How Do I Differentiate My Retail Shop and Get Folks to Come Back?!

In the highly competitive world of medicinal and recreational cannabis, shops are looking for an edge to attract and keep their patients and customers returning for more.

December 2018

In the new world of marketing that we live in, consumers are getting deluged with offers from everywhere and everyone. Email is now so over-ridden with spam that many folks barely check it or have so many different email addresses that they forget which one to look at. Magazine subscriptions and ad revenue continue to diminish albeit, except for the over 70 crowd. And you can’t even watch an NFL game anymore without getting lambasted by commercials that seem to be pitching you for an hour and a half worth of commercial time out of a three-hour contest.

So how do you separate yourself from the madness? How can you make yourself unique and different from what everyone else is doing? The simple answer is, text messaging.

The stats on text messaging are through the roof and are truly a way for you and your retail shop to drive loyalty which in turn drives traffic to your locations.

Some of the stats that confirm this:

  • Text Messaging sees an engagement rate 6-8 times higher than email marketing

  • 90% of users who enroll in a text loyalty program feel they gained value from it.

  • Text messages are usually read within 5 seconds of receipt

  • Text coupons are 10 times more likely to be redeemed than print or emailed coupons

  • 70% of people say they would actually like to receive offers on their mobile phones

-from the 60 second marketer

In the cannabis space, dispensaries are catching on quickly to this. Today, the text of choice is SMS. A bit of education on SMS. SMS or ‘short message service’ is a way to send a minimum of 140-character text message in bulk to an opt-in group of customers. The problem is, that it doesn’t allow you to differentiate yourself from the dispensary down the street because you are limited and unable to add a logo or images that make your location look unique.

But there is a solution. It’s called MMS messaging. MMS or ‘multi-media messaging service’, allows for pictures, video and .gif files to be uploaded and sent to a mobile phone. This helps with building your brand and making you unique. Further the 140-character limit goes away as most MMS messages can be as large as 500KB and up to 500,000 characters. That’s like a novel for crying out loud!

Sprout’s CRM & marketing software (www.sprout.online) takes it even further by helping you create and deploy mobile coupons, mobile surveys and campaign scheduling to make a marketer’s life that much easier. In addition, Sprout enables you to automate marketing campaigns to run on birthdays and pre-determined days after someone becomes a ‘text club member’ is an added bonus!

Lastly, Sprout is much more than a way to aggregate and market to those who enter your store or dispensary. With multiple ways to capture new client’s through website widgets, keyword text advertising and mobile kiosk availability, you can continue to acquire new folks and watch your client list continue to grow. All while you retain the customers you have through text incentives, coupons, offers and more!

To give it a try, call 1.888.411.1699 or text SPROUT to 411669 and a Sprout representative can walk you through the solution.

Happy Holiday’s from all of us here at Sprout. Our wish for you is continued success today and in the New Year!

Cannabis CRM, Sprout Software

Sprout Cannabis CRM