How to Use Direct Mailers for Your Dispensary

Types of Dispensary Direct Mailers

Depending on how large you want to go, we can create regular sized postcards, large postcards, flyers, and brochures. These are the most economical options, but if you want to make a splash, we have no problem sourcing alternatives for you.

The size you choose should depend on the message you want to convey. Large postcards, which are about half the size of a regular sheet of paper are the most popular option because they are big enough to grab attention and feature an eye-catching design.

If you want to require that people bring in your mailer in order to get a discount, then you may want to opt for the smaller postcard size so that it’s easier to carry around.

Larger flyers and brochures may be useful for sharing information and may make sense if you want to talk about your free consultations or educational resources.

Ultimately, the size of your mailer matters less than what is on it. You can have a large mailer and fail to make an impact because your design and copy aren’t well thought out and you can have a small postcard that scores you tons of sales because you included a great deal.

Getting Compliant Addresses

Before getting into what should be on your dispensary direct mailers, let’s talk addresses.

How can you get addresses that belong to known cannabis users or people of age?

Because this is such a pain-point for clients, we’ve made a point of sourcing mailing lists that feature predominantly of-age recipients. Many states require that any dispensary advertising must reach an audience that is composed of at least 75% of individuals 21 or over. We don’t want our partners to get dinged by regulators, so we have already done the pre-work for you.

You don’t just want to focus on everyone over 21, though. As I mentioned earlier, targeting can increase the effectiveness of your campaign. Depending on your location, you have a couple of different options available to you.

If you are in a populous area like a metro area or city, consider starting with only certain neighborhoods. You don’t want to blanket the entire city with your mailers. Rather, pinpoint the neighborhoods where your customers are most likely to live.

If you run a delivery service, it may seem like sending a postcard to everyone within your delivery area is a good idea, but it can actually be a waste of effort. Instead, start with just a segment of your delivery area. Focus on addresses that meet the demographics of your target market.

For example, if you run a cannabis concierge delivery service focusing on high-end cannabis products, you’ll want to hone in on particular demographics like income and possibly education level. This will help ensure your advertising gets into the right hands.

Geo-targeting is very important for mailers. People aren’t going to drive over an hour to get to your dispensary unless that’s the only option for getting legal cannabis. It doesn’t make sense to send mailers to areas that aren’t home to your target market, so be sure to have a general idea of who your ideal audience is and where they live.

If you have a business plan, this information should already be in it. If you’ve been operating for a while, you can look at your customer database to identify common traits and create some personas to help you narrow your focus.

Let’s talk about how to maximize your campaign and get more people to buy from you.

Dispensary Direct Mailer Design

Some people spend a lot of time on the design of their mailer. I’ll be honest, though, it’s not the most important part. It’s still a crucial element because you want anything associated with your brand to look good. However, I’m going to talk about the most important part of your direct mailer campaign in a moment, so stay tuned in.When thinking about design, you want anything you create to be in line with your style guide. You want it to be attractive to your target audience. And you want it to be recognizably from you. You don’t want it to look like it could’ve come from anyone else. This helps build trust and brand recognition.

As you’re working on the layout of your mailer, think about how much text you want and make sure you give a prominent spot to your logo.
You want to be focused on your message and free of clutter. Stick to just a couple of main points and if in doubt, cut the extra stuff.

When choosing design elements like fonts and colors, stick with your style guide unless any of those elements fail to transfer well to paper. If your chosen font is difficult to read, for example, opt for something more consumer-friendly. Similarly, if your brand colors make it hard to read text, tone some of them down.

You only have a few seconds to capture the recipient’s attention. You don’t want those few seconds to be taken up with them being frustrated because they can’t read your font.

We’ve designed several mailers and we understand it can be hard to nail down the right design. Because of this, we always make several iterations so that our clients are able to better determine what they like and what they don’t like.

Mailer Copy

Some people are attracted to design, others to a catchy headline. What you say can matter just as much as what your mailer looks like. In fact, for some dispensary direct mailers, the copy is the design. I’m sure you’ve received a mailer that just had bold text on one side. It can be pretty eye-catching because it forces you to read it immediately. This style isn’t for everybody though.

Your copy should be brand-appropriate and convey your message clearly. Let’s say you’re opening up a new store and want to drive enrollment into your loyalty program. You can have your company motto on one side of your card and text about your loyalty program on the other, along with a special introductory deal for new signups.

If you want to capture attention, you’ll want to make the most of the space you’re given. That doesn’t mean cramming in a bunch of text though. You want your copy to be easy to read, so make sure that it is a larger font that can be read from about a foot away.

Once you have decided on your text, make sure to run it by an editor. You don’t want to send out a mailer full of mistakes. This really should be a separate person than the copywriter.

Your editor can help tailor your message and trim any excess. You want to be concise and cut out any extra words that distract from what you’re trying to say or are redundant. They’re just taking up space. Better to increase your font size than waste your time with extra words.

Share a Deal

Let’s talk about the most important part of your dispensary direct mailers.

If you want people to take action fast, what better way to motivate them than with a time-sensitive deal?

Your deal and call-to-action are crucial for getting the most out of your direct mail campaign.

To create a worthwhile deal, you need to be clear about your goal, whether it’s online sales, new customer acquisition, or loyalty signups. Then you need to make it clear to the recipient what you want them to do and why they should do it.

With the previous example, we wanted to get new loyalty signups. We could say something like “Join our VIP program for exclusive access to deals on your favorite products like 20% off Phat Panda. Text “Join” to 55555 now!”

