does the email builder require you to know how to code?
• Can the templates be changed to fit your brand?

Email templates do not have to be about how they look. It should be easy to use and allow for customization based on your brand's needs.

Automation

Automation is a vital part of running a cannabis business well. When you automate tasks, you can use your time and energy on more important things. This means you can manage your business less and spend more time growing it. Automation and workflows can boost productivity and save money when done right.

Email automation is a crucial part of any good email marketing campaign. For example, you could set up emails to be sent automatically when certain things happen, like when you get a new order, a new lead, a sale, etc. You could also set up emails that are automatically sent at certain times of the week.

Integration

Integration is a feature that is not always given the attention it deserves. It may seem like a small thing, but it is of great help if you want to connect your tools seamlessly. You can set up a workflow where an event from one tool can trigger an event in another tool. You can even combine more than one integration into a single workflow.

You can use each tool's power without paying for separate services. For example, if you wanted to send a discount code to everyone who clicked on your link last week, you could do that by setting up a workflow!

Scalability

Imagine your cannabis business after five years. What does it look like? If you want your business to grow a lot, your email marketing tool should be able to keep up with you as you grow.

As your business grows, you will need a bigger list. When that time comes, imagine how hard it will be to move many people from one platform to another. That is why you should find the best cannabis marketing tool as soon as possible so you don't have to move your email list from one platform to another.

Top 5 Cannabis-Friendly Email Marketing Platforms

Below is a list of ideal email marketing platforms for the cannabis industry:

1. Moosend

Moosend is an email marketing service platform that works with various cannabis businesses. From medical marijuana to other cannabis products, brands use Moosend to promote marketing automation and customer engagement. 

This email platform is a good choice if you want to send newsletters, ads, or any other kind of email message. You can use Moosend's clean and straightforward dashboard to create email campaigns, manage email lists, and set up the logic for automated messages. 

Moosend gives you a 30-day free trial, during which you can send as many emails as possible and set up automation workflows. Here are some ways you can automate cannabis in Moosend:

• Abandoned cart email sequence: If a customer was browsing your site and put some CBD products in their cart without checking out, you could send them an email to remind them.
• Repeat purchase reminder Do your customers need to buy cannabis products regularly? Set up a reminder for them to buy their medical cannabis again.

Moosend Key Features

There are templates for welcome emails and newsletters to help you get started and forms and integrations to help you grow your email list. Overall, Moosend is an excellent email service for businesses in the cannabis industry. Here are more of its key features:

• Email marketing and email automation
• Management dashboard for marijuana marketing
• Built-in integrations between CMS, CRM, eCommerce, and other platforms
• Drag-and-drop builder for landing pages with built-in tracking, forms, and WordPress plugins

Moosend is a great fit for a wide range of businesses in this competitive business field. It is one of the best marketing tools for cannabis startups that need a scalable and reliable email service provider.

2. MailerLite

MailerLite is an affordable and ideal platform if you are just getting started with cannabis software and need the basics. This tool gives you a single place to build pop-ups, landing pages, and email newsletters. It is perfect for brands that want to build and test a marketing funnel for their products.

MailerLite Key Features

• Flexible and highly customizable pop-ups and forms
• Combine pop-ups with landing pages
• RSS to email feature
• Extensive click-maps, including heatmap analytics, to see where your customers click.
• Drag-and-drop builder for landing pages with built-in tracking, forms, and WordPress plugins

MailerLite is best for cannabis brands that want to send newsletters and do simple autoresponders but don't need complex marketing automation. It is also a great choice if you only have a small to medium-sized subscriber list.

3. Klaviyo

Klaviyo is an eCommerce platform for automating marketing and sales that allows cannabis and CBD companies to use them. As you probably already know or have experienced for yourself, cannabis companies have many problems and unexpected roadblocks when it comes to payment processing and using other important software. Klaviyo makes connecting to your preferred POS systems and payment processors easy.

If you sell things through a webshop, Klaviyo can connect to it and use the data from your eCommerce to run campaigns. For instance, let's say you wanted to offer a deal on CBD gummies via email on Black Friday. You can ensure that you're sending to those interested in or who have already bought your product, and you can keep track of the revenue those emails bring in with up-to-date metrics.

Klaviyo Key Features

• Klaviyo email marketing templates
• Marketing automation and email marketing
• Customizable dynamic content blocks that you can use for more than one email campaign
• Automatic product recommendations and marketing through email.
• Dedicated dashboards for important metrics, revenue, and other financial metrics

Klaviyo is thought to be one of the best options for cannabis brands that want to sell online. It can handle moderate to large lists with complex automation and integrations. Moreover, it also offers a free email marketing account with limited email sends and contacts, which is great if you want to try out the platform first.

4. Dotdigital

Dotdigital is an omnichannel email marketing platform that accepts cannabis marketing. It hosts impressive offerings, which include: Email, SMS, Transactional email, Page builder, Social, Forms, and native eCommerce integrations. You can try out the software for free through its trial account.

Moreover, Dotdigital gives you the power to interact with your customer in many different ways. For instance, you can have a chat with your site visitors and ask them to sign up for your newsletter, where you talk about your products. This is possible without having to connect separate platforms together.

DotDigital can work with many different businesses, even for cannabis brands. The dotdigital engagement cloud can help you customize the pages your customers land on and the emails you send them.

Dotdigital Key Features

• Drag and drop automation builder
• A Shopify Plus, Magento Premier Technology, and BigCommerce partner
• Lead scoring and visual reporting for customer personas
• Dynamic product recommendations
• A retail dashboard that calculates metrics like revenue, average order value, customer lifetime value, and more

5. Omnisend

Omnisend is a great platform for automating your cannabis marketing for eCommerce. The provider works with all major eCommerce platforms, such as Shopify, Bigcommerce, Woocommerce, Magento, and many more. It has a free plan that lets you send 15,000 emails per month and a 14-day trial.

With Omnisend, you can make more strategic and personalized promotions. For example, if you have a limited amount of CBD gummies for sale, you can use a live ticker in one of your marketing emails to show people how many are left. When you have this much control over your customers' data, there are a lot of ways you can offer promotions that bring in more money.

As its name suggests, Omnisend does a good job of making omnichannel experiences. As the CBD industry loosens its rules, businesses need to use all the cross-channel exposure they can get. If you need the capability to retarget your prospects, Omnisend can help get all that data in one place.

Omnisend Key Features

• Live view feature
• Automated messaging
• Custom automation workflow

Omnisend is a mainstay for eCommerce brands, and it works best if you want your cannabis businesses to get more personal with the customers.

Conclusion

An excellent and reliable cannabis marketing agency is essential for capturing leads, engaging with customers, and getting your brand message out. However, if you prefer to do the customer acquisition and drip campaigns on your own, ensure that you try the best email service providers we have listed above.

To recap, we just went through 5 cannabis-friendly email marketing platforms, each with its own strengths and key features. Try them all, choose the best ones for your needs, and marketing plan to take over the ever-growing cannabis industry.