Why you should have SMS as part of your Dispensary’s communications strategy.
Your competitors are texting your customers. They let them know about deals, exclusives, events. They even ask for feedback. They use text messaging because it’s many of your customers’ preferred methods of communication. Better yet, delivery and conversion rates are significantly higher for SMS and MMS than email. We’ll get into the statistics in a second, read on.
Before we even mention best practices, or what you can and can’t text your customers, there’s something you need to know. Human behaviour around phones and text messaging.
Look around, where’s your phone?
74% of North Americans keep their phones within three feet of them. Better yet, over 95% of SMS and MMS messages are read within three minutes.
SMS messages open at three times a better rate than Email. SMS texts have a 98% open rate and have remained a preferred method of communication for North Americans for 12 years
Separately, although it is illegal to conduct business via text, cannabis users are already used to texting with the people that sell them their cannabis. Providing you remain compliant with CASL and the Cannabis Act, SMS is a prime opportunity to build a relationship with your customers.
Remaining compliant with CASL and the Cannabis Act.
A carrier violation is when the carrier chooses not to deliver your message.
Telecommunication carriers use machine learning SEO bots that seek out terminology to censor communications they deem a violation.
The telecom provider your customers use may be censoring your SMS marketing because of the terms you use. Yes, they’re aware that it’s legal. No, they don’t care. And no, they’re not all censoring text messages at the same level. Telus is notorious for its anti-cannabis stance.
Here is a list of terpy terms still getting censored:
(Terpy terms are terms that add flavour to your cannabis communications)
- Kush
- Indica
- Sativa
- Marijuana
- Weed
- Cannabis
- Hash
- Preroll
- Edible
- 420
It’s hard to predict which of your customers are on which carrier. SEO bots that comb through texts to censor them are also beginning to look for alternative spellings as well. Ku$h, S@tiva, C@nn@b!$ are starting to get filtered as well.
If you have any of these words in your business name, you cannot even mention your full business name in your text communications.
This is one of the primary reasons we recommend leveraging MMS because you can use those terpy terms in image form. The SEO bots are unable to pick up the text in images because the text is embedded in the image.
Other reasons carriers censor SMS communication:
SMS carriers also censor “spammy terminology”
Terms such as:
- Discount
- Sale
- Deal
- Free
Need to be minimal in your communications or expressed via image. That being said, it’s really not recommended that you text your customers every day unless they are communicating back and forth with you.
In which case, you should probably send them a hat or a sweater. Those are the people you need to consider spending more time trying to keep.
How to format your communications.
There’s typically a 160-200 character limit to texts. Most providers limit links in an SMS to one, others allow between three and five, depending on the carrier.
It’s recommended that you’re writing personalized texts that feel genuine and authentic. The best way to do that is to write conversationally. It’s recommended you start every text with the customer’s name and a greeting. This way it feels like the message is crafted for them as opposed to a mass message directed at 1,000 people.
Be relevant. Text your customers about the products and categories they buy. Unless they’re buying everything, there’s no need to tell them about everything.
Brand/Category/Price relevance is key to crafting personalized communications.
MMS is expensive but worth it.
If you include an image in your message, an MMS is three to five times more expensive than an SMS (text only). There are also fewer limitations to what you can communicate. With an image, you can tell your customers about deals, new products, sales and you don’t have to worry about avoiding terpy terms. An image is also a great way to build brand relevance. Your logo and full business name should be dead center in your images.
When formatting an image, the max file size should be 1,200 pixels wide and only 200 kb’s. Size and orientation become an issue with images. They need to be formatted and compressed to fit a smartphone screen.
What to text your customers:
Your point of sale software gathers crucial information about your customers. Have your budtenders ensure all your sales are made on a customer account. Constantly generating new data is how you learn about your customers.
The data your POS gathers will tell you:
- When your customers come on (time of day, day of week)
- How often they come into the store.
- The recency of your customer’s visit.
- What brands, formats and accessories they buy.
- How much money they spend per trip.
- How much money they spend per day, week, month, period.
- How much money they’ve spent in your store overall.
These are just examples of the useful information you could use to craft personalized, relevant messages. A good relationship with your customer base comes from understanding who they are. When they come to your store, they provide you with all the information you need to craft personalized communications.
The four ways you should text your customers:
Using the data above, you can send your customers information in one of four categories.
Rewarding behaviour:
Reward your customers for the behaviour. Thank them for their spending and let them know they’re valued.
You can reward your customers with:
- Post-purchase deals and thank you’s.
- Sending customers deals based on their level of spending.
- The happy birthday text. Reward them for being your customer on their birthday!
Predictive behaviour:
- Understand your customer’s frequency to try and predict when they need to re-up next and send them deals ahead of time.
- Understand what time of day/week your customer comes in and send them deals ahead of that time.
Disruptive behaviour:
- Sending your customers deals for higher margin/quantity products in their preferred category. (upselling)
- Sending promotional texts when your customer hasn’t done business with you in a while. Aka the ol’ “we miss you, where’ve you been? Is it us?” Text. Don’t worry, we won’t sound that needy.
Generating behaviour.
- Let your customers know about sales on products you want to go.
- Generate same-day foot traffic.
- Let your customers know about events/deals/recommendations/new products!
A final thought on SMS.
Most likely, you’re not the only dispensary on your street, or even on your block. It’s common to work at a dispensary now and have your competitor be directly across the street from you. Or worse, in your plaza.
A high converting message that generates online and in-store traffic could be the difference between building customer relationships and seeing those customers walk out of your competition across the street with bags in their hands.
