Mo Tracey

Take better care of your VIP dispensary customers blog banner image depicting B-Real signing autographs in a cannabis retail store. 

Dispensary loyalty Dr. Greenthumbs LAX

With increased competition between cannabis retailers, it’s not enough to have the best or widest selection of products—or the lowest prices. The cost of keeping a customer is less than the cost of acquiring a new customer, and the best way to turn a first time customer into a long term customer is to reward them for ordering with you and for spending more on orders. 

But what about your existing long term customers and big spenders? Encourage high-spending customers to keep shopping at your dispensary and incentivize repeat customers with a VIP dispensary loyalty program. Whether you have an existing loyalty program or are exploring implementing one, incentivize customers to earn VIP status by adding a top-tier to your loyalty program with access to exclusive rewards.

## 6 easy ways to take exceptional care of your VIP dispensary customers:

### 1. Set Up Your VIP Loyalty Rewards Program
Think about the loyalty programs you love. Don’t be afraid to borrow ideas from retail stores with popular rewards programs like Nordstrom, Sephora, or even your local coffee shop.
Dig into shop data—When do your most loyal customers shop? Who spends the most? What are they buying?
Create your own, fun name for VIP customers that sets them apart—“Top Shelf Club,” anyone? 
Ask your best customers about their preferences and test different ideas to see what works to bring them back to your business. 
Choose a variety of rewards, from cash back, discounts, free products, events and experiences—or give your customers the option to donate reward points to a non-profit. Remember to measure and iterate: track your most popular rewards and experiment—the possibilities are endless!
Consider rewarding customers not just by dollars spent, but by order frequency and volume. Award bonus points to existing customers for each new customer referral. Don’t forget your special group customers—veterans, seniors, and industry. Customers you already provide a group discount to can be some of your most loyal customers. Consider including or grandfathering select customers into your VIP program even if they don’t qualify based upon points alone. 

<sidebar padding="no" side="right">

__Incentivize high-spending customers with a VIP cannabis rewards program. Add a top-tier to your dispensary loyalty program with access to exclusive rewards.__

</sidebar>

Overwhelmed? Start small with a simple loyalty program and grow your tiers as your customer base grows. Remember to provide all customers with realistic, small rewards for continued patronage—don’t make them wait until they’ve accumulated thousands of points for their first small reward! Learn more about creating loyalty “milestone buys” to reward shoppers with prizes and perks on the Meadow Memo podcast: [Meadow Memo: Dispensary Marketing & Building Brand Relationships.](https://getmeadow.com/blog/meadow-memo-dispensary-marketing-and-building-brand-relationships)

### 2. Think Beyond Discounts: Get Creative with VIP Loyalty Rewards 
__Leverage Brand Relationships__
Offer brand-specific specials or exclusive events to VIP customers. You can even target promos by the brand or product category a customer purchases from the most. Think $0.01 samples, BOGO deals, and free accessory gifts with purchase. Go beyond stickers, lighters, and apparel with branded dab mats for extract fans, a rolling tray for flower aficionados, a battery for cartridge enthusiasts, or a special glass for infused beverage lovers.

__Loyalty Events__
Consider loyalty VIP days 2x/year with x% off store-wide. Invite VIP customers into the shop for exclusive demos and early access to new product launches with private shopping. Host an event for VIPs—in your lounge or even off-site (consumption welcome is always a plus), and encourage VIPs to bring a friend! 

__Provide a VIP Concierge Service__
Taking concierge care of your VIP customers is easier than it sounds. Think of services like free or no minimum delivery windows for VIPs—or simply training your staff to greet customers with a personal touch. Utilize customer groups and notes to quickly identify VIP customers when they come into your dispensary or place an order for pickup or delivery. Is it their birthday? Remind them that there’s a special reward and wish them a happy birthday. Does the customer prefer a certain name, or another personal detail? Make a note in your CRM to be sure you greet them properly and help them feel at home in your business. 

### 3. Promote Your VIP Loyalty Program
Make sure your customers are aware of your loyalty program: include physical signage at the register, train your employees to tell your customers about your loyalty program, and utilize your website and menu notes to advertise the program. Explain your program—how it works, how points are generated, different tiers, and examples of rewards. Mention it in your marketing texts, emails, and mailers, and promote it on your Instagram and other social media channels.

