Did you know the two most important marketing and sales tools you need to sell to cannabis license holders are email marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms? Both email marketing and CRM are essential to the success of cannabis and cannabis-related businesses today because they work together to help sales and marketing professionals do four critical things:

• Get new customer leads
• Close deals to generate revenue
• Prioritize sales efforts to increase ROI
• Reduce churn to retain customers

While it’s true that using CRM can boost every cannabis business and following email marketing best practices ensures you’ll see positive results from your investments, the results are even better when you integrate CRM and email marketing. 

Together, email marketing and CRM allow you to create highly targeted and customized communications that meet people where they are in the sales and marketing funnel, so they’re more likely to follow your calls to action, which ensures you reach your goals.

Don’t just take my word for it that email and CRM can help your company get more leads, close more deals, and reduce churn. The data from numerous research studies speaks for itself:

1. Sales increase by 29% for businesses that use CRM. (Source: Salesforce)
2. Sales conversion rates increase by up to 300% when CRM is used. (Source: Cloudswave)
3. 65% of salespeople (on average) who use mobile CRM meet their sales quotas compared to just 22% of sales people who don’t use mobile CRM. (Source: Salesforce)
4. Sales cycles shorten by 8 to 14% for salespeople at companies that use CRM. (Source: Nucleus Research)
5. The accuracy of sales forecasts increases by 42% when businesses use CRM. (Source: Salesforce)
6. 24% more sales representatives achieve their annual sales quotas when they use mobile CRM. (Source: Aberdeen Group)
7. A company’s marketing costs can decrease by 23% when CRM is used. (Source: Cloudswave)
8. 79% of leads fail to convert without CRM. (Source: Pardot)
9. Leads nurtured in a CRM convert 47% of the time. (Source: Annuitas Group)
10. Businesses that use CRM experience a 65% boost in sales quotas. (Inopple Technologies)
11. Average purchase value can increase by 40% when a CRM is used. (Source: Cloudswave)
12. The cost of a lead decreases by 23% when a CRM is used. (Source: Cloudswave)

Using Email and CRM to Get More Leads

Using advertising, content marketing, and other tactics, you can fill the top of your funnel with leads, store the data in your CRM, and leverage email marketing to connect, engage, and nurture those leads into sales with the right messages sent at the right times.

If you own a B2B company that markets its products or services to cannabis license holders, then using the CRM and email marketing tools in the Cannabiz Media License Database gives you instant access to information on more than 70,000 cannabis and hemp license holders in the United States and international markets. 

That means the top of your funnel is instantly filled with verified leads! You just need to start communicating with all of these leads through email marketing and tracking those interactions in your CRM.

Using Email and CRM to Close More Deals

Once you’ve identified your leads, you need to categorize them so you can send personalized offers that are most relevant and appealing to each person. It’s easy to segment your leads in a CRM and send them highly targeted messages through email marketing.

For leads in the middle of the funnel, your goal is to engage them with useful, interesting information and messages that keep your brand top-of-mind and build trust in your brand. 

Through email marketing and CRM integration, you can track how each lead interacts with your messages, identify what topics and content appeal to them the most, and send the best messages at the perfect times in the future so they move to the bottom of the funnel and buy.

Using Email and CRM to Prioritize Leads and Boost ROI

Your email marketing and CRM platform is unlikely to be free. Additionally, the time your team spends using the platform, creating email campaigns, parsing leads, and so on add to your overall investment. However, when you use the right platform and effectively integrate your email and CRM efforts, the return on your investment will go up. 

Most significantly, your sales team can use the data you collect in your email marketing and CRM platform to optimize and prioritize sales calls. 

For example, when you can identify that one of your leads opened every message you sent in the past several months, you can be confident that they’re much more interested in your business than someone who never opens your messages or only opened one message. 

The same is true of people who click on specific links in your email messages, such as links that lead to contact pages, product pages, or sales pages on your website. This behavior shows you the recipient is a hotter lead that the sales person should prioritize and reach out to on a one-to-one basis.

By effectively prioritizing leads and personalizing communications with them, the number of closed deals should go up and the return on your email marketing and CRM investments should increase as well.

Using Email and CRM to Reduce Churn

Using the data you collect in your CRM through email marketing and sales, you can develop detailed buyer personas to send the right offers to the right people in the future. Ultimately, the return on your marketing investments will go up, and your sales team will be more productive and successful.

The key is to leverage email and CRM to improve the overall customer experience with your brand and use the data you collect to better predict customer wants and needs. According to research by Capterra, customer service improves by 47% when a CRM is used, and research by Software Advice found that 74% of businesses that use CRM report better customer relationships.

Again, the data shows that email and CRM can have a significant impact on your cannabis or cannabis-related business. We all know that happy customers are more likely to become repeat customers and to refer new customers to a business. 

Also, studies have shown that repeat customers buy more than first-time customers. In fact, some studies have reported that repeat customers spend up to 33% more than new customers.

Therefore, it’s imperative that businesses prioritize customer engagement and brand visibility through email marketing and customer relationship management in order to boost repeat purchases and reduce churn.

Key Takeaways about Email and CRM for B2B Sales and Marketing Teams

Email and CRM drive measurable value for businesses targeting cannabis license holders. If you’re not already integrating and using email and CRM to the fullest extent, you’re missing opportunities that could have a significant effect on your brand’s future.

If you’re looking for an email and CRM tool combined with essential contact information for cannabis industry license holders across the United States, Canada, and international markets, the Cannabiz Media License Database gives you all of the information and tools you need to get more leads, close more deals, boost ROI, and reduce churn! Schedule a demo and see how it could give your business a significant boost.

Originally published 8/27/19. Updated 8/27/21.