A concentrates-only campaign sent to 1,474 buyers generates more revenue than a cross-category broadcast to 3,170. Smaller list. Sharper targeting. Better result.
A New York cannabis dispensary was sending cross-category campaigns to their full customer list, reasoning that broader reach meant more revenue. The hypothesis to test: would a tightly targeted concentrates-only campaign sent to proven concentrate buyers outperform a larger broadcast to mixed-category customers? The answer had direct implications for how every future campaign should be structured.
The Head-to-Head
Audience Size vs. Performance: Concentrates Only vs. Cross-Category
5.0%
Conversion Rate
Concentrates Only
1,474 emails sent $6,715 revenue generated
Winner
2.2%
Conversion Rate
Cross-Category
3,170 emails sent $5,872 revenue generated
Revenue: Smaller Audience, More Money
Revenue Generated by Campaign Type
Concentrates Only 1,474 recipients
$6,715
Winner
Cross-Category 3,170 recipients
$5,872
2.15x larger list
Key Takeaways
Smaller, targeted list outperformed a list 2.15x its size. 1,474 concentrate buyers generated $843 more in revenue than 3,170 mixed-category recipients. More sends did not mean more revenue. Relevance did.
2.3x engagement gap is the cost of irrelevance. A customer who buys concentrates and receives a concentrate-focused campaign converts at 5.0%. The same customer receiving a generic cross-category blast converts at around 2.2%. The 2.3x difference is entirely attributable to relevance.
Product affinity is the highest-signal segmentation available. What a customer actually buys is the clearest possible indicator of what they want to buy again. It requires no surveys, no preferences data, and no guesswork. Every dispensary has it in their POS.
Broadcast campaigns have a structural ceiling. No matter how good the copy, a campaign sent to customers who have no interest in the featured product category will underperform a smaller campaign sent to customers who demonstrably do.
Ready to Segment by Product Affinity?
We build product-category segmentation programs for dispensaries across NY, NJ, and PA. Every campaign matched to buyer behavior.