Dispensary customer segment · Product preferences
Cannabis topicals and wellness buyers: how dispensaries market to them
Serve the customers who shop this category on its own terms
The Topicals & wellness segment in Sticky Cards includes every dispensary customer who has purchased at least 1 product in the Topicals & wellness category.
A different shopper from the rest of your store, and the category where what you may not say matters most.
What is the Topicals & wellness segment?
Everyone here has bought at least 1 product in your Topicals & wellness category, which follows how your products are categorised in your POS. In most stores this group shops differently from everyone else: less often, more deliberately, and frequently for a specific reason they have not told you.
That reason is exactly what you cannot write about. A dispensary cannot make a health or medical claim, and this is the category where the tempting sentence is always a health claim. The working rule is simple: describe the product, never the outcome. Format, ingredients, size, how it is applied, what is new. Nothing about what it does for a person.
Marketed properly this is a steady, high-margin category with unusually loyal customers. The people on this list came looking for something specific, and if you carry it reliably they will keep coming back for it.
How Sticky Cards builds this segment
- Category
- Product preferences
- Membership
- Dynamic, recalculated from your POS
- Find it in the app
- Customers > Segments > Product Preferences
Email usually carries this segment best, because the useful messages here are about range and availability rather than urgency. Check the Loyalty row too: these customers visit less often than the rest of your store, so without a Sticky Card in their wallet a gap between visits looks like churn when it is just how they shop.
What should a dispensary send to topicals buyers?
The range updateEmail
What you now carry, in what sizes, from whom. Factual and useful, and it stays well clear of anything you cannot say.
The reliable restockPush
This shopper comes in for a particular item. Telling them it is back is the most useful message you can send and it costs you nothing.
The category introductionEmail
Aimed at the rest of your customers rather than this list. Plenty of people have never looked at this shelf, and an introduction that sticks to what the products are is both safe and effective.
The gift-season sendEmail
This category buys well as a gift, which is a reason to feature it that requires no claim about it at all.
Ideas to try
The restock play
Build it in Play Designer so a push goes out when the products this segment buys come back in. Low effort, useful, and it suits a shopper who comes in for one thing.
Sample subject line
Back on the shelf
The new-format blast
When the category gains a format you did not carry before, tell this segment as a Campaign Blast. Describe what it is and how it is used, and stop there.
Sample text
A new format landed on the shelf you shop. In store now if you want a look. Reply STOP to end.
The introduction to everyone else
Send to your wider active list with this segment under "Don’t send to". These are the people who have never shopped the category, and a plain description of what is on the shelf is all it takes.
Sample subject line
The shelf plenty of people walk past
Related segments to pair it with
- CBD productsThe closest neighbour, and it carries the same rules about what you may say. Cross the two when you are launching something that sits across both.
- Last purchase 61-90 daysUse the wider window when you are checking who is still active here. This group shops less often, so a 30-day list will make a healthy category look dead.
- No purchase in 30+ daysDon’t send toSet this as your exclusion on anything treating a gap as churn. This category is bought on a longer cycle, so a topicals customer at 30 days is usually just between visits.
What to measure
Use a longer window than you would elsewhere. Measure repeat purchase over 90 days rather than 30, because this category is bought on a slower cycle and a short window will tell you it is failing when it is not. Watch margin per customer too, since this shelf usually earns more per sale than the volume categories.
Questions we get
What can I say about these products?
What they are, what is in them, what size they come in, how they are applied, and what is new. Nothing about what they do for a person and nothing health related, in any channel.
Why do these customers seem to disappear?
Most of them have not. This category is bought on a longer cycle than the rest of your store, so measure it over 90 days rather than 30 before you treat someone as lapsed.
How do I grow the category?
Send an introduction to your active customers with this segment excluded. Most of the growth is in people who walk past the shelf, not in the ones already at it.
See this segment running on your own customers
We connect your POS, build the list from your own orders, and walk you through the first campaign on it.
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