How Dispensaries Can Make The Most Out of Segmentation

What Is Segmentation?

Market segmentation is the practice of breaking down customer pools into smaller segments that can be targeted more effectively. By creating identifiable subsets of customers based on certain attributes and characteristics, segmentation allows marketers to target their messages more effectively.

Segmentation groups can be based on numerous demographics such as age, gender, income, location, values, and interests. Establishing these groups makes it easier for marketers to craft tailored marketing messages, offers, or promotions that appeal more deeply to specific subsets of customers.

Let’s say you’re a dispensary in Illinois offering both medical and recreational cannabis. Segmentation will allow you to send separate deals to your medical patients and your rec users. Of course, we recommend taking segmentation even further and grouping customers by preferences and age as well. That way, you’re truly offering your customers enticing deals that they can’t help but take advantage of.

Yes, this is more work, but the payoff is worth it.

Think about the deals you receive from stores. If they aren’t sending you specials based on the items you’ve actually bought—if they’re just doing a blast of whatever special they’re currently running—then you probably don’t pay too much attention to those texts or emails. But what about when your favorite brand goes on sale? It’s a different story, right? If I go to your dispensary and buy Pax era pods, sharing a Pax deal (as opposed to a more generic special) with me makes it more likely that I’ll be back to take advantage of it.

It All Begins With Data

Creating well-thought-out customer segments will require tracking and analyzing large amounts of customer data. Customer information can be used to create customer personas that can help dispensaries gain a better understanding of their customers and leverage it to boost marketing and sales efforts.

What kinds of data can you use to model customer behavior and build customer segments?

This is data that you should be capturing via your loyalty program or POS, as well as through your email and text list building efforts.
And, of course, if you're collecting data, you should have a privacy policy on your website that shares what you're collecting and how you're using it.

Customer Loyalty Segmentation

Customer segmentation can also be used to boost the effectiveness of your dispensary’s loyalty programs.

Segmentation can divide loyalty program subscribers into actionable groups that can be more effectively targeted and marketed towards. By analyzing sales data and purchasing behavior, targeted marketing campaigns can be run against different customer segments, offering more appealing rewards and maximizing revenue.

Email Segmentation

Segmentation can be put to use to boost the effectiveness of email marketing programs.

Email segmentation is the practice of dividing email newsletter subscribers into smaller groups based on certain criteria. This allows for more precise targeting and increases the odds that potential customers will be receptive to your message.

For example, you can put medical customers in one segment and send them information to help them learn more about cannabis while sending recreational customers fun tidbits about what to watch while high.

Loyalty and email segmentation efforts can even be combined and layered for maximum effectiveness.

Mobile Ads

Segmentation can improve the effectiveness of mobile ads and help increase your ROI. With MediaJel’s mobile ads, you can create a campaign of display ads based on a variety of customer segments, including current geographical information. That means that you can target cannabis users who are shopping at your competition’s dispensary or who just happen to be in the area.

What Kind of Customer Personas Should Dispensaries Target?

Ready to get started?

Dispensaries serve a range of different customers with a range of different needs. Consider grouping customers together into larger segments and drilling down from there.

For instance, seniors typically tend to purchase medicinal cannabis products in-store during the daytime. Meanwhile, cannabis newcomers tend to be less enthusiastic and less willing to spend, oftentimes requiring a good reason to come back and become a repeat customer (like a special offer or promotion!).

Another way to segment customers is by analyzing their spending habits and consumption methods. Big spenders and high-value customers should be segmented into their own group and prioritized for marketing efforts. Additionally, some customers display clear consumption habits and preferences that can be leveraged into special promotions and offers on the items they really want.

However you wish to use it, segmentation can boost the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and help your dispensary achieve better results on a modest budget.

Ready to get started? Schedule a strategy session today and let's talk about making your digital marketing more effective.