Why Cannabis Operators and Marketers Are Moving Their Email to beehiiv
Disclosure: This article includes a referral link. If you sign up for beehiiv through it, Minnesota Cannabis College may receive a commission at no additional cost to you. We use beehiiv for our own newsletter and only recommend tools we actually rely on.
If you run a dispensary, a cultivation operation, a brand, or the marketing desk for any of them, you have probably already learned the hard lesson of cannabis marketing: most of the digital channels other industries take for granted are either closed to you or quietly working against you.
Paid social is off the table. Search ads are restricted. Organic reach on the big platforms is unpredictable at best, and an account that took years to build can disappear after a single automated flag. For operators in Minnesota's licensed market, where advertising rules are still taking shape and every public-facing message has to hold up to scrutiny, that uncertainty is expensive.
Email is the exception. It is the one channel you own outright, where your audience opted in, where no algorithm decides who sees your message, and where a platform change does not take your list with it. The question is which email tool to build on, and for a growing number of cannabis operators and marketers, the answer is beehiiv.
The problem with most email platforms
Plenty of cannabis businesses have had the experience of building a list on a mainstream email provider, sending for months, and then getting an account suspension notice with no warning and no appeal. Several of the largest platforms explicitly prohibit cannabis content in their terms, and others enforce the rule inconsistently, which is arguably worse. You cannot plan around a policy that might be enforced next Tuesday.
That pushes operators toward a handful of niche, cannabis-specific email tools that tend to be expensive, dated, and built primarily around SMS blasts and promotional pushes rather than relationships. They work, but they tend to treat your audience like a transaction list rather than a community.
beehiiv sits in a more useful middle ground. It was built for publishers and creators who treat email as a product, not an afterthought, and Minnesota cannabis publications already use it successfully to reach thousands of readers. Our own newsletter at Minnesota Cannabis College runs on it.
What beehiiv does well for cannabis operators
It is built around the newsletter, not the blast. The editor is clean and fast, the templates look like something people want to read, and the whole product nudges you toward consistent, useful content rather than coupon spam. For an industry still working to build public trust, a newsletter that educates and informs is a better long-term asset than a weekly discount email.
Your archive becomes a website. Every issue you send is automatically published to a hosted, search-indexable archive. For operators who cannot run search ads, that archive is a quiet SEO engine: strain education, harvest updates, compliance explainers, and community stories all become pages that people can find on Google long after the email went out.
Segmentation and automation without enterprise pricing. You can tag subscribers by location, interest, or behavior and send different content to different groups. A cultivation operation might send one track to wholesale buyers and another to patients and consumers. Welcome sequences, re-engagement flows, and drip campaigns are available without a separate marketing automation contract.
Analytics that actually tell you something. Open rates, click rates, subscriber growth, and referral sources are presented clearly, and you can see which links in a given issue drove engagement. That matters when you need to justify a marketing budget to an owner or a board with real numbers.
Built-in growth tools. beehiiv includes a referral program feature, recommendation networks between newsletters, and embeddable subscribe forms. In a market where paid acquisition is mostly unavailable, these organic growth mechanisms are some of the few levers marketers can pull.
A free tier that is genuinely usable. You can launch and grow a list before paying anything, which is the right order of operations for a new operator watching every dollar.
What to keep in mind
beehiiv is a communication and education platform, and that is how it should be used. Its acceptable use policy restricts the sale of age-restricted or regulated goods through its built-in digital products feature, so do not use beehiiv as a storefront for cannabis products. Treat it as the place you build the relationship, and let your licensed retail channels handle the transaction.
The usual rules of cannabis marketing still apply. Keep your content compliant with Minnesota advertising requirements, avoid anything that could appeal to minors, include required disclaimers, and send only to people who have opted in. A clean, consent-based list is good practice on any platform and a requirement on this one.
Where to start
If you are a marketer who has been nervously waiting for your current email provider to notice what industry you are in, or an operator who has never had a proper owned audience at all, a newsletter is the most durable marketing asset you can build this year.
You can get started with beehiiv here: https://www.beehiiv.com/?via=minnesota-cannabis-college
And if you want to see what a cannabis-industry newsletter looks like in practice, subscribe to ours at mncc.beehiiv.com. We cover workforce training, Minnesota's licensed market, and the people building it.
Minnesota Cannabis College is a Saint Paul-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit providing equity-driven workforce training for Minnesota's licensed cannabis market.