This type of call-to-action may not lead to immediate sales. However, by increasing your loyalty signups, you can continue to market to those individuals without paying to capture them again.

If you’re trying to acquire new customers, you can offer a deal for a percentage off of their first purchase. Just be sure to make it worth their while. Take a look at what the competition is doing and differentiate yourself, whether with your product offering, branding, or deals.

Many places are still under restrictions. While dispensaries are open and considered essential, you may want to limit the number of people coming in to your store or how long they stay.

If this is you, you might want to run a campaign focused on online orders. Offer a discount for online-only orders, share your free delivery deal, or talk about how easy your curbside pickup is. Make it exciting and, again, be clear on what you want the recipient to do. For example, “Take $10 off when you order online!”

Opt-in Code

Depending on your CTA, you may want to include an SMS opt-in code on your dispensary direct mailers to encourage recipients to sign up for your loyalty program.

Again, this is so you don’t have to pay to capture the same individual again. They’ll start receiving your text offers or emails instead.

While it’s not a sale, it’s still an important conversion. They’ve entered your sales funnel and they’re aware of your brand. You still have time to get them to your online menu or into your store.

I’ve mentioned this multiple times for a reason. Once someone is on your list, you’re able to continually market to them. They’ve already expressed interest and you can work towards getting them to become a loyal customer. The more touchpoints you have with them, the more likely they are to convert into a customer.

QR Code

Putting a QR Code on your dispensary direct mailers can make it easy for recipients to shop your menu. It also lets you track the effectiveness of your campaign, which is extremely important.

To do this, you’ll need to sign up for a QR code and tracking, or work with a team like MediaJel that will do this for you.

You’ll also want to ensure that your Google Analytics is set up properly.

We’ve found that too many dispensaries either don’t have Google Analytics installed, or it isn’t set up correctly. This is a huge problem when it comes to revenue attribution, which I’m going to discuss in a moment.

Where your QR code goes will depend on your messaging. It can go to a signup page for your loyalty program, your menu, your consultation scheduling page, your deals page, or your homepage. We can help you determine which is right for your campaign. For many of our clients, we opt to link directly to a menu so recipients can easily place an order.

Revenue Attribution

So why have Google Analytics installed on your site for a mailer campaign?

Well, one of the most important things you can do for your advertising efforts is to ensure that revenue attribution is set up. Revenue attribution is the act of tying your sales to your advertising efforts and it’s crucial for monitoring the impact of your marketing. Because if you can’t track it, you won’t be able to manage it!

When you’re able to track how much revenue your advertising campaigns generate, you can pinpoint the channels that are most effective for your dispensary and then invest more into those specific channels. It’s vital information that every dispensary should invest in.

Without revenue attribution, you’re flying blind. Basically, you’re throwing money at a problem and hoping it works. With the technology available nowadays, this doesn’t make any sense. Why waste time, money, and effort and then not measure how effective your campaigns were?

This is really important for us at MediaJel. We’ve made revenue attribution and transparency a part of our mission. We want to bring the cannabis industry up to speed and put it on par with other industries. By implementing tracking and measuring the effectiveness of your marketing, you can make the most of your budget.

Let’s be honest, advertising and marketing budgets are often the first to get slashed when money is tight. Don’t let this happen to you! With revenue attribution, you can show the impact of your efforts and save your budget or even get it increased.

To get started, as I mentioned before, you’ll need Google Analytics. Once that’s set up, you’ll want to use UTM codes to track your different traffic sources. You should be creating these codes to insert them in your social media messages, texts, and emails. For your mailer, your QR code will contain unique signifiers to help track the effectiveness of your campaign.

addition to Google Analytics, you’ll want a menu platform that works with Google Analytics ecommerce tracking. This helps to tie the UTMs with particular transactions so that you can better parse the data.

The MediaJel team and I spent a lot of time in 2020 working with different menu platforms to help ensure that our clients could properly set up revenue attribution. We’ve found that some platforms are simple enough to connect if you know what you’re doing, while others need complicated workarounds to properly enable revenue attribution.

Because we believe this is such a valuable tool for our clients, we set this up with all of our services. I’d be happy to talk to you more about this and how it can help your dispensary grow your revenue. You can schedule a call with me at foottraffik.me/call

When to Send

The most basic answer is that the timing should align with your goals.

If you’re facing a slump and looking to boost sales, it could be a great time to create and send dispensary direct mailers, as well as implement digital advertising efforts like Mobile Banner Ads to help keep you top of mind with consumers.

Mailers are also great if you’re hosting an event. We know that some dispensaries are still doing virtual events, which is great. Why not spread the word with a mailer with a QR code that goes to your signup page? Be sure that your page also includes an opt-in box for your email or text marketing campaigns.

Holidays are also a great time to run a campaign. We have Valentine’s in a month, then Saint Patrick’s Day, Easter, and, of course, 420. You can do a spin on the traditional gifts for these holidays and feature edibles and cannabis beverages to help people celebrate differently.

Honestly, there’s no wrong time to send a mailer. It all depends on what you accomplish. We can help you establish the right timing for your goals, no problem.

Get Started Today

Are you ready to take the leap and create a direct mailers for your dispensary? Let MediaJel help you get your message into the hands of people who want to order from you.
A direct mailer campaign can help you boost your online orders, build brand awareness, and keep you top of mind with consumers in your area.

Whether you’re an established dispensary or a new delivery service, a mailer can help you capture the attention of your target audience.
Getting started is easy. We have everything you need to get you up and running fast. We’ll run everything by you so you have the creative input without having to do all the work. Schedule a call today!