Welcome to High On Marketing - A weekly newsletter where I show you how to strengthen your email marketing strategy for your cannabis brand. Learn how to nurture your audience, increase retention rates, and sell more weed.

Today’s Email:

• 5 Most Common Canna Loyalty Program Mistakes

• How Your Brand Can Avoid Them

• What You Can Do Today

Let’s Roll 🛼

You’re wasting time and money trying to grow your audience and customer base.

Instead, you should focus on ensuring your current customers keep coming back (remember the 80/20 rule).

Customer loyalty programs are a mess in the cannabis industry…

Most brands fail to realize the impact an effective loyalty program can have on sales, retention, and brand recognition.

But loyalty programs are essential for steady brand growth. They save you a ton of money on customer acquisition costs and keep your brand on top-of-mind with regular communication.

Here’s the 5 most common mistakes cannabis brands make in creating their loyalty programs and how you can ensure your brand won’t make the same ones:

1. Complexity in Earning and Redeeming Rewards:

• Problem: If customers find the loyalty program too complex or the rewards difficult to achieve, they may lose interest. Programs that require too many purchases or have confusing rules can deter engagement.

Brands often inadvertently make their rewards programs complex in an attempt to create a nuanced program - confusion and complexity are huge deterrents for your customers taking part in your program.

Here’s some common ways brands make their loyalty programs too complex:

• Multiple tiers with unclear benefits

• Complicated points systems

• Restrictive redemption options

• Limited time to redeem points

Solution:

Instead, make everything as simple and flexible as possible:

1. Clearly define tiers and ensure rules are understandable

2. Simplify points systems and make it as straightforward as you can

3. Allow customers to redeem points with minimal restrictions (flexibility)

4. Extend points validity and provide a generous timeframe for points redemption

5. Transparent communication to regularly update customers on their points balance, tier status, and potential rewards

2. Lack of Perceived Value:

• Problem: When the rewards do not align with customer interests or seem too insignificant compared to the effort required to earn them, the perceived value diminishes, leading to disengagement (i.e. they dgaf).

The four main reasons your customers will disengage and not take your loyalty program seriously are:

1. Insignificant Rewards

2. High Thresholds for Redemption

3. Complex Earning Structures

4. Limited Time to Redeem

Solution:

Use customer data to offer relevant and desirable rewards:

• Ensure your rewards actually align with the needs and interests of your customers

• Segment your audience by product preference, engagement, number of points, thresholds, etc.

• Simplify, and extend the redemption process

• Regularly refresh rewards

3. Poor Communication:

• Problem: Failure to effectively communicate how the program works and what benefits are available can lead to low participation rates. Customers may not be aware of how to join, what the benefits are, or how to redeem rewards.

I’ve been checking out at dispensaries before, and right before paying the budtender says “Oh, you have 200 points. Do you want to use them?”

Now what good is awarding your customer with hundreds of reward points without them even knowing they have them?

Solution:

Keep in touch with your customers through regular updates about their points balance, new rewards, and special promotions linked to the loyalty program. Utilize email marketing to communicate the following:

• Threshold alerts

• Celebration emails

• Redemption reminders

• Bonus points opportunities

• Personalized reward suggestions

• Monthly/weekly point statements

And, as always, ALL of this can be automated😉

Struggling to find the perfect email frequency for your brand? Click here to identify the best schedule for your content.

4. Inflexibility:

• Problem: Programs that do not evolve with customer needs or market trends can quickly become outdated. A lack of customization options for different customer segments can also make the program less appealing.

Flexibility and personalization is key to a successful rewards program. Without it, your customers will become frustrated, disengaged, and have a poor perception of your programs value.

Solution:

Allow customers to choose how they earn rewards and what they can redeem them for. Do this with:

1. Flexible terms

2. Personalized offers

3. Tiered rewards system

4. Multiple redemption options

5. Diverse earning opportunities

6. Communication and feedback

5. Failure to Integrate with the Overall Customer Experience:

• Problem: Loyalty programs that feel like an afterthought, rather than an integral part of the customer experience, fail to make a meaningful impact.

A common mistake brands make with loyalty programs is allowing them to operate in isolation - aka not incorporating it into the broader brand experience or customer journey.

Inconsistent brand messaging and a lack of personalization can lead to customer disconnect.

Solution:

Seamlessly integrate the loyalty program with your existing sales and marketing systems. This helps in creating a cohesive customer experience and allows for better tracking of customer behavior and program effectiveness.

• Create customer personas to ensure your audience is always receiving relevant content and offers

• Align the look, feel, and voice of all aspects of the loyalty program with the wider brand

• Allow customers to earn and redeem rewards through any channel they choose, whether in-store, online, or via mobile apps

• Regularly communicate about your rewards program through various channels. Keep your customers informed!

What You Can Do Today:

1. Start by reviewing and simplifying your reward structure. Identify any points of confusion in the program itself or in the communication to your customers. Simplify everything!

2. Conduct customer surveys for current loyalty program members asking them what they like, dislike, or want more of.

3. Start leveraging customer data to improve personalization and customization.

When You’re Ready, Here’s How I Can Help You…

Click here to download my High On Marketing Evergreen Templates - 50 pre-written emails tailored for cannabis brands to stay on top-of-mind while building a well-informed, loyal customer base through regular value-driven email communications.

Get yours today and have the next 6 months of content covered!

Customer loyalty should be your #1 concern with keeping your brand profitable and relevant.

Stop worrying about new customers, and start worrying about keeping your current ones.

Loyal customers are what provide you the freedom to focus your attention on other aspects of running a cannabis business.

Put in the work to develop a fully-optimized customer retention program now and let your dispo run itself!

For more on customer loyalty, check out my recent post: “7 Ways to Ensure Your Customers NEVER Choose Another Dispensary”!

Until next week!

Happy Retaining!

Steve

P.S. Have any questions? Reply directly to this email! I’m always here to help in anyway I can.