VIPs are your biggest customer advocates and word-of-mouth marketing channel. Incentivize these customers to refer their friends, and give them things to talk about your shop on social media with bonus points. Consider: How can you turn your VIP customers into ambassadors of your business? Do you have a VIP customer with a particularly interesting story? A passion for cannabis? Do they have a cause they care about? Feature VIP customers (with their interest/participation, of course) on your social channels. 

### 4. Train Your Team to Integrate VIP Loyalty Into Everyday Operations 
Loyalty is all about building a relationship with your customers, so make customer loyalty part of your company values and integral to your complete customer experience. 

Train new staff and budtenders from day 1 on your loyalty program. Make it easy for employees to recognize VIP customers during check in, checkout, and online or over the phone. Show them how to properly identify and greet VIP customers. Encourage your team to build relationships with your customers and provide them with personalized attention. Learn more about [How to Boost Basket Sizes at Your Dispensary.](https://getmeadow.com/blog/sell-more-cannabis-how-to-boost-basket-sizes-at-your-dispensary)

Identify an employee or two to be a designated VIP concierge, and put them in charge of the program. Empower them to help create, manage, maintain, integrate and measure your VIP loyalty program. 

Finally, incentivize and reward your employees for driving customer loyalty. Did a customer leave a review or comment praising a particular employee? Did you recognize exceptional service? Reward them for going above and beyond. 

### 5. Gather and Track VIP Customer Information
Set up an in-store process to collect customer information: Name, birthday, email address, and phone number. Requiring customers to check-in upon entering the store will help track all visitors, even if no purchase is made—but you can also choose to just gather customer details when ringing out a purchase. Attach a customer to each purchase to ensure they earn loyalty points. For online or delivery orders, info is already recorded and attached to the customer profile.

Some customers don’t want their information collected. You can gently remind anonymous customers that they won’t earn any points for their purchases, but respect their need for privacy. 

Ask for your customers to consent to their marketing preferences, and allow them to opt-out (or back in) at any time. You can still offer specials to VIPs when they order or visit the store, even if they prefer not to receive marketing messages.

### 6. Reach VIPs with Targeting Marketing Messages 
You’re collecting customer and sales information—now put that data to work! Send targeted marketing campaigns to your VIP segment of customers. Recent campaigns with the highest order amount per customer have very specific offers and target customers that have not come in or ordered recently. Include a call to action—remind them to come into the store or place an order online to claim their reward. 

<callout>Some tips for marketing to your VIP customers</callout>
- Craft marketing messages with your own voice. It should sound like you’re texting a friend.

- Use specific language in your messages to VIP customers. Make it clear that this offer is for your most loyal VIP customers.

- A simple thank you message recognizing customers for their loyalty with a small incentive offer will go a long way. Don’t hesitate to remind them they’re top-tier!

### With Meadow’s built-in CRM and text marketing platform, it’s seamless for retail teams to collect customer data, set up VIP cannabis rewards programs, and send dispensary marketing campaigns.

Meadow’s [cannabis retail software](https://getmeadow.com/blog/tags/cannabis-retail) tracks loyalty points for each dollar spent (or per purchase), and makes it easy for customers to cash in on rewards online or in-store. With four different reward types to choose from – cash back, flat discounts, percent discounts, and free products – you can have flexibility in the perks you offer loyal customers, and Meadow’s integrated [cannabis marketing software](https://getmeadow.com/blog/tags/cannabis-marketing) lets you create targeted, segmented campaigns in minutes.

Take better care of your VIP dispensary customers blog OG image depicting B-Real signing autographs in a cannabis retail store. 

Dispensary loyalty Dr. Greenthumbs LAX OG

Learn six ways to retain and reward your VIP dispensary customers

How to Take Better Care of Your VIP Dispensary Customers

Aria Biswas

Aria Biswas is head of marketing and cannabis events at Meadow, a cannabis retail software system for dispensaries.

Dispensary Marketing & Building Brand Relationships with Julien Butler, Directer of Retail Sales, Marketing at Delivery at the Original Green Cross of Torrance and David Hua, CEO of Meadow

Dispensary Marketing & Building Brand Relationships

In today's episode of [Meadow Memo](https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/meadow-memo-6907026159591157760/ "Meadow Memo"), Meadow CEO David Hua sits down with Julien Butler, Director of Retail Sales, Marketing and Delivery at the Original Green Cross of Torrance, a South Bay storefront and delivery service powered by Meadow since 2019.

