In partnership with

Welcome to High On Marketing - A weekly newsletter where I show you how to strengthen your email marketing strategy for your cannabis brand. Learn how to nurture your audience, increase retention rates, and sell more weed.

⚡Quick Tip⚡

Today’s Email:

• Common Mistakes Dispensaries Make with Their Subject Lines

• How to Avoid the Same Mistakes

• 25 Free SL Templates You Can Use Today

• Bonus Tips (A/B testing, avoiding spam, etc.)

Let’s Roll 🛼

Subject lines are the most important, yet most overlooked element in cannabis marketing.

My spam folder is filled with cannabis emails that use the same generic, zero-emotion approach to their subject lines.

And it’s doing them zero favors.

What happens when you repeatedly send emails with unoriginal, boring subject lines?

• Open rates go down

• Trust goes down

• Attention goes down

And that’s just the customer side of things…

When you keep sending emails that aren’t getting opened because of your shitty subject lines, your email service provider will label your emails as spam, and that’s where you’ll go.

And it’s a snowball effect from there. When your sender reputation goes down, it can be hard to bring it back up.

These canna brand’s subject lines don’t work because they’re not speaking to the reader.

They’re just broadcasting deals like a billboard.

If you want your emails to be seen at all, you need to start with a fire subject line.

Writing effective subject lines is a skill.

One that will be second nature for you by the end of this email.⬇️⬇️

Let’s Start With What Doesn’t Work:

I’m gonna share a few recent subject lines I’ve gotten from dispensaries in the last week (note: all of these landed in promotions/spam):

1. “Premium Pre-Ground🍃” What about it?

2. “Last chance to check out this week’s DEALS!” Boring. Could’ve come from anyone

3. “10% off - fuel your next ride” 10% off what? What ride?

4. “Your Weekly Savings Are Here!” Sounds like that other one

5. “20% OFF All Eighths Excludes SALE Eighths & Shake | 30% OFF All Vapes, Edibles, Topicals, & Concentrates” A bit wordy, no?

None of these get my attention.

Because none of them address me in anyway. They’re just broadcasting deals.

And in the most non-conversational way possible.

I mean, who talks like this?

If you wouldn’t open it, they won’t either.

To write better subject lines that actually grab your reader’s attention, you need to change how you think of your SL’s.

Modernize your marketing with AdQuick

AdQuick unlocks the benefits of Out Of Home (OOH) advertising in a way no one else has. Approaching the problem with eyes to performance, created for marketers with the engineering excellence you’ve come to expect for the internet.

Marketers agree OOH is one of the best ways for building brand awareness, reaching new customers, and reinforcing your brand message. It’s just been difficult to scale. But with AdQuick, you can easily plan, deploy and measure campaigns just as easily as digital ads, making them a no-brainer to add to your team’s toolbox.

Learn more now.

The “Psychology” Behind It:

Call it a philosophy of sorts.

But I believe your subject line has just one job: Get the click.

That’s it.

They don’t need to know exactly why they’re clicking yet.

Don’t try to cram your entire deal/offer into your SL. You don’t need to put the “main event” in the opening act, so to speak.

Use your subject line to address your reader directly:

“We picked something out just for you, {first name}”

Pro Tip: 6-10 words is optimal for subject lines.

👉 Mobile screens cut off subject lines after ~35–50 characters (roughly 6–10 words)

👉 A 2019 study by Retention Science found that subject lines with 6–10 words had the highest open rates - about 21%.

Here’s 25 subject line templates you can use for your dispensary emails:

These subject lines work because:

• They’re short

• They’re specific

• They address the reader directly

Feel free to use any of the examples above.

And for anyone that wants to know how to build their own subject lines, here’s some tips and a simple formula to follow.

Plug-and-Play subject line formula:

[Personalization/Trigger] + [Curiosity or Benefit] + [Urgency/Timeframe (optional)]

Here’s some examples:

• “{First Name}, your gummies are almost gone 👀”

• “We saved this for you - 24 hrs left”

• “Time to reload? Here’s 15% off your favs”

Tip: Cycle through combinations of curiosity, urgency, and personalization. That trio is the key.

Short, sweet, personal.

Start learning AI in 2025

Keeping up with AI is hard – we get it!

That’s why over 1M professionals read Superhuman AI to stay ahead.

• Get daily AI news, tools, and tutorials

• Learn new AI skills you can use at work in 3 mins a day

• Become 10X more productive

Sign up and start mastering AI

Tips for A/B Testing Subject Lines:

• Test one variable at a time (length, tone, personalization)

• Send to a smaller % of your list first 

• Use your CRM’s A/B features

Example test you can run this week:

A: ‘Hey {First Name}, your gummies are back!’
B: ‘You asked, we restocked your favorites 👇’

Whichever wins → send to the rest.

Tips for Staying Out of Spam:

✅ Do:

• Use first names

• Keep it under 10 words

• Keep subject line + preview text in sync

🚫 Don’t:

• Use “FREE!!!” “Click now!” or all caps

• Bury the real benefit

• Sound like a robot

To Wrap it All Up:

Learning how to write click-worthy subject lines is NOT a massive undertaking by any means.

It’s really just changing your writing approach from “What do we want to say” to “What do they want to hear?”

When you do that, it’s much easier to get their attention (and it gets easier and easier the more you do it).

Before you send your next email, ask yourself if the subject line you’re sending would be enough to get you to click on that email.

If the answer is no, try again.

If the answer is maybe, that’s a ‘no’ (try again)

Have fire content that’s just not getting enough clicks? It’s probably your subject lines…

Reply to this email with “SUBJECT” if you need help getting more opens and clicks with from your emails.

I’ll tell you what you’re doing wrong, show you how to fix it, and provide you with as many subject lines, templates, & proven formulas as you can handle!

Until next week,

-Steve

When You’re Ready, Here’s How I Can Help You…

Click HERE to download the High On Marketing Evergreen Templates - 50 pre-written emails tailored for cannabis brands to educate, engage, and encourage action from your audience

Stay on top-of-mind while building a well-informed, loyal customer base.

Get your templates today and have the next 6 months of canna content covered!

⬇️Don’t forget to use your subscriber code for 50% off!⬇️

9VVS85T

P.S. ⬇️⬇️