How to Improve Dispensary Text Message Conversion Rates

Improving your dispensary text message marketing isn’t about sending as many offers and deals daily to attract the most customers. Text messages for dispensaries are about strategy, getting feedback, and optimizing results based on rigorous sales attribution. 

In this article you’ll learn how to improve your cannabis dispensary text message conversion rates, factors to consider, and tips to double down your text marketing efforts.

What Is Text Message Conversion Rate?

A text message conversion rate is a metric used to measure how successful a text message is at driving the recipient to take action. It’s important to think about all the different types of conversions that can happen from a text message campaign such as clicking on a link, answering back, or generating sales.

When you have a high SMS conversion rate, it means the messages you sent to your customers were successful in obtaining the desired action. Text message conversion rate is an important metric to evaluate whether your marketing efforts are giving results or if you need to change to a more beneficial channel.

Types of conversions you'll often use to measure the success of your text message campaigns are:

Open Rate

Open rate is the percentage rate at which text messages are opened. Different from a “read” in which recipients just look at the preview of the message.

A high open rate on your text messages means the preview of the message captured your audience’s attention enough to open it and read it.

Click Rate

Click Rate is the percentage rate at which your subscribers click on a link contained in your text message.

A high click rate means the content of your text message made the recipient interested in your offer, so they clicked on the link to know more or be redirected to your website.

Sales Conversion

Sales conversion is the percentage rate at which you’re able to convert new leads into customers. This metric varies according to the industry. And your success depends on how many conversions you need to generate profit or reach your goals.

A good sales conversion rate means your customers went through the purchase process on your website successfully.

It’s important to note that, as a dispensary marketer, the most important conversion type for you is your sales conversion and how many attributed sales your campaign drives. This is the only way in which you can calculate your ROI and show you’re driving tangible results.

Click and open rates can help you analyze and change your strategy but are lagging indicators of campaign success and can lead you to fall into the trap of vanity metrics.

What Is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)?

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of improving the conversion rate of text campaigns to drive more sales. This is a common process of text marketing CRO that involves strategy, testing, and changing anything from the sales funnel to get higher KPIs.

An easy way to check CRO in your dispensary is by using an e-commerce platform with analysis features. Another option is to use a 24-hour sales attribution window in dispensary text message marketing software tools like Polaris.

In order to understand CRO for text marketing, we have to outline all possible areas of improvement. These typically fall under three categories.  

Audience Optimization

Audience optimization is the process of segmenting your audience according to similar characteristics to understand them better. With this, you can qualify leads, offer them better deals or products, and improve the chances of them buying from you.

With a tool like Polaris, you can segment your dispensary audience automatically by brand, purchase frequency, product preference, and more. Thanks to machine learning capabilities, Polaris analyzes your audience's behavior to help you send the right promotions.

Message Optimization

Message optimization is the process of using content marketing techniques to spark interest in the recipient. This is often done with industry language, attractive offers, and information your audience cares about.

Website Optimization

Website optimization is the process of improving your website's performance in design, speed, or even messaging. The goal of website optimization is to enhance the user's experience and ease conversions. 

Remember, successful text marketing CRO depends on optimizing all three areas together. For example, you might have a fast website and stellar copy, but if you’re just blasting campaigns to your entire audience, you won’t see as high conversions.

The same goes for if your segment and copy are targeted but your website is slow-loading and has unclear product pages. Every area for optimization affects campaign CRO as a whole.

Let’s talk about three factors to consider when optimizing for campaigns.

3 Factors to Consider for Optimizing Your Dispensary Text Conversion Rate

There are many factors that can affect sales at your dispensary. But you can take advantage of text messages by optimizing them to increase the likelihood of getting sales. Here are some questions you need to be answered to achieve this:

Is Your Segment Targeted?

Segmentation is a crucial step to better know your audience, recognize their behavior and even boost loyalty. However,   having this information and not targeting your audience segments with the right message can make you lose subscribers. 

Sending messages daily might look like a good way of keeping your audience interested. But if you send offers from Alien Labs to a segment that mostly buys from Jeeter, this audience segment is going to find those texts annoying. 

To keep your audience happy, send targeted messages according to the following segmentations:

• Product type segmentation: Audience segmentation according to the product they prefer. These segments can be customers that prefer flower, vape, edibles, or pre-rolls.
• Brand segmentation: Some customers prefer to buy from brands they already know. Some popular brands are Jeeter, or Alien Labs.
• Purchase frequency: Segments of customers that buy after a certain period. These customers have a fixed buying behavior that you can use to your advantage. By sending an SMS with deals close to the time these customers often buy, you can ensure some sales.

Did You Write an Appealing Message?

Boring messages lose sales. It's well known that to sell you have to capture your audience's interest and you only have a small window to achieve this. The thing is, a yawn-inducing message won't make it. 

To write an appealing message, factor in three things: first, a hook at the beginning to grab your reader's attention. Second, short and simple context. And finally, a call-to-action (CTA) in clear language to make sure your reader knows what to do next.

Are Your Product Pages Well-Designed?

You're no stranger to the cringe feeling you get when you land on a website with a lack of basic web design practices. And it gets worse when you click on something just to wait ten tortuous seconds for the next page to load. 

Ten seconds might not look like a lot, but according to SEMrush, a good goal for your site speed is a load time of 1-2 seconds. It's easy to feel impatient when most of the web loads in less than five seconds. 

Your website design should be clean, user-friendly, and have creative visuals. Not to mention, concise product information and social proof like customer reviews.

Remember that your website is like your elevator pitch.

3 Tips on Crafting Dispensary Text Message Copy That Converts

Here's more specific advice on how to craft dispensary text message copy that converts, so you can generate more revenue:

1. Clarity: No one likes a long-winded message they have to scroll through! With text messages, people want something they can read at first glance. To achieve this, your message should be concise without compromising information. Your reader should be able to understand your message the first time they read it.
2. Relevance: You can easily solve this with segmentation. Make sure that the text messages you send out are relevant to the recipient. For example, people that aren't very fond of edibles because of their intense high, wouldn't be interested in getting edible deals.
3. Call-to-Action: Your dispensary text message copy should always close with a CTA. Otherwise, there's always the chance of customers forgetting about your message or not knowing what to do next. A way in which you can prompt them to take action is by offering them discounts or incentives. You can also reiterate the urgency of limited offers that are going away soon.

Dispensary Sales Conversion Rate Benchmarks for 2023

• Text campaigns had a 24-hour conversion rate of 2.4%.
• Text campaigns had a 7-day conversion rate of 7.3%.
• The average monthly sum of sales generated by text campaigns in 24 hours was 27,600.

The difference between a 24-hour and 7-day conversion is the attribution window. As previously mentioned, a 24-hour attribution is more rigorous and accurately represents how effective your campaigns are. So, we recommend following the 24-hour attribution benchmark when measuring your campaigns.