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  <video-player url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHB0qKzf8o4" width="560" height="315"></video-player>
  <figcaption>Meadow CEO David Hua and ulien Butler, Director of Retail Sales, Marketing and Delivery at the Original Green Cross of Torrance discuss Dispensary Marketing & Building Brand Relationships.</figcaption>
</figure>

The conversation focus is around Dispensary Marketing & Building Brand Relationships. Highlights include:

- How he’s structured his marketing, sales and delivery teams (2:23)

- Becoming vertically integrated and creating shelf space for their in house brand, Alta Vida (11:50)

- Marketing messaging, discounts & loyalty programs for various customer demographics (15:42)

- Creating loyalty “milestone buys” to reward shoppers with prizes and perks (18:33)
- “20 days of 420 promotions” with daily brand promos to build hype (20:44)
- Building strong vendor relationships, how product marketing affects the menu, and the importance of interdepartmental communications between purchasing and sales teams (23:23)
- Why they switched from selling from product in cases to 14 floating iPads on the sales floor with the Meadow embedded menu (25:47)
- The three things brands need to get on retail menus (28:02)
- How Stokd Marketing empowers vendor and dispensary partnerships (30:28)
- Recent products we’re enjoying from Kush Co., Lost Farms, El Blunto, Ursa, Carte Blanche, Cold Fire Juice, Khalifa Kush, Alien Labs (32:32)
- The importance of freshness in products — harvest and manufacture date (35:09)
- Why connecting with the cannabis community is important to staying up on trends (36:42)
- How dynamic delivery paired with text marketing makes it possible to serve pop-up events (38:20)
- Why Green Cross switched from Treez to Meadow (41:53)
- The importance of serving customers with omni-channel sales (43:03)

![Pink Certz cannabis flower ](//images.ctfassets.net/6kwu1u6s8j23/7CJ1t0NOZDDIZsx7qXG2El/36f49d929c518b170fe260afff62699b/pink_certz.png)

To kick off our conversation, Hua samples some Pink Certz flower cultivated by Sense, bred by Compound Genetics using 100% renewable energy, which took first place in the flower category at the Transbay Challenge in February 2022, presented by Jimi Devine & Emerald Farm Tours.

Thanks for exploring this Meadow Memo on Dispensary Marketing & Building Relationships with Brands.

If you found this content useful, please [subscribe to this monthly newsletter on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/meadow-memo-6907026159591157760/), and share with a friend in the industry who is part of a retail or delivery team.

Book a call with us today at [getmeadow.com](https://getmeadow.com/#upgrade-now).

Learn more about Meadow's all-in-one [cannabis retail software](https://getmeadow.com/blog/tags/cannabis-retail "cannabis retail software")

How dispensaries should market and build relationships with cannabis brands 

Meadow Memo: Dispensary Marketing & Building Brand Relationships

Learn how a vertically integrated cannabis retailer approaches working with brands, curating a menu, catering to customers, and more

Meadow's new cannabis marketing platform makes it easier for dispensaries to send text messages to customers

New cannabis marketing platform for dispensaries

As [TechCrunch reported today](https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/20/meadow-launches-a-powerful-mobile-marketing-tool-for-cannabis-dispensaries/ "TechCrunch reported today"): 
*Meadow was once called the Amazon of weed. Now it’s trying to be the Salesforce of weed, too.*

*Meadow, the maker of a popular point-of-sale system for cannabis dispensaries, is today launching new tools for its clients. Called the Meadow Platform, it includes two key tools for dispensaries: a customer relationship manager (CRM) and a text messaging platform for mobile marketing. As the company puts it in the news release, this system is designed to let users push a button and sell more weed.*

*This system is designed to help legal weed proprietors serve its client base with deep insights and targeted marketing — all while abiding by the strict regulations governing the budding industry (pun intended).*

*Meadow’s POS system is widely used throughout the legal cannabis industry, giving retailers inventory management, analytics, online ordering and more. Because of regulations, retailers have a wealth of information on their clientele, which Meadow’s system can use for target marketing. Because these new features are built into the Meadow platform, instead of through a third-party add-on, Meadow says it’s protected by the same security used throughout the rest of its platform.*

