Marketing Your Dispensary Like a Pro

‘Tis the Season

Football season is almost upon us, and with that usually comes a number of consequent events that signal kickoff is just around the corner. Days are getting shorter, sweaters are becoming less sweaty, and of course, everyone’s favorite, fantasy football commissioners trying to coordinate a time for the league to draft their teams. Countless emails back and forth between league members spamming your inbox, all for spending far too much time just for your buddy’s wife’s sister to win your league with a team she got thanks to auto-draft. But before you swear off fantasy football, springbig cannabis CRM has a dispensary marketing plan that will help you draft a championship team and drive sales in your marijuana dispensary up and into the MVP conversation. Three letters: ROI.

Drafting and maintaining a killer fantasy team shares some similarities with starting and maintaining a successful dispensary: you need a vision for your brand/team, a plan for how to execute that vision, and adjusting as you try to pull away from the competition and bring home that hardware. But that’s where the similarities end: fantasy football success relies heavily on luck of schedule and player performance, whereas success in the cannabis industry means more than just a waiver wire pickup before Q4.

no wasted picks 

Virtually all cannabis retailers offer the same solution, so the need to encourage customers to choose their store over the one down the street has been a “HOT PAIN POINT” for retailers, which is probably what brought you to this page in the first place. But even if you find some big-name CRM solution trying to apply general strategies to the unique cannabis market. You’ll find your marketing dollars go to waste. That promotion you have for 20% off edibles? Your customer base might be more of a pre-roll-type crowd, but you’d have no idea because you don’t know any of your repeat customers’ preferences.

You know those “Top 10 Fantasy Sleepers and Busts of 2019” articles you see floating around nowadays? Well, this article is like that, except there’s only one sleeper and no busts, and the sleeper is putting up #1 overall pick-type numbers. Hint: starts with an ‘S’, ends in ‘big’, and leads the league in customer retention and ROI. With the first overall pick, your dispensary is on the clock…

mile high growth

DLP (Dispensary loyalty programs) isn’t exactly a deep position, so finding a dependable week-to-week starter is key for long-term customer loyalty and overall success in the cannabis business. Take our client in Colorado, for example. Springbig cannabis CRM has been putting up spectacular numbers for them all season, even with a moderate investment (say, a 4th round pick). And boy, does it look like they had found their franchise CRM for their dispensary loyalty program. In the past 6 months:

• $855 spent on campaigns in total, $216,022 in revenue
• Annual cost of package was earned back in the first 3 weeks (3 campaigns)
• ~5% of sales came from campaigns alone
• Average campaign had 2,530 texts sent, leading to $8,309 in sales

In case you weren’t in the mood for doing the math, that’s more than 25,000% ROI. Yes, a twenty-five thousand percent return on investment. Not a typo.

Our Mile-high friends saw customer spending spike to $57 per visit after campaigns (an average dispensary visit was $25- a 128% difference for those counting at home). We’re not sure how that matches up with the rest of the league, but that’s pretty good if we say so ourselves.

sophomore bump

After a Patrick Mahomes-like performance we just saw, it’d be easy to predict a sophomore slump, simply because expecting that kind of output in back-to-back campaigns is unfair. But relax there, Colin Cowherd, we already have another performance for the ages ready for all the doubters out there trying to create headlines. Do you think 5,000 yards and 50 touchdowns is good production? Just ask our friends in Seattle.

• After 3 months of using our platform, this dispensary enjoyed:
• $1,745 spent led to nearly $350,000 in revenue
• The average $0.01 text returned $2 in revenue
• nearly 20,000% ROI. Again, not a typo.
• Text campaigns brought in 14% of sales
• Annual cost paid for within the first two weeks (2 campaigns in 2 weeks and they made their money back. Two.)

But don’t let the flashy numbers distract you from the rock-solid production springbig has been spitting out week-to-week, or in cannabis retail terms, visit-to-visit. The average purchase per campaign was $54 in those 3 months (up 116% from the average) and customers have been raving about the dispensary rewards program. Rewarding customers for every notch in the digital punch card, whether it be their first or tenth, and treating them as loyal customers as soon as they register with your rewards program. Seems to be working, what do you think?

big-time players make big-time plays 

Seeing the dominance springbig put on Washington, any more breakout performances would have to put it in the ‘GDLMOAT’ (greatest dispensary loyalty marketer of all-time) conversation. Yes, there will always be the “6 rings vs. 9 straight finals” argument, but this is more of an “already cementing their legacy as the GOAT with more accolades” type of thing. From one of our users in Maryland after 3 months of our platform:

• Less than $3,000 spent brought in more than $1.5 million in revenue
• Average $0.013 text returns $7 in revenue
• 51,464% ROI (No bolded letters here- Skip Bayless told us to “act like we’ve been there before”)
• Annual cost paid for itself after the first 2 days (2 campaigns)
• The average campaign sends 1370 texts and generates $9,185 in sales- $6.70 per text

We’re not usually one to toot our own horn, but that kind of output is like Tom Brady winning his 8th Super Bowl- it’s enough already, we get it. 51,000% ROI and nearly $7 of revenue per text? That could go down as the single best season in history, and the season just started. Use springbig cannabis CRM this fantasy season (basketball and baseball too) for more to look forward to than just Sunday, Monday, and Thursday nights.

To stay on theme, springbig is offering their inaugural sleeper pick of the fantasy season: Ravens QB Lamar Jackson. You’ve seen his highlight tape- dude looks like the second coming of Michael Vick (Madden 2004, anyone?), and shattered the record for rushes by a quarterback for a single season by a wide- in 7 games. Rushing yards and TD’s are worth more than passing ones, so why not get both?

2019 Lamar Jackson will be a league winner, and springbig will be your bottom line MVP. Heard it here first.