How Did Cannabis Retailers Perform on Green Wednesday, Thanksgiving and Black Friday?

With the week of Thanksgiving behind us, we wanted to take a look at how it all went down, share some interesting insights, and present a collection of the most successful campaigns sent through text and email.

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Here are some key takeaways, with more context and specifics included below:

1. Customers using Happy Marketers saw INCREDIBLE delivery rates this season
2. Thanksgiving week is a naturally purchase heavy week for consumers, regardless of whether they’re buying cannabis, food, drinks, or many other items. Align with strong consumer holidays for maximizing revenue growth
3. Discounting SKUs too much on Green Wednesday doesn’t really improve sell-through of inventory, it seems to only erode your profit margins

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Ok, let’s dig into the details.

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Deliverability was VERY high at Happy Cabbage

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First things first: using Happy Marketers, campaigns got through! Our clients saw delivery rates far above what they experience on other text marketing software vendors.

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We’re going to dive much deeper into deliverability and ROI in a blog next week. However, what we saw for this week was:

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• 75% of our clients experienced above a 50% delivery rate
• 54% of our clients experienced above a 75% delivery rate

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We’re getting most of the messages through, and they’re driving a ton of ROI. Clients that followed our best practices and took them very seriously saw over 95% delivery rates. Let’s talk about them!

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First off, we can’t tell you the names of these retailers or we’d be violating their data privacy. If you feel we’re obfuscating just to make a bunk claim, reach out to us, we’ll help you understand. 

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1. Retailer A sent 52 targeted campaigns with 56,745 total texts over the week of Thanksgiving. Their average delivery rate was 95.66%. 

2. California Retailer B sent 18 campaigns over Thanksgiving week. Their average delivery rate was 98.88%.

3. 31 clients sent 656,000 combined texts across 262 campaigns with an over 75% delivery rate. 

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While other vendors are telling you text marketing isn’t delivering, and that carriers aren’t carrying, come talk to us to get “the straight dope.”

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The most important week for cannabis sales

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Most people consider 420 to be the biggest sales event of the year. It indeed drives more single-day sales than any other. However, Green Wednesday, Thanksgiving, and Black Friday are a conjoined event that outpace sales of 420 and actually align with consumer preferences in all other products outside of weed.

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In other words, customers are already procuring things on these days, from family-drama-coping products like weed or booze, to food items for gatherings, to super cheap electronics. They’re out shopping, and your retail store is just a stop amidst all these other behaviors.

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420, on the other hand, is a weed-centric holiday defined by discount prices. People stock up on 420 because weed is cheaper that day than any other. They aren’t already out buying other things naturally aligned to a special moment in time like they do for all other national holidays.

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Discounting SKUs on Green Wednesday doesn’t improve sell-through

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Inventory data in Happy Buyers for Green Wednesday seems to confirm this:

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• Retailers kept product on the shelves, as only 2.1% of products went out of stock. 
• Retailers moved through, on average, 4.6% of their inventory. This is likely a result of overstocking.
• Yet, 35% of that inventory was discounted.

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These data points aren’t directly correlated, but they track for a very good reason. People are wanting to buy cannabis during Thanksgiving week. It’s a given. While some small level of discounting may aid you in winning a customer into your doors vs a competitor, discounting didn’t make a huge impact on sell-through.

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How do you ensure your discounts are perfectly set to drive demand? Check out this blog post we wrote on that exact subject.

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This is because naturally occurring consumer holidays drive purchases, and only after the holidays are items discounted. Think Halloween candy. You can’t buy 100 pounds of candy for $50 before Halloween, but after, you can be swimming in Tootsie Rolls.

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Same idea applies here. Save your big discounts for post-Thanksgiving. Maximize your margins during these naturally big consumer driven holidays that already exist to pump your sales.

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Take a test drive of Happy Buyers to see how to up your inventory purchasing game with machine learning.

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Most successful Thanksgiving week promotions

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What worked the best to drive recaptured customers and dollars over the week? We had our Customer Success Manager, Macey, pull the most interesting campaigns we saw driving the best ROI.

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• One of our Alaska retailers did a "Danksgiving" drop of new drinks and vapes products that brought in 80+ recaptured customers over 11/22-27 when they advertised these brands + flavors. This tracks with our advice on how to succeed the week prior! Glad to know we called that shot correctly.
• Just sending a Thanksgiving text at all succeeded in recapturing customers either by getting those back-in-town shoppers who visit friends/family seasonally, or the one's who need something extra to get through the holiday (we see you, nieces and nephews of "Aunt Karen and Uncle Chad")
• "Thankful for you" is cliche, but the campaign stats are proving that consumers love to hear it. Don't discount the power of Hallmark.
• One of our retail clients rebranded Black Friday to Green Friday and with one text recaptured 24 customers over Thanksgiving week! Be creative, claim your own holiday!
• Last but definitely NOT least, one of our retailers kicked off an annual food drive for Thanksgiving week and recaptured 68 customers from their text campaign! This is proof positive that engaging with your community can have greater ROI than marketing only discounts

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We always have more to discuss and share than can fit into a single blog article, and we love to chop it up with you out there experiencing these holidays. Share your results and ideas for success with us on social or reach out to talk shop with our team if you'd like to know more about how data driven retail marketing and inventory purchasing can get your revenue and margins high as the clouds.