Essentials to an Attractive Dispensary Loyalty Program

If you are already running a dispensary loyalty and texting program for your cannabis business, you are on the right track to increasing customer loyalty and spending, but it’s just the first step. Driving new and existing customers to enroll and actually participate is what really counts. Thankfully, there are a number of steps you can take to help ensure the success of your customer loyalty program. The following are suggested ways to encourage enrollment and incentivize current and future customers to participate and become repeat customers:

• Easy Sign-Up
• Easy Opt-Out
• Bonus upon enrollment
• Transparency
• Referral Programs
• Budtender Training
• Tiered Rewards 

Make it easy to sign up.

Don’t ask your customer base to fill out a lengthy form in order to enroll in your dispensary loyalty program. Stick to a few basic questions name, gender, age, email, phone number. You can always send them a longer questionnaire about their purchasing preferences via email or text at a later date. Sweeten the deal by rewarding customers who enroll in the form of points or a discount on their next purchase for completing it. Aside from the data you get, i’lll make them feel more committed to the program.

Make it easy to opt-out.

Not only is this required by law for SMS marketing programs in the cannabis industry but it is also just a common-sense best practice. You don’t want customers to have to jump through hoops to opt-out of receiving text message marketing material. Just because they’ve opted out of receiving texts doesn’t mean they won’t stay loyal to your dispensary, some people just prefer to keep their phones free of ads.

Offer a sign-up bonus.

While enrollment in your program itself should be free, many mainstream retailers offer reward points or 10-15% off the next purchase as a bonus for registration. By offering a signup bonus you ensure that they will come back to your dispensary in order to use their reward.

Have clear and transparent program guidelines.

The most important factor in loyalty program participation is how easy it is to understand the guidelines. To ensure customer retention, you need to make it very clear to members how to earn and spend their points. The best way to do this is to run a points per dollar loyalty program that rewards customers 1 point for every dollar spent. This allows loyal customers to easily keep track of how many points they will get at each purchase in real-time. Have a section on your website that spells everything out and keep a sign or hand out at your check-out counter with all of the details.

The reward for friend referrals.

If your customers love your marijuana dispensary’s loyalty program, they will naturally share the wealth with their friends. It’ best practice to provide them with incentives to do so, with a discount to both the customer and friend for each referral to your loyalty program. You may even want to offer a larger reward for multiple referrals, like a promotion that offers one free pre-roll if a customer refers five friends to the loyalty program, or one package of edibles if they refer 10 friends. Customers can even share their personal unique referral link on social media!  All of this is possible using our Budz feature

Train your employees to promote a referral program.

Make sure that your budtenders and check-out associates are trained to consistently promote your loyalty program in their interactions with customers. It’s important they are able to accurately describe all of the program’s perks and discounts, how to earn and use points, and outline loyalty point values. Budtenders and dispensary staff are your loyalty program front line ambassadors as much as they are your product and brand salespeople. Confusion on their part will create distrust from customers.

Create obtainable rewards.

If you want customers to really use your rewards program and become loyal to your cannabis dispensary, you need to make it easy for them to use their points. Loyalty program members are most enthusiastic about a program when they spend points on rewards, not when they are accumulating points. Offer some lower-point-value products like rolling papers, lighters, or a 10% discount as a reward to get the ball rolling for new customers with fewer points. From there, you can have other more valuable, but still obtainable, options for them to work toward, as an exclusive pack of prerolls or limited edition cartridges. Higher-end retailers can even consider offering an ‘aspirational reward that’s worth an enormous number of points like an all-inclusive trip to a partner growing facility with free products. Various reward tiers give customers something to be excited about and work hard toward achieving without being too hard on your bottom line.

Competition is fierce in the cannabis retail world. Make your business stand out by offering a stellar loyalty rewards program that customers want to join…and really use.