Dispensary Email & SMS Strategies: 2024 Edition

What is Dispensary Email & SMS Marketing?

At its core, dispensary email and SMS marketing involves using these digital communication channels to promote your products, share updates and deals, and cultivate relationships with your database of customers and loyalty members.

Unlike paid advertising that casts a wide net, these channels enable you to directly reach current and lapsed patrons with hyper-relevant, personalized messaging. Whether through weekly deal blasts or automated email flows triggered by behaviors, you can keep your dispensary top-of-mind and drive valuable foot traffic.

Email Campaign Types

Regular promotional email campaigns should form the backbone of your dispensary marketing efforts. These could highlight:

Weekly Deals

Capitalize on FOMO by promoting limited-time discounts and inventory to drive mid-week traffic.

In-Store Events

Build awareness for product launch parties, educational seminars, or community gatherings to boost engagement.

New Brand Drop

Get customers excited for newly arrived flower, edibles, concentrates or merch from coveted brands.

Slow Moving Product

Clear out aging inventory with flash sales and bundles before it becomes a liability.

Happy Hour

Reactivate lapsed customers and fill quieter hours with enticing happy hour specials.

Double Points

Offer periodic double or triple rewards points to incentivize larger basket sizes.

Email Flow Types

While one-off campaigns are effective for quickly getting eyes on your latest offerings, automated email flows can nurture customers through their entire journey. Some must-have flows include:

Returning Customer (2nd Visit)

Reward and encourage repeat business with a discount code for their next visit.

Birthday Discount

Celebrate customer birthdays and gather zero-party data by offering a special treat.

Customer Review

Solicit product feedback and online reviews by sending a post-purchase follow-up email.

Tiered Reward Notifications

Keep customers engaged by alerting them when they've achieved a new loyalty tier with added perks.

Lifecycle Winback

Re-engage inactive customers who last visited in X days/months with an alluring offer.

Abandon Cart

Recover abandoned online orders by following up with gentle reminders and incentives to complete their purchase.

This omnichannel combination of campaigns and flows ensures your dispensary stays connected at every customer lifecycle stage. Now, let's explore how intelligent segmentation can maximize these efforts.

What is RFM Segmentation?

No two customers are alike, so why send them all the same message? RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary Value) segmentation allows you to target different audience groups precisely based on their purchase behavior.

By segmenting your list based on criteria like:

• Recency: How recently a customer made their last purchase
• Frequency: How often they visit and make purchases
• Monetary Value: How much they tend to spend per transaction or over their lifetime

You can then tailor your messaging, offers, and product recommendations to what will resonate most.

Segmentation & Offer Development

• VIP/Whales: Your biggest spenders get exclusive VIP treatment with premium product teasers and double points.
• Casual Buyers: Less frequent shoppers may appreciate "we missed you" discounts to drive their next visit.
• First-Time Buyers: Welcome new customers by immediately introducing your loyalty program's benefits.
• Lapsed/Winback: Re-engage this at-risk segment with highly compelling offers for their first purchase in months.

The more you refine your segments and map strategic incentives, the higher your engagement and revenue per campaign (and recipient) will be.

Measuring Retention Results

Of course, you'll need to continually measure and optimize based on actual performance data. Some key dispensary email/SMS marketing metrics to monitor include:

List Growth %

How quickly your email/SMS subscriber list is growing through opt-in sources like cashiers or online sign-ups.

Revenue % from Alpine / Springbig

What percentage of your dispensary's total revenue can be directly attributed to your email/SMS campaigns and flows in Alpine IQ or Springbig?

Campaign / Flow Split %

Break down the revenue mix between manual campaigns vs. automated flows to identify opportunities.

Engaged Contacts %

Keep your lists pruned to maintain quality by tracking email open/click rates and SMS engagement.

Analyzing these figures will inform which segments, topics, and incentives are moving the needle. Armed with these insights, your dispensary can iteratively improve its retention marketing game.

Work With CAA - Dispensary Email Marketing

Hopefully, this guide has illuminated why a strategic email and SMS marketing program should be pivotal to any dispensary's overall marketing mix. By connecting with loyalty members through campaigns, flows, and segmented messaging, you can educate them on the latest happenings while driving consistent visits.

Of course, developing this comprehensive long-term strategy while juggling the day-to-day operations is a challenging feat for an in-house team. If you want to ensure your dispensary unlocks the maximum return from email and text marketing, our cannabis marketing agency would be thrilled to explore a partnership.

Our seasoned email specialists live and breathe segmentation, lifecycle messaging, and cutting-edge dispensary marketing tactics. We'll craft a turnkey solution to supercharge your retention efforts, all backed by meticulous data analysis to continually optimize performance. Simply put, we know how to keep customers coming back for more.

Get in touch to learn how we can help elevate your dispensary into the upper echelon of cannabis email and SMS marketing mastery.