*Current regulations make it difficult for dispensaries to market their wares. These retailers cannot fully utilize modern marketing channels such as social media, leaving most retailers with limited options outside of billboards. Meadow’s new solution brings standard marketing tools to dispensaries.*

*“Marketing is not one-size-fits-all, especially in cannabis. Dispensaries need tools to select which customers they want to talk to in order to send relevant messages and promotions,” David Hua, CEO and co-founder of Meadow, said in a released statement. “Let brand-loyal customers know when their favorite brands release new strains, products, blends or flavors. Tell customers about new hours or delivery and pick-up options. Send reengagement offers to customers who have dropped off. Let members of your loyalty program know when they have points to cash in and include their point balance. Tip-off VIPs when a limited-edition strain becomes available and give them first dibs. This is the level of delight and sophistication that has been missing from cannabis marketing, and we’re very excited to debut it to dispensaries across California.”*

*David Hua, Harrison Lee, Rick Harrison and Scott Garman founded Meadow in 2014. Since then, the company has raised $2.1 million and participated in Y Combinator’s Winter 2015 class. The company currently has 14 employees.*

*Building this product has always been part of Meadow’s goal, Hua tells TechCrunch. COVID-19 helped accelerate the need.*
*“Meadow has always had three core priorities,” Hua said. “The first was compliance, which we had a big checkmark at the beginning of this year. The second was operational efficiency, and now marketing. These dispensary owners, especially in this COVID-19 world, can talk directly to their customers again, bring in more revenue and give them more information on what’s happening. Now they can leverage Meadow’s platform to do promo codes, automated discounts, loyalty rewards; we have all that. So you could have a customer that’s ordering an early-bird special at 9:00 am, and that’s a member of your senior group that gets 10% off. You can now send them a message regarding new topicals. Marketing just becomes more engaging.”*

Learn more about Meadow's new [cannabis marketing](https://getmeadow.com/blog/tags/cannabis-marketing "cannabis marketing") platform.

Dispensary marketing tool to send SMS and MMS text messages to customers

Cannabis marketing text platform

Learn how to put customer data to work and take the guess-work out of dispensary marketing

Introducing: Meadow's Connected Cannabis Marketing and CRM Platform

Meadow's cannabis marketing tool allows dispensaries to send smarter text messages.

Cannabis Marketing Text Campaign

When we started doing research around how to build the best [cannabis marketing](https://getmeadow.com/blog/tags/cannabis-marketing) platform for dispensaries, we started analyzing the marketing messages we were receiving from different dispensaries, and started to see a lot of common marketing mistakes.

There are many different types of modern cannabis consumers, and it's important that your business helps educate and guide people to new products that they're going to love and reward them for being part of your community. 

Here are easy ways to identify and fix five of these common cannabis marketing mistakes, with the goal of improving the way you communicate with customers and setting up systems that make it easy to continue conversations digitally:

1. **Don't Assume Customers Receive Text Messages from Your Dispensary Only**

Most cannabis consumers buy products from more than one dispensary or delivery service, so you can't assume they know who the text message is coming from if you don't identify yourself. This seems like a no-brainer; but it's a common issue, and very easy to fix: **Always include some key information about your dispensary: it's name, social handles, location, link to their website and/or logo in an MMS in your message.** If your dispensary name contains a word like cannabis or weed that might get triggered or filtered by the text message carriers, it's best to come up with some sort of acronym or abbreviation for your name or use other ways to identify yourself. If you just send a deal or special offer without making it clear which business it's from, you're not doing yourself any favors.

2. **Don't Blast Your Entire Database with the Exact Same Message**

Unless your marketing message is relevant to every single customer who has ever shopped with you, avoid blasting your entire customer list with the same text message. There's no better way to get low ROI on your marketing budget and your marketing campaign. Instead, use their historical shopping patterns and your relationship with them to craft relevant messaging so it feels more conversational and targeted. No one wants to feel like they're just a number; this can lead to people opting out of your marketing entirely. **The data shows that the more generic the message that you're sending out to your entire list, the more opt outs that you're going to receive; whereas the more targeted your messaging is and the smaller your segments with more targeted messages, the higher the retention rate.** It's always better to use a cannabis marketing tool that allows you to layer segments and conditions to really start these compelling conversations with your customers.

