Top Cannabis Promotions for Christmas and New Year’s

Get the Most Out of Christmas and New Year’s With These Proven Cannabis Promotions

We already know customers are out and about, shopping naturally for gifts, and eventually, for items to bring to an end of year party. Make sure you align your promotions strategy with events that customers are already spending money around.

What events are we talking about?

Christmas, Chanukkah, Kwanzaa, Solstice, New Years. The holiday season, as it is, celebrated across nearly every culture. Because the consumer behavior is the US is much more aligned with Christmas by volume, we tend to only include it in our content, but know that we see every culture of shopper making purchases in the last month of the year.

At Happy Cabbage, our focus is always on maximizing sell-through for cannabis retailers and brands. We’ve put together some tips for you based on the most successful cannabis holiday promotions launched by retailers using Happy Marketers.

What marketing promotions work best for The Holiday Season?

First things first, let’s talk about what people are naturally doing during these holidays and map your promotions to those things at the right time.

Shopping for gifts:

This isn’t something that happens on Christmas, it happens in the weeks prior. If you want to promote specials around Christmas, NOW IS THE TIME. Don’t wait until the week of Christmas. According to the data, sales during the week of Christmas dipped by around 5% in 2022. 

Unlike Green Wednesday or Black Friday, Christmas isn’t a great sales day at all; unless you’re one of the few retailers open during this day … more on that later.

Shopping for drinks:

New Year’s is a drinking holiday. Many attend house parties with friends or meet them out at a bar. Cigars are also part and parcel of traditional NYE celebrations. Consider this before you launch a NYE concentrates sale.

Just like Thanksgiving, the holiday season means people are coming home from out of town and will stock up on weed to help them cope with Uncle Jimmy’s casual bigotry. Focus your efforts in the following strategies for success:

1. Recapturing customers - those people coming back into town aren’t your regulars, but they are looking to shop. Use SMS and email to most effectively recapture them and bring them in-store
2. Focus on non-inhalable products like edibles, beverages, and topicals to promote - these shoppers aren’t trying to puff a blunt around their family, but adding some cannabis drops into their La Croix is the move

Let’s get into the specific successful promotions:

NYE

• 'Last day of the year' deals - create urgency where none existed before
• “Get ready for NYE parties” - highlight your prerolls, shareables, and most importantly, drinks 🥂🍾
• New Year clear out sales - we made up the end of the year, so people naturally think you need to clear our your inventory before it’s over
• To say goodbye to this year and hello to the next, cannabis retailers hosted year end blowout sales.
• With a new year came announcements of new products, new prices, and new rewards and offers.
• Start the year right with a "Be the first to buy in 2025" where your first XX customers in the new year get a special incentive.
• This is a great time to remind your customers how much you appreciate them and wish them a happy New Year.

Christmas / Winter

Make it the most wonderful time of the year for your customers with these tried and true promotional ideas:

• Match products with accessories for easy-to-give, ready-to-enjoy gifts - like a battery & carts or a bong, lighter, & top-self flower.
• 'Do your holiday shopping with us' - just remind them that there’s no reason a quick weed buy isn’t part of their shopping trip
• Countdown to Christmas with 12 days of deals or your 12 strains of Christmas - we don’t have “weedvent calendars,” so do the next best thing and turn your texts into daily deals
• Offer stocking stuffer suggestions and holiday gift guides to make it easy for your customers to check off their holiday shopping lists.
• Remind your customers to get themselves a gift, too! We all need a little something to help ease any holiday stress.
• Catch their eye with playful imagery (especially while you can still text flyers directly!) with smoking Santas, red-eyed reindeer, or sleighs filled with weed.
• Be sure to celebrate everyone
  • Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Holidaze, really any excuse to celebrate the season.
• Communicate your holiday hours so your customers can plan their holiday shopping. Closing early for an employee event? Text and email your customers to let them know.
• Host a toy or food drive so you and your customers can give back to your community.
• Hold a contest -
  • Draw your customers into the store by offering a prize for whoever colors the best stoned gingerbread man or pot leaf Christmas tree.
  • You can’t be a classic Christmas sweater contest - have customers vote for the budtender with the tackiest holiday sweater or offer a goodie to your customers who come in dressed in a festive outfit.
• Goodie bags and/or gift with purchase - be Sativa Claus for all your customers
• 'Unwrap these surprise offers' - everyone loves a good pun
• “Take a to-do off your list and order delivery” - for those that don’t enjoy shopping all day, do them a solid by reminding them of delivery options
• “Stock up on stocking stuffers” - see above on puns
• “Christmas Tree giveaway” - we can’t see on our end if the winner got an actual tree🎄or a different type of "tree" 🥦🔥💨- be creative!
• “Wear an ugly Christmas sweater to the store and get a surprise” - there is some weird pride people have about possessing the ugliest sweater, harness that

General promotions around this month that are also successful:

• Post-holiday sales - not everyone is a shopping robot, cut them some slack
• Holiday hours notifications - informative and actually drives sales
• Happy holidays from our team to you - don’t forget to show appreciation, people don’t want to only read about discounts
• Seasonal product flavor announcements - #PSL 4 life! Anyone?
• Holiday food and toy drives (bring donations, get a deal) - never underestimate doing the right thing to help others this season
• Encourage pre-orders - recognize the need to keep things efficient

What to offer customers to bring them in

We know the categories that are likely to be most popular during this time. Lightly discount drinks and edibles. It seems topicals are quite popular during this time as customers bring their elderly family members gifts to aid in their aches and pains. Topicals are one of the best way to introduce the power of cannabis medicine to our older loved ones that may have been anti-pot until recently.

That being the case, there’s no need to discount this category. People wanting topicals are going to buy them regardless.

What you can consider is bundling products. Make a Christmas Basket offer with a couple bevs, a preroll or two, and some topicals. Mix it up, make a couple bundles, just capture more in the cart by pairing popular products with holiday-oriented use cases.

Make sure and share this with your network in the cannabis community and add your thoughts! We'd love to see what else you've seen create success.

And if you're looking to capitalize on a real text marketing platform at your dispensary you know where to find us.