Matt Dell

4 Tactics to Retain New Cannabis Customers After 420

Chances are you’ve planned for the 420 holiday months in advance, spending countless hours on your product and staffing needs, thousands on your marketing acquisition strategy.

What happens after it’s over?

Believe it or not, the only way you’ll make the most out of your pre-420 investment is by focusing on customer retention – guaranteeing you’ll get the most out of every cannabis consumer that purchased with you over the holiday.

Keep reading for 4 retention tactics that you can start using with customers after the biggest cannabis holiday of the year.

#1: Segment New Cannabis Customers

To get the most value of your newly acquired customers you’ll want to start segmenting them into marketing audiences.

Segmentation allows you to increase these customers’ Lifetime Value (LTV) – how much they will spend at your business over the next 6 to months.

Let’s briefly talk about your customers to understand why segmentation is important after 420.

You probably captured the one-time demand of first-time buyers at your store. You can increase your return on investment by segmenting them and sending targeted follow-up marketing.

If you sent blanket promo text to all the customers that you captured on 420, the content might not match the product they’re interested in or where they ordered.

Therefore, they wouldn’t convert again or potentially purchase from your competitor and you’d risk a lower return on investment than if you had sent marketing that matched their preferences.

Here are two ways to segment cannabis customers after 420 from our recent blog post:

Product & Brand Preferences

Creating product and brand-based segments is one surefire way to get cannabis customers to reorder in the weeks after 420.

Simply put, if a cannabis customer comes in to buy a certain product, they’ll most likely take up a discount on it again in the future.

You’re also starting to collect data on your newly acquired customers, so enhancing segments with frequency and average ticket size characteristic might not be possible yet.

Therefore, creating product and brand-specific audience will be your best attempt to get a targeted message out.

Order Source: In-Store, Delivery, & Pickup

Another kind of segment that often goes overlook is order source – where did your new customers place an order?

Online? At the store? For pick up only? These details matter.

Imagine sending an in-store promo to customers that ordered delivery. Chance are you probably won’t see the best conversion rate than if you sent a delivery offer.

So instead, enhance your product and brand-specific segments with order source data.

Now you’ll be ready to serve a targeted promotion to customers that matches the product they’re interested in and their preferred mode of purchase.

#2: Leverage Your Dispensary Loyalty Program

Did you acquire new loyalty program signups during 420? Great news! You have another marketing tactic to use during follow-up.

Happy Cabbage Analytics integrates with native loyalty points systems in Treez POS, allowing you to target new customers with redemption-based offers immediately.

One of the major benefits to using your loyalty program for customer retention marketing after 420 is that you can incentivize repeat behavior early with targeted redemptions offers.

Combine the segmentation tactics we discussed previously with one of these loyalty program ideas:

Your loyalty program can be a powerful tool for customer retention marketing after 420. Just make sure to use it with your segmentation, and you’ll see great results!

#3: Offer Flash Cannabis Delivery Promos

Did you acquire lots of cannabis delivery customers on 420? Keep the excitement going for your store with flash promotions!

Flash promotions work best for cannabis delivery if you can find which zip codes contain high volumes of customers with similar brand preferences.

Here are the top 5 brands that were ordered the most by cannabis delivery customers on 420 in 2022:

Do these match your results?

Once you’ve organized your zip code and brand data, next step is organizing your delivery and targeted marketing campaigns.

Remember the goal is to create a time-sensitive offer for your new delivery customers to place their next order with you.

That means offering you’ll offer promo that’s only active for the next 3 to 5 hours and send a driver out there to fulfill orders from customers that converted.

The benefit of the flash promo approach is that it’s targeted to your delivery customers interest and creates urgency to place an order.

Just make sure that you offer brands favored by your delivery customers and you have a high enough volume of potential buyers in a small delivery radius.

Happy Operators by Happy Cabbage Analytics can help you see which zip codes ordered the most of a specific brand. Check out this tool before planning your next flash promotion! 

Zip code data for the brand Jeeter in Happy Operators

#4: Try These SMS Campaigns

Now that we’ve discussed a few tactics to retain your new cannabis customers, let’s close with what we’ve seen work at dispensaries in the past.

Text message marketing is a powerful channel for channel for customer retention. However, it’s critical to follow the segmentation approach we discussed earlier to be effective.

Below are two follow-up campaigns a San Francisco dispensary sent to targeted customer segments after last year's 420:

An example of dispensary 24hr ROI follow-up marketing after 420
Targeting delivery customers and specific product preferences
An example of dispensary 24hr ROI follow-up marketing after 420
Targeting specific product preferences  


You can see how this retailer sent two different text messages based on the order source and brand-specific segments.

It’s a great example of using marketing with the segmentation strategy we shared earlier!

Remember, the goal of your follow-up marketing is to encourage loyalty with your new customers and get them to order again. Try out the ideas we mentioned in this post and the pay-off after 420 might be greater than you expected.

Liked this blog? Request a demo for Happy Marketers and Happy Operators by Happy Cabbage Analytics. We help retailers like you measure your data, segment audiences, and send high-converting campaigns.