3. **Don't Send a Concentrates Deal to Someone Who Only Ever Purchases Pre-Rolls**

Before starting to write and create text message campaigns for your dispensary, you want to know who you're speaking to. **Know who you're speaking to: If someone's purchase history shows they only ever grab pre-rolls, then they're probably not interested in a concentrates sale.** You'll see better ROI on your marketing spend if you use your dollars wisely, sending deals people can't refuse because they feel tailored to their preferences. Using historic sales and customer data, you can create your own custom segments of your customers for text marketing campaigns. These segments can layer conditions like what products they buy, average order amount, their total lifetime order count, if they're ordering pickup or delivery, the product categories they shop most (i.e. edibles, flowers, tinctures), the number of loyalty points they have to spend, and more. Don't forget to layer in data from customer groups (a segment you can add customers to with the click of a button when they first register at your shop, ie. neighborhood locals, VIPS, veterans, seniors, etc). 

4. **Don't Forget to Reward Your Customers for Shopping With You**

Customer retention is the name of the game. If you don't have any sort of loyalty program implemented,  it's extremely important (and easy!) to implement your own VIP club that rewards people for shopping with you, allowing them to stack up points to earn discounts or free products. Give customers a reason to check in on their account with you; you can both gamify it and help people feeling like they're part of a community. The reason why websites like Weedmaps and other [cannabis dispensary directory sites](https://meadow.delivery/) are so popular are because it's easy for people to shop for and find deals in their area. Once people find you, it's important to give them a reason to keep coming back.

![Create a VIP dispensary loyalty program](//images.ctfassets.net/6kwu1u6s8j23/7qk5Yu2TwtjZnTbnEb84bI/aaafdf57ff2babbdefb0575437c06afd/Blog_Banner_Image__4_.png)

5. **Make Sure You Can Track Your Marketing ROI**

If you're using a cannabis POS software that requires you to export spreadsheets of all your customers and importing it into a third-party SMS campaign system without properly filtering and segmenting your customer data, it's going to be hard to determine what's working and what's not. You want to be able to see the results of different marketing tests so you can optimize your SMS and MMS to perform better each time.  

![Cannabis marketing is most effective via text marketing](//images.ctfassets.net/6kwu1u6s8j23/4F2pzhIJNNzvq06xxJd01L/b78a4a6e2d96a1b6b98595bdba2a288b/Blog_Banner_Image__5_.png)

With Meadow's cannabis marketing tool, you can track all your text campaign data right within your POS dashboard with on-screen analysis showing your ROI measurements, engagement, orders, promo codes used, and more. Because the texting platform is tied directly into the same system as your online menu, you can create promo codes as you craft a text campaign, and include a direct product link (ie. to the limited edition flower on your menu that just dropped) or a direct category link (ie to a menu page featuring all of your edibles) within your text campaigns, knowing that your inventory will always be accurate and up to date as customers redeem the promo codes to make purchases.

![Cannabis marketing made easy with SMS built into the cannabis POS dashboard](//images.ctfassets.net/6kwu1u6s8j23/6r9xLD3jPQXoVSs7OUgveb/94567f096928ee612171d68ea6ea9a88/Blog_Banner_Image__6_.png)

If your [cannabis retail](https://getmeadow.com/blog/tags/cannabis-retail "cannabis retail") operation is able to fix all five of these common marketing mistakes, you'll improve communication with your customers and patients, and build a loyalty community who share the joy of cannabis by bringing their friends and family to your businesss to learn about all of the many benefits of this amazing plant medicine. 


Discover how you can improve your cannabis marketing ROI

Posts tagged “Cannabis Marketing”

How to Take Better Care of Your VIP Dispensary Customers

Meadow Memo: Dispensary Marketing & Building Brand Relationships

Introducing: Meadow's Connected Cannabis Marketing and CRM Platform

Top 5 Cannabis Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

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Posts tagged “Cannabis Marketing”

How to Take Better Care of Your VIP Dispensary Customers

Meadow Memo: Dispensary Marketing & Building Brand Relationships

Introducing: Meadow's Connected Cannabis Marketing and CRM Platform

Top 5 Cannabis Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

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